Building a Programmers Blog: Enabling Blog Posts

By default, Drupal comes with just two different node types - pages and stories. These two node types are useful in most cases - but not sufficient for all. In this post we'll look at how to use these two types, and how to activate the Blog module is supplied with Drupal core.

Pages are used for invariant information on your site - pages of information that remain relevant and appropriate with the passage of time. Typically, pages are arranged into a hierarchy of topics as a part of your sites primary navigation, perhaps supported by some kind of menu widget. Good examples of pages you might create include an "About" page giving your biography, a "Resume" page detailing your work history and skills, or perhaps a page about a specific product or service.

Stories are used for information that will age with the passage of time - usually stories about news and/or events that happened on a particular day. Often stories are shown on the front page of your site, listed in reverse chronological order with the most recent news at the top. Good examples of stories you might post on your site might include announcements of software releases, reports from conferences or product reviews.

For many Drupal users, pages and stories are all they need. You can quite easily use stories to post blog entries and keep things very simple. However, doing this means that you lose the ability to separate different kinds of content. Keeping blog entries separate will allow you, for example, to show recent stories on the front page of your site without listing blog entries.

Turning on the Blog

Ensure you are logged onto your Drupal installation as the administrator and go to Site Building, Modules. Under Core - Optional find the Blog module and turn it on. Don't forget to press Save Configuration when you're finished.

Note The Blog module is not active by default in a vanilla Drupal installation. However, it is on by default in an Acquia Drupal installation.

Once the module is turned on, you should see Blog Entry showing as a new content type.