Drupal Nodes

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ByAlex Kent

Drupal nodes are an integral part of how a Drupal 8 site works. Understanding them will help understand how an Islandora 8 site functions.

All content on a Drupal site is stored and treated as nodes. Regular Drupal nodes include any individual content on a site such as a page, poll, article, or blog entry. The content type of the node will define what fields (or specific information) that node displays. For example, a basic Page content type has (minimally) two fields: title and body. 

Node management and display 

The fact that all content are nodes gives us the ability to create innovative new content, apply new features, or make changes to the content of one type. This means there is a lot more control over the access to, and display of, resources in your repository.

Under the hood, the Node module manages the nodes and enables the following abilities: 

  • List, sort through, and manage all the content on your site 
  • Set defaults for how all posts are displayed
  • List and configure the “content types” for your site and create new ones

Being able to create different content types enables one to have different nodes for different purposes. These content types tell Drupal how to interact with the node. For example, an “article” is one content type, a “book page” is another, and an “about page” another. This impacts how that content is managed and viewed in the repository.  

Nodes: Pulling it all together

Nodes are an integral part of a Drupal site. They are the glue that holds everything together in the user interface. With them, Drupal knows how to manage nodes, and through them, all content on the site.

Fun Fact: Drupal provides the back-end framework for 1.5% of websites worldwide. The majority of these sites (67.9%) are running Drupal 7.

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