Hello,

I wanted to share with you something new that I learned today. I got some great ideas from a colleague of mine and I was able to put them into practice immediately.

Beginners’s Guide to Node Export Module

My client asked me to build a new form for their Drupal 6 site and to place it in the staging area. So I created a new webform from scratch and placed it on my DEV site. The site was LIVE but I still used the DEV site to tweak CSS and to test various Drupal things.

The Site Editor also needed to put into practice the training I gave her and would also like to add 5 new articles to the staging site. So, OK. I created a new account for the Site Editor and she went ahead and added 5 new articles.

Then the client came back from holidays and says I need the new articles to be displayed on the LIVE site. Well, I thought the site editor was going to re-enter the articles on the LIVE site. Wasn’t the staging site just for practice? No, the client thought the staging area was part of the LIVE site and I could make the new content go LIVE with a flip of a switch. Wouldn’t that be nice?

So I called my experienced Drupal colleague, Ryan Weal. What do I do? He gave me some valuable advice. “I’ve heard about Node Export module”, he said in his deep gravelly voice. “Here’s what it says about it on Drupal.org.”

So I downloaded it and decided to test it right away since my client wanted all this new material on the live site pronto.

It was very easy to install.
1. Download the module from drupal.org at
http://www.drupal.org/project/node_export

2. View the readme.txt

3. Uploade the node_export folder to sites/all/modules.

4. Go to Site Build – Modules
Click on the “Other” section
Check the 2 boxes for these 2 modules: Node Export and Node Export Files

5. Go to Content Management - Content – Import

6. You will see the change settings link “configure the settings”.

Or you can go to /admin/settings/node_export

7. I just wanted to export the 5 new articles so I checked off Article.
I selected “Local file export”

8. Under “General Settings” it says: Method to use when importing a node:
I choose “Pre-populate the node form fields”

9. I want to do a straight copy so I did not check
Reset values on import
Or any of the options for Article.

10. Click “Save Configuration”

B. Now it’s time to choose the 5 most recent articles to export over to the LIVE site.

1. I went to Content Management - Content – List
Show only items where type = Article
It showed the 5 most recent articles at the top.
I selected these and under “Update options” I selected “Export Nodes”
And clicked on “Update” button.

2. A nice window popped up which said, Node Code at the top
And at the bottom: “Copy this code and then on the site you want to import to, go to the Import Node link under Content Management, and paste it in there.”

3. So I navigated over to my LIVE site and logged in.

I uploaded the node_export files to the LIVE site and enabled Node_Export in Other on the Build/Modules page.
I checked the same settings as in the DEV site
And clicked Save Configuration.

4. I went to Content Management - Content – List
And choose Import
It asked me to paste the code which I did.
And presto all 5 of my articles showed up. I did have to go in and Edit each article.
This images weren’t showing up, so I uploaded all the article images to files/ directory.
I went into each article and edited the image path.
And I needed to add a custom image to each article. The images didn’t copy over using the Node Export/Import plan.

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