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1. File management in Drupal: an introduction
At DrupalCon Barcelona last year Dries held a survey for his presentation of the State of Drupal. Two problems areas were defined by the Drupal users:
- determing what modules to use
- difficult to add media files
When looking at file management, both issues are combined: do you use a module that creates a new content type (e.g. filenode), one that grants the option to add an upload field to a content type (e.g. upload) or one that adds a cck field (e.g. filefield). Each option has different modules, with an enormous amount of cck fields, each specializing in one type of files: audio, video, images, youtube, embed.
There are a lot of choices to make when picking a module:
- For creating galleries, do you use built-in functionality (if the
module supports this, e.g. image module) or do you use views for
instance. This might also cause issues when you're using different types of modules to handle your files.
- For your editors to enter content: do you use cck fields, added
fields, a separate content type + nodereference, a WYSIWYG plug-in, ...?
- Also, do you pick different modules/cck-fields for each type of
content you're adding or do you use a generic module which handles all
files.
The Asset module tries to tackle these issues in a highly integrated
manner. It provides integration with cck, views, panels and imagecache. There is also a TinyMCE plug-in for inserting and managing assets or an "Add asset" link below textareas if TinyMCE is not enabled. Image galleries are created using a special panels field. Any type of file can be added, many of which have specific plug-ins or players to display them: mp3, flv, swf, youtube, ... |
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