How to speak Drupal for MyLO

Tip: To quickly search for the term you need, use your keyboard and hold down Ctrl + F at the same time. A search bar will appear in the corner of your browser, and you can begin typing to search.

A

Anchor links An anchor tag within a post or page, is a link which when clicked allows the reader to jump to another location on the page or to another page.

Article A content type that, in MyLO, is intended for temporal information such as news, press releases and/or mentions, blog posts, and member's spotlights.

Authenticated user A user who is logged in to their MyLO account.

Authenticated webmaster A user who is logged in to their MyLO account. This user was granted the role of administrator member, allowing them to edit/manage the backend of their League's MyLO site.

B

BLOB Binary Large Object. A collection of binary data stored as a single entity in a database management system.

Breadcrumbs The set of links, usually near the top of the page, that shows the path you followed to locate the current page. For example, it might show Home > Macadamia Nuts > Current Events > News Articles, meaning that you started at the home page, clicked on “Macadamia Nuts” in the menu, then selected “Current Events” in the sub-menu, and finally selected, “News Articles.” The term breadcrumbs is borrowed from Hansel and Gretel, who left crumbs of bread along their path so they could find their way back out of the forest. MyLO is intentionally not using breadcrumbs at this time.

C

Child Objects that can have hierarchical relationships, such as menu items, taxonomy terms and so on. A “child” menu item, for example, is nested under another menu item, which is referred to as the “parent” menu item.

Clone The clone function allows a webmaster to make a copy of an existing content node (i.e. an event) and then edit that copy. The authorship is set to the current webmaster, the menu and url aliases are reset, and the words "Clone of" are inserted into the title to remind you that you are not editing the original content node.

CMS Content Management System. In the context of a Web site, a collection of tools designed to allow the creation, modification, organization, search, retrieval and removal of information (content).

Content type  Every piece of content (a.k.a. node) belongs to a single “node type” or “content type” (like a template), which defines various default settings for content of that type, such as whether it is published automatically, what fields are on the content -- e.g. events include event date and event location fields -- and whether comments are permitted. MyLO Webmasters have access to the following content types:

• Action Alert
• Article
• Committee
• Event
• Page
• Position
• Slideshow Item
• Webform
• League landing page

Context menu A context menu is a menu that contains commands specific to the object that the cursor is currently pointing at — the “target object”. Target objects include your main menu and content items in a predefined list (view). In MyLO, context menus can be accessed by hovering over the target object and clicking the gear that pops up in its top right corner.

D

Drupal Drupal is a free and open-source content-management framework written in PHP. It is used as the basis of My League Online (MyLO) and powers millions of websites and applications across the world.

E

Editing form To change a content item, click on the "New Draft" or “Edit Draft” tab(s), where you will access that content item's editing form. To access the "New Draft" or “Edit Draft” tab(s), begin on that content item's page--while logged in as an administrator user (webmaster). The "New Draft" or “Edit Draft” tab(s) are located above the content item's title.  

Embedding Embedding allows you to take a video that lives on YouTube, Video, or some other server and post it on your own web page. Embedding the video allows people to watch it on the MyLO page rather than visiting Vimeo or YouTube.  

F

Form Webforms provide a way of creating forms on your site that allow visitors to enter data (i.e. surveys, donation forms). This data is then stored in your site’s database (viewable via the Results tab) and the submission may be sent to a set of specified emails, if needed.

Form component Key elements of a webform that will gather data from a user/visitor. In MyLO, webforms are constructed by stacking form components. There are several types, each with unique settings, and some will gather specific data. These are used only with webforms. See examples of each type.

Form component value Also known as component value. The response submitted by a user to a specified form component. The form component value will vary from form component to form component, and user to user.

Front page Drupal calls this the homepage or landing page the Front page. MyLO is unique because it has two pages that are considered front pages. 

• The page you see when you go to https://my.lwv.org/ -- which lists all Leagues -- is the main front page. This is the front page for all of MyLO.
• The page that you see when you go to https://my.lwv.org/state-name/local-league is a League's front page, or League landing page. For the purposes of MyLO, this is also considered a front page because each League can be considered an individual site.

See also League landing page.

G

Group  In Drupal, a group is an organizational unit where a community of users who are interested in a topic can create content about that topic and interact with each other using status messages. In MyLO, a group is a League's community of online members and webmasters who share the ability to access private content from that group.

H

Hero image A large banner image  – usually a photo or graphic design, prominently placed on a web page, generally in the front / top of the page layout. In MyLO, either the Main Image or Alternate Hero Image fields will display the selected image at the top of your content items as the hero image. The hero image is often the first visual a visitor encounters on the web page and its purpose is to present an overview of the site's most important content. 

HTML HyperText Markup Language.  Standard markup language used to create web pages. HTML is a cornerstone technology used by most websites to create visually engaging webpages, user interfaces for web applications, and user interfaces for many mobile applications. HTML describes the structure of a website semantically along with cues for presentation, making it a markup language, rather than a programming language. You don't need to know much -- or any -- HTML to use MyLO, but if you want to it will help you. Some basic intro HTML notes can be found on this blog post from Rain Michaels, Basic HTML Tags that Empower Content Editors.

L

League landing page The front page (or homepage) for your specific league. Each League on MyLO is an "organic group," and the League landing page is the group page where you define your League. It is also the page a visitor would land on if they type in your League URL. The League landing page consists of a main block of text that is created by editing the homepage, and also features a "river of text" of various promoted items (articles, action alerts, events, pages, etc.) that appear on the page in chronological order when  promoted to the front page, unless "Highlight this item on front page" is used. Read our documentation about using the front page functionality.

Links An item like a word or button that points to another location. When you click on a link, the link will take you to the target of the link, which may be a webpage, document or other online content. Both images and text can be used to create a hyperlink. Links can point to web content that is part of that website (relative), or it can point to web content that is part of external websites (absolute). One difference is that absolute paths always include the domain name of the website, including http://www., whereas relative links only point to a file or a file path. When a user clicks a relative link, the browser takes them to that location on the current site. For that reason, you can only use relative links when linking to pages or files within your site, and you must use absolute links if you're linking to a location on another website. 

M

Mailto Mailto: is a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) scheme for email addresses. It is used to produce hyperlinks on websites that allow users to send an email to a specific address without first having to copy it and enter it into an email client. Used to create a clickable link to the user's email client with the address already filled in. When linking email addresses, use this syntax: mylo [at] lwvc.org (mailto:).

Masquerade The ability in MyLO for an administrator to take on the characteristics of other users. This allows administrators to help other users troubleshoot bugs, etc.

Members only content Content is marked for members only (marked as private) during creation or editing. This means it is only visible to users who are authenticated and logged into the site with name and password. The members only status of content can be changed at any time by a user with the right permissions (such as a League Webmaster).

Menu In Drupal, the term refers to the site navigation. For MyLO, this is the list of links on the left side of the landing page, or the links across the top of your site if your site theme is using design #1.

Modal A modal window creates a mode that disables the main window but keeps it visible in the background, with the modal window in front of it. 

N

Node  A piece of content in Drupal, typically corresponding to a single page on the site, that has a title, an optional body, and perhaps additional fields. Every node also belongs to a particular content type, and can additionally be classified using the taxonomy system. Examples of nodes on MyLO are pages, events, positions, and action alerts.

Node type See Content type.

P

Page  The content type intended for freeform content or any content that does not fit into the other predefined types. Typically basic pages are used for static content that can (but are not required to) be linked into the main navigation bar.

Path  The unique, last part of the URL for a specific piece of content. For instance, for a page whose full URL is http://example.com/about/mission, the path is about/mission.

Permission  In MyLO, a tool for controlling access to content creation, modification and site administration at the application level. Administrators assign permissions to roles, then assign roles to users.

Plain Text Any text that isn’t formatted. It does not take any special formatting, such as varying fonts, font sizes, bold font, or italics. It also only contains standard characters, which are those found in the default set of characters that an application can display.

Published The state of a node that can be viewed by visitors to the website. To easily hide nodes from the public (i.e. anonymous role), make the node unpublished by clicking “Unpublish” in the Moderate tab.

Publishing options (triggers that perform an action)

• Promoted to front page - piece of content will display in list of items on the front/landing page. Shows in descending order by date posted (10 items).
• Sticky at top of list - will promote higher than everything else in the list of 10, regardless of the date posted.

R

Revision A revision is another version of the same content, but instead of existing as separate pages, there is one content item with possibly many revision versions.

Roles Sets of permissions that can be applied to individual users. Users can belong to more than one role. The following user roles are essential for MyLO:

• Anonymous: a visitor to the site who is not logged in.
• Member: a visitor who has logged in and is a member of a League, but has no editing permissions. This user can see members only content.
• League Webmaster: an administrator of a specific League or Leagues, who can edit the content and menu in their own League but not elsewhere.
• MyLO Manager: an administrator who can administer any League and general content.

RSS  Really Simple Syndication. A family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts. An RSS document (which is called a “feed” or “web feed” or “channel”) contains either a summary of content (“teaser”) from an associated web site or the full text. RSS is one of the many ways of connecting a MyLO website with external sites, systems and data.

S

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo index the content on your site and use specialized and ever-changing algorithms to determine how to rank your content in search results. MyLO has done what it can on the back-end to create a clean, optimized environment, but it is up to the Leagues using the system to make sure that their content is well-structured and uses proper semantic markup to ensure that search engines know how understand the purpose of the pages and therefore rank them based on user searches.

Sidebar Content Sidebar elements are created in the “League landing page” and display on the left side of the content when seen full screen. If seen on a mobile device, they display below the content.

Semantic Markup This refers to properly formatting and classifying the elements in your content. You will want to make sure that you create easy-to-skim pages with headers whenever possible, and use headers level 2, 3, and 4 in proper outline form. Any quotes should be marked as blockquote, and you will want to use the list formatting options any time you have a list. Proper markup will help both site SEO and accessibility.

T

Tag An organizational keyword, known in other systems as categories or metadata. A tag is a label that can be applied to events and action alerts. They are also known as terms.

Taxonomy In Drupal, "Taxonomy" is the name of a powerful core module that gives your site use of terms. Terms are grouped into vocabularies and the Taxonomy module allows you to create, manage and apply. For example, a vocabulary called "Fruit" would contain the terms "Apple" and "Banana".  In MyLO, "Tags" is a vocabulary where users create the terms by adding tags to content (see Tag).

Teaser  A short introductory sentence or paragraph about a piece of content that informs readers about the subject of the content. By default, the first paragraph or two of the content is used (there is a setting for how much), usually with a link to the complete node. Also known as the summary.

Tel  Tel: is a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) scheme for telephone numbers. It is used to produce hyperlinks on websites that allow users to make a call with the number provided in the link if they are on a mobile device. When linking telephone numbers, use this syntax: tel:12223334444 (1 being the US country code, and the remainder of the phone number without any parentheses or hyphens).

Term An organizational keyword, known in other systems as categories or metadata. A term is a label that can be applied to a node. They are also known as tags.

Text Format A tool for stripping out HTML, PHP, JavaScript, and other undesirable elements from content before pages are displayed. This prevents potential security holes, but also limits formatting options on the site. The standard text format for MyLO pages is WYSIWYG. If you need Full HTML, you can switch the format but need to be careful with what you put on the page at this point (such as embed code).

Theme  A file or collection of files (PHP, INFO, CSS, JPG, GIF, PNG), which together determine the look and feel of a site. A theme contains elements such as the header, icons, block layout, etc. Drupal modules define themeable functions which can be overridden by the theme file.

Token Tokens are variables/placeholders in Drupal, so each token represents a predefined value. These tokens are placed in a [token:type] format. There are thousands of Tokens available for you to use that can be accessed wherever a link to Browse available tokens is available. Read more about tokens.

U

UID  User ID. The unique identifier for each user. It can be found in the path to the user profile, e.g. “http://drupal.org/user/1”.

Unpublished  The state of a node that cannot be viewed by visitors to the website and is only available to authenticated users. This state easily hides nodes from the public (i.e. anonymous role). See Published.

Update  Moving from one minor release to another, e.g. moving from Drupal 7.12 to Drupal 7.14.

Ugrade  Moving from one major release to another, e.g. moving from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8.

URL  stands for "uniform resource locator." The address to an object (i.e. webpage) on an Internet server. Examples of URLs in MyLO include: https://my.lwv.org/mylo/glossary, https://my.lwv.org/node/2204/,  https://my.lwv.org/california/demo-site/articles.

User  The user interacting with MyLO (you). This user is either anonymous (not logged in like the general public) or logged into MyLO through its account.

UX  User experience. An umbrella term referring to the overall experience and satisfaction a user has when using a website. It is important to note that this “includes only what the user perceives and not all that is presented.”

V

View  Also known as dynamic view. A predefined list of content. For example, the slideshow on the League landing page, the list of promoted content on the League landing page, the list of events on the calendar page, the list of members only content, the list of action alerts, etc. These adjust automatically when content is updated.

W

Webform See Form.

WYSIWYG What You See Is What You Get. An acronym used in computing to describe a method in which content is edited and formatted by interacting with an interface that closely resembles the final product. Sometimes also referred to as a visual editor.