Posted by Merlin on Wed Jun 20, 2007 12:46 pm.
A lot of people don't realize how useful Node Queue is as a module; in part because the name doesn't do a very good job of explaining what the module does. For one thing, it almost seems like it duplicates taxonomy, or maybe bookmarks. But it does something none of those modules do: It orders your nodes completely arbitarily.
One other valuable point: Queues have a maximum size. When the queue is 'full', if a new item is added, the the last item in the queue is automatically removed.
What is this good for?
Generally, it's used for highlighting something you want to show to your users. In many ways, it's like "promote to front page" except that promote to front page is very static in what it does. It is merely a flag that is on or off.
A typical use of the Node Queue might be:
"My five favorite posts".
I create a nodequeue, and set its size to 5. I use Views to create a block for that queue, and I put it in my sidebar. Then, I go around my site and pick 5 posts to add to the queue. But when I have favorites, chances are I want to order them my way. With node queue, I can do that quite easily:
What else can I do?
- The lead article. In this case, you just mark one article as a 'lead' article. Often the most prominent article either on the front page, or on a section front page. (For example, if you're doing a news site, you might have a section page for each News type, such as Sports, Entertainment, World, Local, etc). By choosing a nodequeue with a size of 1, any time a new lead article is added to the queue, the old one is automatically removed. Or with a larger queue size, you can keep a little bit of history before they drop out.
- Hot Topics. If an editor is choosing forum topics that are particularly hot or interesting. This makes it easy to keep a rotating list of hot topics, and move some up or down depending upon how important they are.
- Picture of the Day. Really this is Node of the Time Period -- an editor can add nodes to a private queue. At a certain time, an editor can take the top item in the queue and move it to another queue, making it visible on the site. Because Node Queue supports the actions module, this should be able to be accomplished automatically using the scheduled actions module. [Note: I haven't tried this.]
The biggest weakness, right now, is that queues are system wide. One feature request that I've had and have not yet had the time to implement is that it sure would be nice to have private queues. So each user on the site could easily have "My favorite nodes" or something along these lines, and control the order.
The second biggest weakness is that the 'Node queue' tab is kind of ugly, and doesn't work well when presented to more end-user types. This is fairly minor, though, and is largely alleviated by having added the links to make it easy to add/remove a node from a queue without having to visit another page.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| nq.png | 18.78 KB |
Node Queue access comments?
Can Node Queue access comments or only nodes?
It would be pretty spiffy if
It would be pretty spiffy if it could do comments, but alas, only nodes.
Just chiming in : NodeQueue
Just chiming in : NodeQueue _is_ indeed a godsent module, which versatility makes it really handy for an awful lot of various things. Plus it has an API, which let your own modules use queues as a backend, independantly of the UI.
You want to provide a list of nodes using a query that is too heavy / too specific to generated by Views ? Have a custom module fill a nodequeue (possibly in a cron task), and le Views handle the advanced display options :-)
Just another one of of those genious-concept life-savers modules by Earl, even though less publicized than Views and Panels. It belongs to the same must-have modules toolbox for any drupal site admin, IMO.
Here is for the 'Happy customers report' section :-)
NodeQueue is one of our favorite modules
NodeQueue is one of our favorite modules now, and something we almost always find a use for in a web project. Since nodequeue is now visible in views, it becomes the handiest way to manually select views contents. Big thumbs up from over here!
I've written a tutorial on using nodequeue
Your mention about not having tried it with actions and workflow made me curious so I decided to try it out. I wrote up a tutorial over at drupal.org.uk which I hope people find useful. Contact me if it sucks or can be improved, or there's other features I've completely missed.
Thanks Earl for another great module, hope you'll make it to Barcelona in September.
Node Queue is very important module
Its true that people dont realize the importance of "Node Queue" module. Since this module is required where each content of website is hand-picked and promoted to certain areas.
It took me long to realize its importance - and now this is my favorite module. Great work.
Thanks
Vinay Yadav
http://www.vinayras.com
node queue
I have created several node queues with limit 0. But in one queue the nodes won't show up any more. I can see them on the page, but not in the queue. Can someone give me some insight here?
If you do a google search on
If you do a google search on "node queue limit 0" and check out the second article that Google brings up that should help.
Regards
Bob
Node Queue Finds
This is great - its one of the aspects I've been wanting to add to a site I'm developing and up to now I've only been able to do it with promote to front page. Thanks so much for highlighting this one for me.
John.
Nodequeue cck field
I'm contemplating the creation of a nodequeue cck field and I wonder if you might be able to recommend an easier way before I dig further into the idea. I'm not sure I have time right now, but I like the sound of it...
This would work in combination with CCK node reference fields. I want the flexibility of a queue, but the strong association of parent node references.
An example would be a magazine issue and magazine article. If you added a nodequeue field to your issue type, each issue would automatically create a it's own queue. The module would hook nodeapi to check when the issue was referenced by an article. Any time an article's node reference was pointed at the issue, the article would be automatically added to the queue. If the reference changed or the node was deleted, the article would be removed from the queue. You could then use a viewfield with some argument handling code to display the queue. Or... A semi-automatic, but configurable nodequeue view field would be pretty sweet.
The field could add tabs to the parent type to manage the queue.
So before I think much more about tearing into this...
1 - Do you see an easier way to have queues for issues (or similar situation)? I did look at taxonomy smart queues, but I would rather have articles be strongly associated with a parent node than loosely associated with some taxonomy terms.
2 - Do you have any best practices or pointers on the API with this task in mind?
Later!
Chris Miller
Did you ever explore this
Did you ever explore this idea further? I've been contemplating a similar problem (a nodequeue per node of a particular type), and also thought of the solution you came up with. Another idea I had was to create a new smartqueue module for node types, but like you, I prefer the noderef relationship.
Cheers,
Joshua
If you do a google search on
If you do a google search on "node queue limit 0" and check out the second article that Google brings up that should help.
Examples -- thanks / great!
Thanks, Earl, for making this module understandable to newbies like myself by doing what good science/technical writers do: provide easy-to-understand examples, use simple but meaningful words to show how it can be used and, concurrently, use the more sophisticated language. Reading your text was a pleasure. Thanks for the great job.
Post new comment