Views

Views

In Drupal you create individual content items—and the site also builds lists, grids, and feeds automatically. That listing system is powered by Views. You will rarely build a View yourself (that is typically an ITS or developer task), but you need to understand Views because they control how News, Events, People, and other types appear across your site.

What is a View?

A View is essentially a saved database query presented as a list or grid. Think of it as Drupal answering a question such as:

Show me all published News nodes, newest first, limit 10.

Because Views are dynamic, they update when you publish matching content. A new Event node can appear at the top of “Upcoming events” without you editing the list page manually.

How a View processes content

If content is missing from a feed or directory, these four parameters are a useful mental model:

  1. Content type: A “Latest news” block pulls News, not Events or Pages.

  2. Filter criteria: The most common filter is Published status. Unpublished nodes are excluded. Views may also filter by taxonomy (for example, only news tagged Research).

  3. Sort criteria: Events often sort by upcoming date; news by post date; people by last name.

  4. Pager/limit: A homepage might show three items; an archive page might show ten before pagination.

See Taxonomy for how tags affect filters.

Common Views on campus sites

  • Content overview (/admin/content): The table where you find and edit pages is itself a View.

  • Faculty and staff directories: Gathers People nodes, sorts them, and displays a grid. See Directory Profiles. Example Directory.

  • Archive pages: Full lists of Events or Newsletters, sometimes with filters.

Section Row attachments

Some landing pages use Section Row attachments—smaller Views showing a few items (for example, three upcoming events or four news headlines) placed within a Section Row layout. ITS configures these when your site is built; contact ITS if you need a new attachment block.

Troubleshooting: “Why isn’t my content showing up?”

If you published a faculty bio, news article, or event and it does not appear where expected, check:

  • Is it published? Unpublished nodes are ignored.

  • Is it the right content type? A Page will not appear in a News feed.

  • Are taxonomy tags correct? Feeds limited to a department tag exclude items without that tag.

  • Event dates: Past events drop off “upcoming” lists and move to archives.