As a Honored Registered User* who has logged-in, congratulations!
You are now ready to start posting content.

Different Types of Content

There are various types of content that you can post using Drupal. Many of these are organized into what are called "nodes". Basically,you can think of a node as the content of a page. This might be, for instance, an article you wish to post, an event, or a comment. Content is added or updated through web page forms. So to add an article, you bring up a form, enter text into it (like the title and content of an article), and hit a button to submit the form.

Topics/Categories/Terms

Content on Drupal websites is usually organized using categories through a system called "taxonomy". A taxonomy has different "terms" that are used as categories for articles. When you are adding an article, you will find a drop-down list for you to select a "Focus Area" and "Habitat". If you are entering an event, you will also be given drop-down options to select such things as "Region" and "Setting." By selecting one, you choose how to categorize your article on the site and where it will show up. If this seems hard to relate to, you can think of topics as being like folders on your hard drive--they help to organize content, so that you can find similar things in the same place.

Permissions

What types of content you can create or edit depends on the privileges that have been assigned to the "role" or user group to which you have been assigned. In general, to find out what you can do:

• On your user menu (the collection of links that has your user name as a title), look for a link that says "create content". Click this to get a listing of the types of content you have permission to post.
• Or else on a particular page, look for links at the bottom of an article. These links say things like "12 comments" (if there are comments that have been made on the article) and "read more" (if you're looking at a short version of an article). If one of these links say "administer" or something like "edit this page", you have permissions to edit that type of content.

Submission Queue

Q: I submitted a story, but it doesn't appear anywhere!
Sometimes a Drupal site is set up so that when you submit a story it goes straight up on the site. Often, though, a Drupal site is set up with a "submission queue". This means that articles submitted are marked for evaluation to be read by an administrator. Don't worry! When a site administrator has had a chance to look over your submission, they wlll make the decision about whether it meets the criteria and post it accordingly.

*HRU's are the minimum role required to post content to the site. Click on the link for a more in-depth description of roles.