Front Page Carousel

Today I altered our Front Page Carousel to access a new Content Type.

Basically, we wanted to be able to enter titles and book jackets from NextReads and have them appear on the Carousel, linking to the Catalog record.

Here's how we accomplished this:

Create a Content Type called NextReads, with a Title field and an Image field that links to the Catalog.

The problem here was the Image type in CCK doesn't link to external websites without downloading and enabling a module called LinkImageField. Once I did that and configured the Image type properly, everything worked well except the default URL wouldn't show up.

Create a View that uses Nodequeue and View Carousel to display Content Type

In this case, I cloned the existing Front Page Carousel View that was accessing just an image and altered it for the new content type. The only trouble I see in the future is I'm not sure if I can delete the old view without deleting the cloned view.

Add a new Queue in Nodequeue that points to the NextReads content type

Be sure to reference the correct queue in your View. Also, be sure to add an "add" and "remove" link for the content type.

Populate the content type with NextReads content

Right now I will likely have users upload a Book Jacket from the Catalog by saving it to their computer first. We may then need to go in by hand and edit the image to provide a drop shadow and make sure it looks nice. This will be part of the Workflow for that content type.

Users will also need to copy the URL in the URL Description and paste it into the URL field and add the ISBN at the end of it, until I can figure out why the default URL isn't showing up in the form.

We'll need to create a NextReads role and test user to make sure this all goes smoothly. I'll also need to officially document the procedure for users.

BUT, at least it works! Except the View Carousel doesn't really scroll...