Spotlight: Content Editing and Image Handling We now have a site with all the functionality that Jeanne and Mike asked for, access control configured properly, and a slick new look, complete with a custom color scheme and fancy new logo. However, one final piece remains: streamlining the content editing process, and allowing easy image uploads.
Content Editing As mentioned previously in the chapter, by default Drupal’s content entry is done with HTML. Like most earthlings, Mike and Jeanne aren’t fluent in code, so it’s important that they be able to format their content and add images without it. Not surprisingly, a number of community solutions to this issue have cropped up over the years: Toolbars Some users can use HTML fine if they’re given a toolbar that inserts the tags on their behalf. The BUEditor module (http://drupal.org/project/bueditor), pictured in Figure 2-50, is an example of a module that provides such a toolbar.
Figure 2-50. The BUEditor module provides a toolbar to assist with HTML
Text-to-HTML translators Modules such as Textile (http://drupal.org/project/textile) or Markdown Filter (http://drupal.org/project/markdown), covered in Chapter 5, provide the ability to take simple text such as **bold** and transform it into its HTML equivalent (<strong>bold</strong>). This syntax, once learned, is much easier and faster to type in than raw HTML. What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editors WYSIWYG editors not only provide a toolbar, but also display the formatting directly in the text area, looking similar to a word processor, as pictured in Figure 2-51. There are several Drupal modules that offer integration with WYSIWYG editors, but the most popular are TinyMCE (http://drupal.org/project/tinymce) and FCKeditor (http://drupal.org/project/fckeditor). 76 | Chapter 2: Drupal Jumpstart