Creating an Online Newsletter with Drupal
By Michael J. Ross2008-07-11
The Newsletter
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Now it is time to create the raison d'ętre of the framework we have built up so far — the newsletter itself. You have two options at this point: You can organize each issue of your newsletter as a separate page, or as a separate topic within a newsletter forum. In this tutorial, we will use the latter approach.
You also have the option of allowing subscribers to add comments to any of your newsletter contents. If you would rather not, then set the comment settings to "Read only". But in this age of social news sites, Internet users have become accustomed to being able to comment on just about anything posted. Also, allowing reader input will dramatically increase the odds of your being able to build an online community that is dynamic and interactive enough to keep readers coming back for more and paying a subscription fee to have that privilege.
To make use of Drupal's built-in forum capabilities, go to Administer > Site building > Modules, and enable the Forum module.
No forums exist at this point, so we need to create at least one to serve as a repository for the newsletter issues. Go to Administer > Content management > Forums, click the "Add forum" tab, and provide a name and (optionally) a description of the newsletter forum.
The other forum settings can be left as is.
In the "Create content" section, there is a new option, for creating a forum topic. Create a new forum topic for your newsletter's first issue, and assign it to the "Newsletter" forum.
Tutorial Pages:
» Introduction
» Laying the Foundation
» Initial Theme
» The Homepage
» The Newsletter
» Access Control
» Navigation
