The articles covering the basic Drupal concepts needed for page creation have grown long and scattered across multiple articles, so here's a summary to pull them together.
Page Creation and Required Configuration
After installing Drupal, you choose a theme and start building pages. I imagine most people don't plan to use the default pages as-is — they want to configure things to match their preferences or the purpose of their site. I certainly didn't use the defaults; I changed things to what I considered the best setup for publishing articles before going live.
When I first installed Drupal, I found it hard to figure out how to create pages in the configuration I wanted. These articles are what I wrote after working through that — documenting what I came to understand. I tried to put the concepts and rules into words alongside simple diagrams, but the articles got long and it became unclear what they were actually about. Hence this summary.
Understanding Drupal's Menu Structure
- Understand what each menu in the Drupal admin console is for
- Understand the meaning of the word "Content"
- Understand what "type" means
- Know the structure of each menu and where features are located
Content Menu
- Understand that page and block creation is done in the Content menu
- Understand that the content types and block types used for page creation are templates
- Understand that detailed content type configuration is done not in the Content menu but in Structure > Content types
Structure Menu
- Understand that configuring site structure — including pages — is done in the Structure menu
- Understand what each feature available in the Structure menu does
- Understand the concept of fields — the elements you enter and display
- Know where features in the Structure menu are located
Creating and Publishing Pages with Drupal
- Check the content type for page creation
- Configure the content type to match the target structure
- Configure Taxonomy
- Add the necessary fields to the content type
- Check and configure Block layout
Additional Notes
- Think through and organize the elements needed to build your site.
- Understand the concept of Taxonomy as the basis for tags and categories
- Understand the value of giving each page the sorting conditions needed to display it in a list
- Understand the significance of having a publication date and author on each page
1. Drupal Admin Console
Understanding Drupal's menu structure means grasping an overview of what Drupal can do, knowing where to find specific features, and being able to use them when needed. That's why I made it an article.
#C12 The Drupal Admin Interface.
An overview of the Admin Console. The fastest way to understand the full scope of Drupal's features is to understand and get a feel for the menu structure. Knowing where to find the features you need is fundamental to working with Drupal, which is why I made this the first article.
2. Content
Creating pages in Drupal means selecting a content type from the Content menu and building from there. To understand the Content menu, I put together an overview of its structure. The Content menu is where you select an available content type and create pages — and a content type is a template for page creation. Content type settings cannot be changed from within the Content menu.
#C13 An Overview of Drupal Content.
The Content menu and content types have similar-sounding names, and it's hard to understand their respective functions and purposes from the words alone, so here's an overview. This article is written to convey three things: that the Content menu is for selecting an available content type and creating pages; that a content type is a template for page creation; and that content type settings cannot be changed from within the Content menu.
3. Structure
Adding and configuring the content types available in the Content menu is done in the Structure menu. Structure is also where you do all the other configuration that's essential for site building — including Views, which lets you flexibly organize pages into lists (not covered in detail in this article) — making it a menu that handles everything in one place.
#C14 An Overview of Drupal Structure.
An explanation of the Structure menu, where you add and configure the content types available in the Content menu. This article focuses on Taxonomy configuration and content type settings. The Structure menu is where you configure the elements and features that make up the site — it handles not just building individual pages but configuring everything needed to build the site as a whole, making it an important menu for working with Drupal.
4. Content and Structure
Having covered the Structure menu overview in the previous section, this article covers configuring Taxonomy and setting up the actual content type to use. It walks through the process of creating a page with a content type configured in Structure, using a real published article as a concrete example. This article brings together what was covered about the Content menu and Structure menu and explains how they're actually used.
#C15 Using Content and Structure.
A walkthrough of the process for creating pages in Drupal with a custom structure rather than the default. Using a content type configured and prepared in the Structure menu, this article uses a real published article as a concrete example. It's written to bring together the Content menu and Structure menu described in the previous articles and understand how they're actually used.
Conclude.
After installing Drupal and choosing Bootstrap5 as the theme, I started creating pages and building out the site. When I created the first article page, I wanted to change the page structure, and that started with figuring out what I needed to do to change it.
- When I selected the default Article content type, wrote a test article, and thought about what I wanted to change: creating a page with the default Article content type places the breadcrumb in the upper right of the page. I wanted to move it to the bottom.
- The default image field is set to a single location at the top of the page. CKEditor — used for writing articles — also has an image placement function, but placing images through CKEditor leaves them as JPEG; you can't upload images as WebP.
- Not covered in this article, but Drupal has a built-in image optimization feature that lets you specify image dimensions and converts the published file type from JPEG to WebP. This feature isn't available when images are placed through CKEditor, so I add image fields directly to the content type instead.
- Since this article is about creating a single page, I haven't touched on how to organize created pages into lists — but to do that later, pages need to carry tags and categories. The default content type does include a tag function, but it's not set up for the kind of list organization I had in mind, so I wanted to configure Taxonomy to handle both the tag element and the category element.
Those were the changes I researched and worked through.
Wanting to change from the default page structure to the one I had in mind, I started researching Drupal's features and working through the settings. In that process, the rules underlying Drupal's site-building configuration started to come into view. Understanding those rules is what this four-article series has been about.
I've been calling them "Drupal's rules," but the underlying concept is this: the features Drupal provides are designed around a separation between configuration and actual use. Understanding that concept makes the logic of how the various features are organized across the menus fall into place.
The question of where to find a feature and what needs to be configured — something that comes up constantly when actually working with Drupal — also becomes more predictable once you understand the configuration-versus-use concept and start reading the menu structure with that in mind.
I decided to try out Drupal's multilingual feature and have been building the English site. That work has put the articles covering Drupal's features on hold. As a short break, I've jotted down a quick note on what I've been doing.