Entries by Matt from June 2009

Drupal solutions for news sites: Multiple authors for nodes

Submitted by Matt on Fri, 06/05/2009 - 11:04
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As you might imagine, a significant part of my job at the Observer has involved creating sites that make publishing news online easier. I am, and always have been, a staunch believer in the fact that Drupal is one of the best web frameworks for news and publishing. The plethora of news organizations that use it now or are planning to use it soon bears me out on this one. That being said, Drupal's base functionality does fall short in several instances for a lot of common things that news requires. So, I'm going to describe common solutions that I've come to know in the course of customizing Drupal for several different news sites.

Drupal solutions for news sites: Rich text in node titles

Submitted by Matt on Mon, 06/08/2009 - 11:43
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This is part 2 in a series of posts about Drupal solutions for common issues raised in developing news sites. See a brief preamble in my first entry about the topic.

Solution 2: "Hey, I'm writing a book review. How do I make the book title italic in the story headline?"

Many are the times when I've wished we could get over our need to italicize titles of books, films and publications. Sadly, I don't make the rules of typography. Inevitably your editorial people will need to include bold or italic text (or even hyperlinks) in the headline (or the node title, as we developers would call it).

Drupal solutions for news sites: Creation date vs. publish date

Submitted by Matt on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 14:16
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This is part 3 in a series of posts about Drupal solutions for common issues raised in developing news sites. See a brief preamble in my first entry about the topic.

Solution 3: "This article says it was published way earlier than it was actually published."

This is a seemingly small problem, and a quick fix. But it's subtle, and a good illustration and how sometimes the programmers and journalists have different ways of thinking about the content.