- Showing similar or related content in the block to improve stickiness
It’s a common feature in CMS to show a block of related content items or similar content. This interests the user as he can read similar entries on your website and stay longer on the website. It will also increase the chances of your website being bookmarked.
There are many modules available , you can see a Comparison of Similar / Relevant content block modules, But I would recommend you use this simple option of showing relevant content block using views module you can find the article here.
Using Views 2 and Drupal 6 to Create a Related Pages Block make sure you read the comments on the page as the solution itself is slightly old.
For drupal 6 sites there is another module available which can do similar function which is Taxonomy Quick Find . It has more configurations like you can configure each block to only show individual node types (eg, one block for page and a completely separate block for blogs) and Each node type on each block can also have its own limit
- Slide show of your content
Generally the homepage of a website would have slide show of the latest items or important nodes / images you want to highlight. This can be achieved in many ways. Usually people may think jquery plugins but the best way to do this in Drupal is to go for views slideshow module.
You could rotate entire nodes, categories, image galleries, etc Its also a great space saver. Places where you had multiple images or multiple items such as RSS feeds or category listings can now be presented in a slideshow >>> Views Slideshow
Views Slideshow has many features and has lot of supporting modules too. Read the module page properly. It even has links to external articles which are very good.
- How to use images in drupal
A common confusion is how to add the image support to drupal. There are so many modules and snippets,which one would be the best ? What do most people use ?As a newbie you may have these FAQs in mind.One another thing I wonder is should I host my images remotely on Flickr , Picassa or should I keep it local.Check out this article which will help you.Drupal Image support for Nodes. If you are planning to use Flickr then you can check out Drupal and Flickr Integration
- Don’t need the body field ? .
As you know each content type be it story , page or new CCK content type has a body field , If you don’t want it , you will have to create a new CCK content type, then Goto administer › Content management > Content types and Edit the type you want, erase the label 'Body'. Using a blank label will remove the field.
- Converting nodes from one type to another.
Often we create content types and then we realize that its difficult to manage so many content types and wish we had created fewer types. Or simply you want to convert from one node type to another. Node Convert adds a menu tab "Convert" on the node view page, i.e. node/1/convert, which gives the ability of converting the node from its current node type to another node type. Also it gives the ability of transfering all the custom CCK field values of the current node type to the destination CCK fields, or discard them
- Using Drupal forums - The forum module of drupal is very basic and when compared
to other forums softwares like vbulletin or simple machines it lacks features & functionality . Question is why would you use drupal forums.? I would say
that if you want a basic mechanism for discussion and don't anticipate a huge
group of users, then you can go with inbuild forum module as it fast and easy
to maintain. If you install a third party module like vbDrupal or Simple
machines integration then may have to wait for upgrades if you are not a
developer. Also you are at the mercy of the free support offered by the community if you have any issues with the modules. Read this postDrupal Forums – Enhance, Integrate and get Inspirations.
- Site Search - I personally don’t like Google site search. Drupal search results is much better. You can use Porter stemmer module to improve your search effectiveness. This module implements the Porter stemming algorithm to improve English-language searching with the Drupal built-in Search module. The process of stemming reduces each word in the search index to its basic root or stem (e.g. 'blogging' to 'blog') so that variations on a word ('blogs', 'blogger', 'blogging', 'blog') are considered equivalent when searching. This generally results in more relevant search results. You can also use views + views_fastsearch to build "section search" or custom advanced search pages for your drupal website.
- Large files (audio) - If you are using audio module in drupal there is a limit to size of audio files which can be uploaded. After much research I have found that the following can be used to increase the filesize limit of audio files. and also to bulk upload your audio's
