Blog Navigation

Blogs Navigation

How to make Blogs into part of Book Navigation?

In Drupal, when you 'create content', you can opt to set the new article as different 'types' like 'book page', 'page', 'blog entry', 'story', and so on.

I had quite a few blog entries on one of my Drupal sites. One of the great things about 'blog entry' on Drupal is that Drupal will automatically set them out for you in chronological order. And since blogs are often like journal/diaries, that is a very handy and logical arrangement.

On the downside, I just discovered that it is quite hard to search for a specific 'blog entry'. The 'block' on which the blog entries have a "more .." link so that supposedly you can search for older blog entries. However, whether it is a Drupal glitch or I just don't know how to use it properly, the "more.." link does not work as I expected. Instead, to find an old blog entry, one has to go page after page just to find the entry. Not satisfactory.

Now if I could just make the blog entries so that they behaved just like they do in Book Navigation, then the navigation for blog entries would be so much more efficient.

Well, there is a way to do this.

Making Blog Entries Navigable - Overview

1. Create a new content of type: 'book page' (so that we can link our blog entries under this new 'book page'). This new content will primarily be used to (automatically) list all the linked blog entries on one page. (In the accompanying image, I have entitled this new page as "Blog Collection".)
2. To make this new 'book page' findable, we set it in the 'Book Navigation' and optionally as part of the 'Menu' links (as Primary or Secondary links).
   

Example: Create new 'book page' entitled "Blog Collection"

1. Create Content > Book Page
2. Title = Blog Collection (of whatever you would like to call it. This is the text-link that will appear in your Book Navigation.)
3. Say you want this new entry as a link in your menu. Let's say you want it as a Secondary link.
   Under 'Menu Settings', enter the 'Menu Link Title' = Blog (or whatever you want. This is what will appear in the Menu navigation bar.)
4. (optionally) write some text in the 'Body' box.
5. Under 'Book Outline', to make it part of your Drupal 'Book Navigation', either put this new page under one of the existing 'books' or 'create a new book'. (Here I have chosen the latter.)
6. You can specify the rest of the fields as you normally would when create a new content in Drupal.

On completion, you should see your new page as both a Menu link and in your site's 'Book Navigation'.

But your (existing) Blog Entries still need to be linked under this new page so that it will show up in under your 'Book Navigation'.

Linking Blog Entries to the navigation

You need to find all your blog entries, edit them, and link them to the new page above.

Then under "Show only items where", set:
type = Blog entry and click the "Filter" button.

You will now have a list of all your (existing) blog entries.

Click each 'edit' button to edit each page.

Under 'Book Outline', link the current blog entry to the new (book) page you just created. (Reminder: we gave the title "Blog Collection" to our new 'book page'.)

Save. Then repeat the same for each of your remaining blog entries. You will see the titles of each of your blog entries appear in your 'book navigation' under your new "Blog Collection" page.