So you're editing a Story node in Drupal, and... Wait, was it a Story? Or was it a Page node? Or is the node you're editing actually a Blog Entry?

When you create a node, Drupal gives you a big-letter reminder of what you're making: "Create Story" (or whatever the node type is) appears at the top of the creation form. Yet when you later edit the node, there's no easy reminder of what the node type. Clues in the path, the visible fields, or elsewhere may give it away to the experienced site builder, but not to a newcomer admin to the site. And to be sure, you won't often care what the node type is when making some small edits, but then again you might find yourself scratching your head as you stare at the edit form for a node someone else made, thinking that you'd like to make this change if it's a Story but that change if it's a Page...

There's a nice and very simple tip at the Josiah Ritchie blog to aid future editors (including yourself) on this small point. Read more about Tip for friendlier content creation

A happy New Year to all! And what could ring in a new year more happily than updates to the Easy Drupal Admin Manual?

Okay, lots. But still, it's not a bad thing, right? Read more about More EDAM updates!

Got a couple new Easy Drupal Admin Manual pages online, under the heading Placing Content on Pages. As with other pages, it's too basic to be of much use to experienced Drupaltons, but may be helpful for some brand-new beginners.

Also doing a little rearrangement of some other pages. (Ah, the beauty of a CMS here: I can shuffle Book pages around, and not have to worry about the internal links. Thank you, blue drop-headed one.)

I recently posted a modest Drupal Admin Manual for the non-technical admin.

Non-technical admin? Whozzat? Well, the specific target audience is the would-be admin client for a Drupal site. Not the person who wants to set up Drupal on his own, create a site, and then run it. Nor the person who wants to pay you to do it all: build a site and then maintain it indefinitely. I'm talking the client in between, the one who says "CMS installation, theming, initial setup – those aren't for me. I want a techie to handle those. But after that, yeah, I want to create my own content, oversee the site, and maybe even play with overall layout and features a bit." I think that describes a common client type for a Drupal developer. (It also covers the unsuspecting admin upon whom Drupalness is thrust by fate: "Here, this is our site that the last guy made with Droopy-something-or-other. It's yours now. We want ten new sections up by Monday...")

Those folks need a manual that starts with post-installation basics and assumes no Drupal knowledge at all. I hope my humble manual can be of help there. But as I've been finding, it's naive to assume that any non-technical user, or even a semi-technical one, can or will dive right into Drupal admin, even with clear instructions in hand. Drupal does a lot of heavy lifting for the non-techie admin, but said person still needs to bring some goods to the table. Read more about Think you can admin a Drupal site?