In Drupal, "content type" refers to a bit of structured content. There are two main advantages to their use: re-use of content, and creating dynamic pages or blocks that list related content. For example, we can generate a page that lists all courses tagged 'PMP'. Whenever editing a piece of structured content you will do so with an automatically generated web form which should guide you as to what fields are mandatory and the meaning and use of information in different fields. Some of the content types in use at CSE are explained below.
Article
An article is similar to a basic page but carries with it the notion of time sensitivity. By tagging, you can do things like present the most recent 10 articles on a given topic.
Course
All CSE courses, and indeed many other UW courses, are meant to be represented. This allows us, for example, to build a page showing all courses tagged 'pmp'.
Feed
A feed lets drupal subscribe to an RSS feed, creating Feed Items as new articles are published. We are moving away from using this type in favor of simply using AJAX to display desired items from an RSS feed.
Feed Item
An RSS article created by a Feed.
Front Page Slideshow Image
Represents an image and blurb used in the slideshow on the front page of our web. The image and blurb must conform to a strict set of parameters. Please contact Kay or Dan to submit a new image.
On-line Course
Represents an instance of a course for which we have lectures in some form posted on our web (E.g. CSEP 546, Spring 2012). It is used to allow us to easily create a directory of such courses.
Video
Represents a video typically of promotional nature, such as those describing capstone courses or animation courses. It is used to build pages presenting lists of such videos with various viewing and download options. It is not normally used for colloquium or lecture videos.