Simple Views

Views

Drupal Gardens also includes Views, which can do everything Simple Views does and a lot more. To find out about Views, see: the Views help pages.

Simple Views

When your site starts to fill up with content, you will probably want visitors to be able to find specific content, posts or information without having to page through all the pages on your site. Enabling the search block is one solution, but you can also make dynamic pages and blocks featuring specific information you want users to find and see.

What are dynamic pages? You can think of a "dynamic page" as a filtered list of content from your site. It can be filtered to show specific content like articles tagged with a specific term. The page is "dynamic" because new content that matches the filter will be added to the page as it is created. Using Simple Views, you can select what content to present and what order it should be presented in.

What are dynamic blocks? Dynamic blocks can present a certain number of content item titles and/or teasers as a preview or highlight of content you wish to promote.

View components -There are three kinds of elements needed to build simple views:

• Filter criteria: "Display" and "Limit to tags" determine what content will be included in a simple view.
• Display settings: "Title", "Sorted", "As a", and "Show" determine how the selected content will be presented.
• Functional elements: "Path", "Add an RSS feed", "Expose a block"

Build a simple view

• Go to Structure > Simple views
• Click "Add view" and design your Simple view:
  • Title (display) - Page or block title displayed to site visitors
  • Path (URL) - URL of the simple view page: "lobster" would create the page at http://example.com/lobster.
  • Display (filter criterion) - Select from all standard and custom content types on your site. "All posts" would include content of all content types in your simple view.
  • Sorted (display) - The display order of the content in your simple view:
    • newest first
    • oldest first
    • by title (alphabetically)
    • by number of hits (how many times a content item has been visited)
  • As a (display) - How to display the content:
    • List of full posts - shows complete content items
    • List of teasers - shows titles and teasers
    • List of titles - show titles only
    • List of titles (clicking reveals first post)
    • Table with overview data - Overview table
  • Limit to tags (filter criterion) - Display content tagged with one or more tags.
  • Show (display) - How many items to display per page
  • Add an RSS feed - Make an RSS feed of your simple view available. The RSS feed of the path "lobster" (http://example.com/lobster) would be http://example.com/lobster/feed.
  • Expose a block - Makes a block of your simple view available. Go to the Blocks page at Structure > Blocks to enable it and place it in a block region on one or more pages or your site.
    • Show - How many items to display in the block.
    • As a (display) - How to display the content:
      • List of full posts - shows complete content items
      • List of teasers - shows titles and teasers
      • List of titles - show titles only
      • List of titles (clicking reveals first post)
      • Table with overview data - Overview table
  • Click "Submit"

    

Edit or delete existing Simple Views

Once your view has been created, it is added to the list of views at Structure > Simple views and can be edited or deleted any time.

Create a link or menu entry to a view

Click on the view's link in the "Path" column to see the view and its URL. Add that URL to a navigation menu of your choice.