Wiring It Up

While not every day leaves me pouring over internet texts like a information hungry vampire, I did get a decent chunk done in a 2 or 3 day period. I can see how this project could have alot of potential but it may die before it leaves the ground. Of course, I know the value of recycling so I suppose I will find a way to make something out of it anyway. On that, we will have to see.

CCK and Views are very concrete modules. After adding them, I enabled all the sub modules as well as the main one. Honestly cannot say that I have met a Drupal user who didnt find these insanely useful. Then again, in the case of CCK, who cold be happy with just being restricted to page and story content types?

Delving into the taxonomy, I created my Product Vocabulary and created terms based on the catalog's categories and sub categories. Once done, I went into the vocabulary's settings to make sure that the content type would use taxonomy which referred to the Product vocabulary and it's terms.

As I started elaborating on what kinds of data the Product content would be concerned with, I got curious about what I might be able to do which would restrict certan fields from being viewable by guests to the website as well as certain types of authenticated user roles. I asked Nibbler, who suggested the Content_Permissions module. After installation, I went into Administer>User Management>Permissions and there it was. Thanks alot, dear.

When it comes to layout, Im still avoiding really getting too deep into it with the exception of analyzing it from a functionality point of view. For example, it is important to have an idea of what content might appear where...but I am not going to focus on where in the page it will be just yet. One thing I want to do is get a horizontal tab layout on the individual product pages. With the amount of information that people can see about any given project (plus the images), it could get really lengthy. Tabs would be neat to do.

Found a module that could help with it but it is still in development snapshot stages. Did a bit of twittersourcing and searching around to see if anyone might know what has caused it to be in this status since last October. Looks like it got put on the back burner but no real problems reported. I installed it after a bit of debate about my typical rule of thumb (which is, "If it is beta, stay clear.").

At some point, Ill get into a few other modules I installed which pertain to adding the image content for the products. Sadly the concept of Views still eludes me. I tried a few times to read up on it but got a bit lost. It was late at night and I think I had burned the last of my midnight oil. Ill tackle it later. Sure is a comfort to know that Lullabot has released 2 more DVDs, one of which that covers Views alone.