Help - Nodes and Pages

The Drupal component that matches GENUKI's pages is, in general, the "node". The node is constructed to hold the various pieces of information that will be shown in the page. Two initial node types have been defined, a Place node for all the standard county, town, parish, etc., pages, and a Plain node for all those further GENUKI pages created to hold additional information in cases where this information is rather too big to go into the parish page. (A third type of node, a GENUKI topic node, which relates to part of a page rather than a whole page, is described below.) 

As a GENUKI maintainer, after you have logged in (in fact to Drupal), you then have the ability to edit Place nodes and Plain nodes, and so control the information content of the pages that these nodes define. When you have moved (either by following links, or by using the Search facility) to the page that you wish to edit, you can click on the Edit button and so reach an "Edit Template" for the node corresponding to this page. This shows you all the fields that comprise the particular type of node (Place or Plain), and provides "Help" information indicating how each field is used and is to be filled in. The initial fields in each node relate to such matters as page titles, contents listings, etc. You need to scroll past these fields to get to the field(s) where the actual data (information content) of the page is held. 

GENUKI's hierarchy of county, parish, etc., pages have a strictly defined structure and appearance. Within each such page, all information content appears under one or other of a defined set of topic headings ("Church Records", "History", etc.); a two-column listing of the contained topics is given at the head of each page. Drupal has been set up so as to facilitate, indeed to relieve maintainers from all responsibility for adhering to, this structuring. Thus each Place node's Edit Template provides an alphabetically-ordered set of  separate "fields" (in particular "topic boxes") for all the possible topics. The Edit Template shows the topic boxes that already have some information content ahead of those that are still empty. Adding to, or editing existing information just involves editing the contents of the appropriate topic box.

When information is added to a previously empty topic box,  and the Save button (near the top of the Edit Template) is clicked, the Edit Template closes and the web page will be shown with the new topic in its correct place, i.e. all the topics with information content will be visible, in alphabetical order, with the correct topic headings, below an augmented two-column listing of the topics contained.

These two columns typically appear either side of a map. The address from which Drupal is to obtain this map is defined in one of the fields that preface the set of topic fields. (In fact the vast majority of parishes already have parish pages in GENUKI, so maintainers will mainly find themselves with the straightforward task of filling in or editing topic fields in existing Place pages.)

Some information, such as map links, nearby places from the Gazetteer, and churches from the Church Database, is added to the place pages automatically, under appropriate topic headings. (Note: Such automatically-added information will not be shown in Place nodes' Edit Templates, and can only be edited via the facilities of the and the Church Database.) 

The inclusion of this information in place pages is achieved simply by providing the appropriate unique "place code" in each place node. For example the code for Lytham is LANLytham. One can find all the nodes and their associated place codes for a county via the "Nodes Column" (Column F) in the Node List which is accessible from the Statistics & Errors report - available via a link in the Maintenance Menu. Alternatively, a simple alphabetically-ordered list of place codes, filterable by county, is provided by the Places Report. (Place codes in fact are in fact held in column R of the set of places.csv files that constitute the gazetteer - Phil has code that will automatically add a suitable value to the place code (column R) for a places.csv file, using the value in existing URLs as a starting point, when a new place page is needed.)

In Place nodes there are also fields for the basic headers such as the title and a descriptive quote, and an optional image for the location map. There are also some fields (that the user doesn't see) which define where the web page that is created from the given Place node is in the GENUKI hierarchy (and hence what the "breadcrumbs" trail will show when the page is displayed), and for linking it with other information. However, it is the topic fields that are the ones that maintainers will use most. 

Each Plain node (such as the present node) similarly has various fields for the basic headers, with the actual information content of the web page being held just in the one "Body" field. Other fields are again hidden from the user and are used to hold information such as the county, and the associated place (identified using the relevant place code).

Maintainers are likely to have to create new Plain nodes, to accomodate newly-acquired information. This can be done using the Create GENUKI Plain Page facility. (There is also a Create GENUKI Place Page facility, and a Recent Content facility that provides a very useful listing of recently-added pages.) The new Plain node's Edit Template is again intended to be self-documenting, so contains explanations of how to fill in these other fields. However an alternative and often easier strategy is to use the "Clone Content" operation to copy an existing Plain page (choosing one that is in the relevant place in the GENUKI page hierarchy), and then edit the contents of the copy appropriately. In either case, there is a need to provide the new page with a URL so that it can be linked to from elsewhere - e.g. "big/eng/HEF/Lugwardine/WarMemorial" if the intent is to provide a page containing a transcript of Lugwardine's war memorial.

Each topic or body box can either be set to display HTML (when a blue command under the field is showing "Enable rich text"), or to show the contents of the field as it will be shown in the web page (when a blue command under the field is showing "Disable rich text"). This latter case is in fact providing you with a WYSIWYG ("What You See is What You Get") editing facility - see below, where you will also find a different and often better way of enabling and disbling rich text.  You can flip between the two entry modes to suit your preference.  In WYSIWIG mode no knowledge of HTML is required. In the  HTML mode the HTML is structured in the sense that it employs new lines and indenting to clarify the syntax of the HTML text. In this mode only a limited set of safe HTML codes can be used. (The allowable HTML codes are listed under the topic box.) 

You can arrange that WYSIWYG is the default mode for you, for both Place and Plain Pages, by setting "Text Formats enabled for rich-text editing" to "Filtered HTML" and "GENUKI Topic" in the Edit pane of your Account page. (This is reachable via the My Account link that is visible in the top right hand corner of each page.) 

A very important safeguard is that all nodes are set to make a new revision each time you edit them. If you make a mistake you can switch back to a previous revision. You can also compare revisions and see the changes that have been made.

As mentioned, the Edit Templates for both the Place and the Plain nodes are intended to be essentially self-documenting, i.e. they contain explanatory information aimed at describing exactly how the various fields are to be used and filled in. Suggestions for improving these explanations are welcome.

There is no direct means of changing the type of a page, e.g. a Place Page to a Plain page. You would have to create a Plain node, and cut and paste the information into it, and  give it a different (temporary) URL. Then once you have saved the new Plain page and it looks alright, delete the no-longer needed Place node so that you can replace the new Plain page's temporary URL.