#C14 Drupal > Structure.

We understood in the previous section that content is the menu for creating pages, but the menu for configuring settings related to page structure and site structure is the menu for site construction, which is explained in this section.

The site construction menu structure covers most of the menus considered necessary for website construction. The comment type, content type and block type are items directly related to page creation and are easy to understand if you think of them as menus for creating and editing page and block templates for use in the content menu.

Whereas menus named type have a secondary use in page creation after editing or creation, contact forms, taxonomies and menus are items that are used directly after creation and editing are complete.

The Display Mode and View are menus for editing and creating listings on the page. Views are a very good feature and allow for flexible creation of list pages with different criteria. The categories and tags set in the taxonomy can also be listed and used as pages in the view settings.

Block layout is a feature that allows you to insert blocks into the page. By specifying the content type, vocabulary and URL conditions, the page layout can be freely structured according to the purpose of the page.

The site construction consists of the following menus.

The site-building menus are managed by fields in the basics of new creation and editing as common to each section of the site-building menus.

Basic settings common to each menu item.

1. [ Add XXX type ] function for creating a new type.
2. The existing [ XXX type ] is displayed in a list, so you can select it, edit it or click on a field to configure it.

Depending on the item, new or existing edits can be made by editing [Edit], [Fields], [View Form], [View] and, depending on the menu, [Permissions]. The following four management items are all related to the setting and display of fields.

1. Edit // Set labels, administrative comments and internal system names.
2. Manage fields // Manage and configure the fields you use.
3. Managing the display of forms // Managing the display of the Admin console
4. Display management // display management of published content

Now that you understand the menu structure, let's take a look at each item.

Set what is to be displayed in the comments section of the article. Basically, an editor is provided for comments, but you can also select images and files if required. A common use case is blog comments, but by having multiple fields, you can also create themed surveys or articles for discussion.

Configure the contact form settings. You can set up fields and values for form items such as name, title and email address, set up recipients and addresses to receive messages sent from the contact form, send messages after submission, and display messages on the page after submission.
You can create multiple forms and use them for different purposes, so you can prepare and use one form for enquiries and another for surveys, for example.

This is the content type that appeared in the previous section of the article. Create or edit content types here for use in creating pages in the content menu. Add fields to add tags, post dates and times, etc., which are not provided by default. You can freely set where the added fields are displayed in the Display management. If you select an image field, you can also set the image size to be displayed.
The settings here are easier to understand if you think of them as setting the template for the page type used in the content menu. The menu allows you to add, rearrange and freely configure the fields of the template you want to use, where the fields are the content elements you want to display on the page, such as tags, images and text.

Drupal does not have the concept of tags or categories to be used as taxonomies, but rather parent elements called vocabularies and terms that are placed in vocabularies are used as tags or categories.

Since Drupal does not have the concept of tags, you can use tags set in terms as categories, or use categories as tags. The benefits of the Drupal concept of terms are linked to the flexibility of the extraction criteria in Views, which will be discussed later, and by setting up the term settings well in Taxonomy, you can use the pages you create in multiple ways.

Although there is a basic concept of creating pages in the content menu, the ability to use terms set in the taxonomy as list pages as they are, for example, shows the flexibility of Drupal's information organisation.

Configure the fields to be displayed in a term in the Vocabulary settings. The term can be used as a list page with HTML elements using the fields set in the vocabulary.

This menu allows you to set which display methods are available for content and forms. There are two modes: view mode and form mode. View mode is configured for content, content blocks, comments, contact messages, taxonomy terms and user menus, while form mode is configured for users.

Initially, I did not understand the meaning and necessity of the Display mode settings, as I could not see the results of the Display mode settings within the Display mode. What I did understand was that when creating a list page for a page created by an article in the View menu (see below), the teaser and body text set in Display mode can be selected for the display format of the list page. This gives some idea of the need and meaning of the display mode setting.

The fact that the teaser and body of the content are selected by default, which means that the teaser and body of the content can be displayed without having to configure them first, is the reason why the need to set and understand the display mode was not understood.

The teaser and text display of content that needs to be set to display mode is set by default, so there is no need to change the settings or add new ones, but the menu is used to make settings when you want to display the view mode in a different way in the future.

Manage customised lists of content. Create lists of pages created by articles. Create lists of only those pages that have been extracted according to your requirements by specifying the content type and taxonomy tags. The View menu also has the ability to create pages, as you can create pages or blocks from the list extracted in the View menu.
As you can create pages and blocks, you can choose to display the list of extracted pages in the form of a teaser or text display set in 1-5. display mode.

The format of the display format is

Grid

1. HTML list
2. Responsive grid
3. TableUnformatted list

Select from

You can customise the design by registering CSS classes in the custom classes section of the settings.
The view menu is one of the advantages of using Drupal. You can flexibly configure the website to meet your objectives. The View menu can be used to create categorised list pages and automatically generate list pages sorted by taxonomy terms.

Setting up view menus is also an important part of building a website in Drupal, and we hope to explain it in more detail with examples in a separate article.

The block type is the block version of the 1-3. content type. The block type used for content is created or set here. By default, a basic block and a search block are provided. Used in content types. This is the menu for creating new block types and setting them up. The actual settings are added and configured on a field-by-field basis, and the configuration items are set for the functions assigned to the selected field.

Configure block content to be displayed in the sidebar and other regions of the site. This menu is another feature that gives you the advantage of using Drupal. You can freely set the layout of the blocks that are displayed on the page. Layouts vary depending on the theme used, but the header is divided into upper, middle and lower rows, main content, left and right sidebars, footer also has upper, middle and lower rows, etc. You can insert the specified blocks where you want them to appear. The header and other areas where these blocks are inserted are called regions, and blocks are inserted by specifying a region.

If you want to check the actual display, you can check the layout of the header and footer by viewing the block region display function.

To insert a new block, select the given region, click Place block and select the block that appears in the menu to place it. The blocks that appear here are the blocks created by the content, the blocks that Drupal provides by default and the blocks provided by the theme, so choose the one that best suits your purpose.

In the block settings, there is an item called ‘page’, where you can specify a path to display on specific pages or, conversely, not display on specific pages, so you can configure the page layout of your site in the way you want.

You can also display certain pages in languages, vocabularies, content types and permissions. You cannot hide these settings. For example, you can change the page layout of the site in English/Japanese by specifying the language.

The block layout menu settings are also an important part of building a website with Drupal, and we hope to explain them in more detail in a separate article with examples.

This menu manages menu links and menus. This menu is used to add and configure the menu displayed in the header of the page TOP and the menu used in the Admin console. The navigation menu provided by the theme and the admin menu used in the Admin Console are provided by default.

The navigation menu provided by default is responsive, so the default menu is used. Select the menu to be used, add the items to be displayed in the menu and set the display name and link.

Following on from the previous overview of the content menu, we have now compiled an overview of the site-building menu, which is quite voluminous when written out as it consolidates the settings required to build a site in Drupal.

The reason why we have written two articles, one on the content menu and one on the site building menu, is that when creating and publishing a page, Drupal requires settings to be made in a separate place from the page creation, including design and structure, which is an essential process if you want to make the page and structure as you want it.

This is a voluminous article to explain this concept. I have not yet been able to summarise the main points well, so I hope to be able to summarise the two articles I have written over the course of two articles in the next article.