In Drupal, each item of content is called a node. A node can belong to only one content type. When creating content, depending on the content type and your role on the site, you may have some or all of the fields listed below:
Create Page
- Title
- The name that will be visible on the top of the page. This is also part of the URL. This field is the only required field.
- SiteSelection
- As the name implies, this is the section or subsection of the site that the page resides in. This is an important field as it helps define the site's structure.
Menu Settings:
The menu settings menu is closed by default, but can be opened by clicking on the menu name.
- Menu link:
- This should be something very similar to the Title above, but can be a shorter version to better fit on menus. Leave this blank if you don't want the page visible on any menu.
- Parent item:
- Identifies which menu or part of a menu an item falls on.
- Weight:
- Allows the author the ability to organize menu items by applying a numerical value to each of them. The higher the weight, the lower on the menu an item will fall. Leaving the value zero will cause items to default to alphabetical order, as will assigning multiple items the same value.
Body:
This is where you place and format page content. This section works very similarly to word processing software like MS Word. Formatting controls are available across the top of the block for:
Formatting Text
bold
italic
ordered list and 
unordered list
Superscript and 
subscript
Blockquote
Citation
Abbreviation
Acronym - 
Remove formatting - removes common formatting like bold, italic, underline, etc.
Format pull-down menu to apply paragraph, h3-h6, definition term, and definition description
Styles pull-down menu to apply styles for left, center, right, and justified aligning of text
Insert Page break - (teaser) Defines where the teaser excerpt, which can be displayed elsewhere on a site will end. This excerpt (teaser) starts at the beginning of a page, and ends at 600 characters or at the page break marker, whichever comes first.
Managing Links
Add/edit link
Breaking links
Link to Node - the mechanism to link or edit links to pages within your Drupal site. Uses a series of drop-down menus to navigate to the desired page.
Insert file
Additional Content
Add/edit image
Add special character
Place and Move Content
Cut
Copy
Paste
Paste as plain text - removes all formatting from pasted text
Paste from MS Word - removes Microsoft related code from pasted text, but maintain formatting
Manage Tabular Data
Insert Table
Row properties
Cell properties
Insert row before
Insert row after
Delete row
Insert column before
Insert column after
Delete column
Split merged cells
Merge cells
HTML Editing
View / Edit HTML - HTML code can also be displayed using the “Disable rich-text” link just below the body section.
Clean Messy Code
Input Format
There are three types of input allowed in Drupal that you may have access to.
- Filtered HTML
- The most commonly used, allows some HTML (bold, italic, links, etc.) but filters out the rest before display. The full code will be saved to the database, but it will only display the filtered result.
- Full HTML
- Just what the name describes. It allows and displays the full range of HTML. Care should be taken with this as mistakes in the HTML of the final page can be introduced.
- PHP Code
- The least commonly used option. Because PHP can interact with the site's database this is should be reserved for administrators who have a good knowledge of PHP and Drupal.
Meta Tags
Meta tags are a series of descriptive terms coded into the head section of an HTML document that allows search engines to better find content. The Meta tag input fields in Drupal allow you to define these descriptive terms for each page of your site.
Revision Information
ITD's installation of Drupal will by default save revisions each time you change a document. It also has a “Log message” field so that you may describe the changes you're making, or the reason for them. This saved version information can be used later to review the history of a document, and to revert to previous versions.
URL Path Settings
URL path settings control the URL of the page being edited. Editing of this should only rarely be needed. The default settings should cover almost any circumstance.
Publishing Options
This section controls the publication status of Drupal content.
- Publish
- Published content is viewable to the public, while unpublished (box unchecked) content is only visible to administrators of a site. Creating unpublished content is useful for testing and proofing of content before making it public by publishing it.
- Promote to the front page
- Places an excerpt (teaser) of the content on the site's home page. This is very useful for featuring new, timely, or updated content. The teaser excerpt is everything in the body section of the content above the page-break marker, or 600 characters whichever comes first.
- Sticky
- Used when multiple content items appear on the same page, such as press releases. Selecting “sticky” pulls that item out of chronological order and moves this it to the top of the page. It will “stick” at the top of the list until that setting is changed.
Create Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
FAQ content varies a little from other content types in that it contains these additional fields:
- Question details
- This is required for longer or more complex questions that would not otherwise fit within the normal question field.
- Question
- This shorter question field should contain either the complete question if it's short, or an abbreviated version of the longer question. (This functions as the node's title)
- Node Weight
- A way of making a question and answer pair more or less important on the overall list. Items with a lower (lighter) node weight value will appear above those with a higher (heavier) value.
- Answer
- The answer to the FAQ. It can contain formatting, links, links, or anything else a normal Drupal page can. (This is the same as the node body in other content types)
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