Drupal: Navigation and Blocks

Hello Everyone, It's Drupal time!  You may ask, "What is Drupal?" Drupal is a content management system that I use in many of the web projects for myself or for clients.  It is a great open-source system that can build super powerful websites, but at the same time, can seem a bit daunting and confusing to people using it for the first time.

That is the purpose of this blog post, to start providing support for people interested in learning how to use their content management system of choice.

Area of Focus

To start, we are using Drupal 8, the system that this website is being built on.  While in the super early stages of building this website, I noticed the main navigation system had a title over all the main buttons.  This is not the desired behavior I was looking for. A screenshot of how the navigation looked is below. Also, the title has been outlined in red for example purposes:



Why was the name being displayed and how can it be turned off?

The Fix

The answer was actually pretty simple.  Whan a block is created in Drupal, it automatically displays the title of the block by default. This is expected behavior by Drupal.  The challenge is to turn the title off. To accomplish this, we simply make sure we are logged into the website as an administrator, then hover over the row of content we would like to modify.  To be more specific, hover over the right hand side of the content area.  A little display box will appear like in the image below and click "Configure Block."



By doing this, you will enter the block configuration area. Now, all we have to do is find the checkbox that is controlling the title.  As you can see in the image below, There is an area for "Display Title." Simply un-check the box and hit the save button at the bottom of the page. This will remove the title from displaying on the website.

Final Display

There we go... it's working! You can see the result in the image below:

Conclusion

Working with Drupal or any content management system can be very challenging at first. Their are hundreds, if not thousands of small pieces of the puzzle that need to be figured out and mastered in order to make something you can be proud of. It is my hope that this post will move you forward in the quest to build your own online empire and to have fun at the same time.

That is all. Thanks for visiting and please check back for more valuable information!

Jeremy