User roles
In a nutshell:
- Anonymous: can view all public content (Forum and Basic pages)
- Registered users: same as anons + can edit (not create) Basic pages + can post on the Forum + can create News and Publications
- Society members: same as registered + can view, edit, create Protected pages + can create Basic pages
- Admins: omnipotent + can (and must!) unblock new Registered users who are initially blocked + can assign other users any roles
How to create a News or Publication item
Use these to announce relevant news or publications that will be shown on the front page.
In the top white menu, go to Content, click Add content, and choose the News or Publication content type. Create your content. (If you don't see the white menu at the top, you're either not logged in or you don't have permissions, see "User roles" above.)
News items go to the middle column, Publications go to the right sidebar. If you don't want to get your news to the front page, expand "Promotion options" on the right and uncheck "Promoted to the front page". Another checkbox, "Sticky at the top of lists", will make your item stick to the top of the front page even when newer items appear — use it only for important stuff that needs to persist, and uncheck it for any other news item that is currently on top.
Use the "Edit summary" link to open a field for summary which is what this news item will be abridged to on the front page (if you don't do it, it will be shown in full if it's under 700 characters, or cut, perhaps in the middle of a word, if it's longer).
How to create a page
Go to Content in the white menu above, click Add content, and select the appropriate content type:
- Basic page: visible to everyone, editable from Registered up. Use for any permanent content.
- Person page: same permissions as Basic, but can have attached tags. Use for personal pages of Nabokovians, adding tags (here's a complete list) to classify them by their research interests.
- Protected page: visible and editable from Society member up. Use for premium content.
If you need to change the type of an existing page, the only way is to create a new page of the proper type and copy/paste content to it. Don't forget to reassign the page's URL to the new page and delete the old page once everything is set up.
New pages can be advertised on the front page of the site, just as News or Publications. Just turn on the "Promoted to the front page" checkbox and edit the Summary to be used.
How to set up or change a page's URL
By default, new pages get technical URLs with /node/ and some number. These are OK for ephemera (news, publication announcements) but don't use these for permanent pages. Instead, assign a mnemonic URL to each new page that would fit into the overall site hierarchy. If in doubt about which URL to use, ask the site's editor.
When editing a page, click "URL PATH SETTINGS" on the right and type your URL. Start it with / not including the site's domain. For example, the page you're reading is at
/about/editing
This is what you should use to link to it from other pages on our site. From external sites, of course, use the complete URL:
https://www.thenabokovian.org/about/editing
Please use https, not http, in external links to our site.
For consistency, we only use lowercase in URLs. In multi-word URLs we use hyphen, not underscore to separate words (i.e. bend-sinister, not bend_sinister) because it reportedly works better for Google and some people may have trouble with the underscore character.
How to use HTML markup on a page
When editing, there are two views of the text: default and source. You can only see and edit the HTML markup in Source view. Just click the Source button on the toolbar and you can see and edit and add HTML markup. You can always switch to and from the Source mode as necessary.
How to attach a PDF file to a page
First, attach the PDF to the page using the "Upload a file" section at the bottom of Edit page. Your file should appear there in the list.
Then, get the URL of that file by right-clicking the file in the list and choosing "Copy link location" or "Copy URL" in your browser.
Then, just write the text of the link in the text of the page, select it, click the Link button on the toolbar, and paste the URL. Save the page. Now this text links to your file.
Alternatively, you can check the Display checkbox in the list for this file, and then it will be simply listed at the bottom of the page with its natural filename. This works for any number of files.
How to insert and resize an image
Just click on the Image button on the toolbar and upload your image. You can provide a caption.
Once the image is in your text, you can resize it by dragging the black handle in the bottom right corner, or move it up/down by the handle in the top left. You can also right-click the image and set some properties, most notably Align: if you set it to Left or Right, the image (if small enough) will be inset into the text flow on left or right. (Unfortunately, due to a Drupal bug flowing text around the image won't work if your caption is too long.)
How to add a gallery of images
For a few images incorporated into text, see the previous section. However, if you want to upload a large number of images and display them as a thumbnail gallery, use the Images field. When editing, the Images field is at bottom (note that it's different from Files, which are for PDFs and the like). Add any number of images and provide a Title for each (titles are not displayed as text, though, but as tooltips on mouse hover). When viewing the page, the images are below the text, shown as thumbnails linked to the full-size image.