Front page

Editing in progress!!!!

Front page of the departmental Drupal installation is a View composed of the following components:

  • Slideshow,
  • Upcoming Events,
  • Departmental News, and
  • Front Features

Slideshow

To add a new slide to the slide show:

  • Upload an image to /var/www/images/slideshow/ on the web server. The image should be 490 x 280 pixels. Assume the file name is xxx.jpg.
  • In the Navigation menu, choose Create Content and then choose Slide with caption.
  • Choose a short Title.
  • The Body field is displayed only if the node is viewed directly, not on the slide. Put a long version of the story here. The beginning should look as follows to repeat the photo:
    <div class="slide" style="background:url(/images/slideshow/xxx.jpg);"> </div>
  • The Teaser is what determines what shows up on the slide overlay. Here is an example of a teaser:
<div class="slide" style="background:url(/images/slideshow/xxx.jpg);"> <div class="transbox"> <h2>Title: at most 30 characters</h2> <p> Text: at most 200 characters. <a href="https://www.math.lsu.edu/url-of-this-node"> Read more... </a> </p> </div> </div>

Note that the slideshow is set up in a non-standard way: the slides are made not of images, but of teasers, with the images defined as background to teasers. This is to go around the restriction for Drupal files to be public, which all slideshow modules seem to impose. We certainly must have private files since we use Drupal for control access to files like promotion and tenure documents.

Upcoming Events

To make the Upcoming Events functioning now, a primitive version of a Drupal calendar has been implemented. This will change in a few weeks, when this primitive version is replaced by a full-fledged calendar module, which is now being developed and which will replace the old departmental calendar. For now, to make new event appear in Upcoming Events:

  • In the Navigation menu, choose Create Content and then Event.
  • Pick a Title.
  • For now, Event Category is irrelevant, although it will be crtical later for the full version of the calendar.
  • Set Event Calendar to Front Page Event, and whatever other calendars are appropriate. (Hold the Control key to make multiple selections.)
  • Fill out Body.
  • Carefully choose Short Title, since this is what will actually show on the front page.
  • Select Date. The From date is mandatory, and is used for sorting the events in the display, while the To date is optional.