Skeletons!
I just released my second official Drupal project today.
Skeleton for Drupal 5.
I created this module (like most Drupal developers) to solve a specific problem. I’m building a corporate intranet site to store complex information about clients and partners. We want to store the same information for each partner, but not all in a single node, because: a) not all users should be able to access all data; and b) that node would be ridiculously long.
The solution: create reusable book outlines, which contain preset nodes containing sample (or static) data.
From the project description:
The Skeleton module works with the core Book module to create pre-configured outlines that can be reused. After creating a skeleton and assigning templates to it, users with the proper permission will be able to create new books that clone the outline and content of the skeleton.
The original use-case of this module is for publishing on an intranet site, where it is important to create the same information structure repeatedly. The skeleton module is designed to make this repetitive task easy to perform — especially for non-technical site administrator.
This is an alpha release, as the module has only been tested on localhost by a single user. if you need this module and want to be a co-maintainer, let me know, too!
4 Comments so far
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You should check out the node_template module (http://drupal.org/project/node_template). It already provides the option to store a complete book (as well as any node by itself) as a template and the ability to re-use it. Isn’t that exactly what Skeletons does as well?
By Wim Mostrey on 06.18.07 5:42 am
AFAIK there’s a module controlling access rights to fields in CCK node types. Would that be useful? With node templates - I think it could be done with existing modules.
By Gunnar Langemark on 06.18.07 6:06 am
Indeed, the cck_field_perms allows you to do this so user could use the template, and force them to keep certain default values.
By Wim Mostrey on 06.18.07 7:19 am
@Wim: Wow. Never even saw Node Template. I even asked on the development list if such a module existed, and no one responded. [Sigh — I will test that module after I get back from vacation.]
A very brief look suggests slightly different use-cases and workflow. Node Template seems to work with previously published content. Skeleton lets you create template nodes that aren’t published nodes — they are just stored node data structures. I suspect the two modules might merge pretty well, as I already thought about adding a “make template” tab to other nodes.
@Gunnar: I’ve used cck_field_perms (I like it) — it sets the perms as Access Control rules, so its usage sits outside what Skeleton (and Node Template) does. It could indeed be used to create default data that can only be edited by certain roles.
By Ken Rickard on 06.18.07 10:57 am
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