There are two fundamental things to know about how Drupal thinks about the content in it: "Everything is a Node" and "All Nodes Have Components." It might sound weird at first, but a lot of what you will encounter in using this site will make more sense and come more naturally if we look briefly at these two things.

EVERYTHING IS A NODE

This can be a bit of a mind-blower, simply because it is so different from what we are so used to: books. Books have pages. Pages are fixed, and in a book the are arranged in a fixed order. In Drupal, things are different, and even the metaphor of the "web page" will be a bit misleading. Instead of thinking that you are reading a page, think of it as a node, as in a node in a network. Right there is the first important part -- nodes here are not in a sequence like they are in a book. Instead, they're in a network, and that network can be structured and organized in many different ways. Peek around the sides of the screen at all the little boxes for navigating the site. Most of those options provide a slightly different structure on the network of nodes.

Here's another way to think of it. Start with the familiar book, one that has a really good index. The job of the index is to guide you to the page you want, based on the keyword. In that way, it provides a sort of structure for the book. Now, imagine a magical index such that when you point to a keyword, the book is ripped apart and put back together, but with the pages for that keyword being at the very beginning. Point to a different keyword, and the book is again reconstituted with those relevant pages at the beginning.

That's roughly what happens in a Drupal site (or most other web sites for that matter). "Navigation" really means "rip it all apart, then only show me the parts I'm interested in." Content does not have a necessary place in the site. Instead, content is simiply available to be put into any of a wide array of structures. Steve, Donald, and I have done a lot of work to predefine many structures for this site. And so, when you add something to the site (remember everything you add is a node), it is possible for it to reappear in many different ways.

ALL NODES HAVE COMPONENTS

Whenever you add something to the site, there will be little boxes for you to fill in. Those are the components of the node (different nodes usually have different components). Generally, you'll just be filling in the little boxes to make the components. But here's the kicker to be aware of: those components are often the things that are used to create automatically new structures. So, for example, I could create a list of all the titles in the site, or only the titles that contain a particular word. The site also applies a different design to titles. That's possible because the title is a separate component. If the title were just another part of the body, that wouldn't be possible. That's the big reason that there are sometimes many boxes to fill in. Each one might be serving a bigger purpose in organizing the site.

Oh, and if you really want something to bake your noodle, the components of a node can themselves be nodes.

ENOUGH THEORY, LET'S WRITE!

Okay, here's an example of what creating all of this looks like. After all that, hopefully this will be happily straightforward. But as you use the site more, that background will help make sense of it.

The most basic node has two components: a title and body. Most of what you write won't be much more than that.

This is roughly what the screen looks like when you submit new content.

Generally, you just type what you have to say. . .

Then . . .

Scroll down a bit . . .

And there might be a few funny things. What you see here will depend on your role in the site. Different roles have different permissions to do things. This is what I see as the super-admin. You will probably see much less. And, usually you can ignore it.

Groups are a way to target communications to a small group of people.

I think only admins get to write log messages. Generally this can be ignored.

File attachments If you are allowed, you can attach a file to your content. It works just like it does with email.

Comment settings let you say whether others can leave comments.

Menu settings are usually for administrators and designers. They let you explicitly put the node into a particular organizational structure.

Authoring information is for admins--we can change the author or date of a post. Yes, this is a forgery tool. We promise to use it only for good.

Publishing options. In some cases, you can change whether a node is published, whether it shows up on the front page, and more.

The last thing is to either preview the post or hit submit, and you're done!