Beginning Drupal 8

Chapter 19 ■ Creating a Blog Site
Before creating the views, it’s a good idea to have content in place that allows us to see our view
in action. Add several dummy blog posts (refer to Chapter 2), selecting various Topics (e.g., Hosting,
Performance, and Theming). After creating blog posts, it’s time to create the main view for the site. Click the
Structure link in the secondary admin menu followed by the Views link on the Structure page. Click the “Add
new view” button and enter a view name of “Blog posts” in the “View name” field. Change the View Settings
by selecting Article in the “of type” select list, followed by clicking the “Save and edit” button. We will want
to create a Block display, so click the Add button and select Block from the list of display types. Make the
following changes to the view:
1. Click the “Display name” link and change the value from “Block” to “Blog
Listing.”
2. Click the Title link and enter “Latest Blog Posts” as the title.
3. Click the Show link and change the value from “Fields” to “Content.” When the
“Row style options” form appears, select the Teaser mode and click the Apply
button.
4. The Sort Criteria section should already be set to sort descending on post date,
which will give us a listing of blog posts with the newest posting displayed at the
top of the list.
5. Click the Save button to save the view.
The second view that we need to create is the list of terms in the Topics vocabulary. We’ll use this list
of terms as a menu to navigate to taxonomy listing pages that show all of the blog postings assigned to
that topic. Click the Structure link in the secondary admin menu and the Views link on the Structure page.
Click the “Add new view” button and enter a view name of “Blog Topics.” In the View Settings fields, select
“Taxonomy terms” from the Show select list, Topics from the “of type” select list, and leave the “sorted by”
field as Unsorted. Click the “Save and edit” button to continue.
We want the view to display as a block, so create a new Block display by clicking the Add button and
selecting Block from the list of display options. Click the “Display name” field and enter “Topics Menu” in
the “Administrative name” field and click the Apply button. Click the Title link and enter “Browse by Topic”
in the Title field, followed by clicking the “Apply (all displays)” button. The view is now ready to save.
Now that we have all the views we need to address the requirements of our site, the next step is to place
the views on the page.
Assigning Blocks
With the views complete, we’re ready to assign to the page the blocks we created. Click the Structure link in
the secondary menu followed by the “Block layout” link. Click the Blog Posts: Blog Listing link in the “Place
blocks” box on the right and select Content as the region to display the list. We want to restrict this view so
that it appears only on the front page of our site (and not on every page that we visit), so select the Pages
tab in the vertical menu at the bottom of the block configuration page and select “Show for the listed pages”
from the “Show block on specific pages” form. In the text box, enter , which is a shortcut that Drupal
uses to represent the front page of a site, and then click the “Save block” button.
Next, select the Blog Topics: Topics Menu block from the “Place blocks” box and place it in one of the
sidebars provided by your theme. Since commenting is enabled, we’ll want to display a list of the most recent
comments on our site. Drupal 8 provides a block that does just that by default. Select the “Recent comments”
block from the “Place blocks” box and place that block in the same sidebar as the Topics menu. Your block
layout should look similar to Figure 19-4. Save your blocks before exiting the “Blocks layout” page.
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