Create Lists of Content with SimpleViews

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In this tutorial, we'll show you how to use the SimpleViews module to create a dynamically-updated list of all the most recently-created content on your site.

  1. Log in to your Drupal site.
  2. screenshotIn the menu at the top of the screen, choose "Site building > Simple views".
  3. screenshotChoose the "Add view" tab.
  4. screenshotEnter a "Title". We'll call our example view "Recent Updates".
  5. screenshotAssign the view a "Path"; this is the relative URL users will use to access your new view. You'll also use this path when assigning your view to a menu item. In this example, we'll use "recent-updates".
  6. screenshotFor "Display", choose the types of content you'd like to include. Since we're creating a view for all recently-created content, we can leave this set to "All posts". If we wanted to limit it to just Page content or just Story content, we could choose either of those options. You can also create your own Drupal content types to filter by.
  7. screenshotFor "Sorted", choose how you'd like the content to be ordered. In this example, we'll choose "Newest first", so that the most recently-created content floats to the top of the list.
  8. screenshotYou can adjust the way each entry shows up in your view by adjusting the "As a" setting. In our example, we'll choose "List of teasers"; that way, the title and first few sentences of each entry will show up.
  9. screenshotThere are a few more options at the bottom of the form, but for this example the default settings should be fine. Click "Submit" to save your new view.
  10. At this point, Drupal should take you back to a list of views; from here you can navigate to your new view by clicking on its path in the list. You should also note that Drupal has created a new menu item for your view and placed it in the sidebar navigation block for logged-in users. If you'd prefer this menu item to appear in a different menu block, you can do so from the menu administration page ("Site building > Menus").

As you can see, the SimpleViews module makes it very easy to create usefully-sorted lists of content. There are actually quite a few more things you can do with the full Views module; if you're interested in more advanced techniques, please check out our advanced Views tutorial.

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