How to allow a client to do specialized styling for a single node?

Question

I'm working on converting an existing website to Drupal, and I'm looking for best practices for creating specialized styling on specific nodes. I have a page that looks like this (baconized for your viewing pleasure):

Can someone advise me as to the best way to accomplish styling a node this way - specifically in a way where the content can be managed by the client?

I've had a few different ideas as to how to accomplish it, but I'm not sure which is best.

Write raw HTML as the content and add CSS in the template? - The downside with this is that I'd prefer my client not have to mess with raw HTML when managing the content, if at all possible.

Create a custom content type that has fields for each snippet which I can style within the theme? - This seems like a reasonable course of action, except that I'll be creating a one-off content type for a single node, and that seems less than optimal.

Do something with Views? - Views is always an option, but I don't know if it's the right one here. Would I create a separate node for the intro snippet, the 3 blockquotes, and the rest of the page, or something else? I'm not sure.

Do something with Panels? - I'm still figuring out how to use Panels, and it seems like a possibility here, but an overly complicated one. Additionally, how will the client manage it?

Any insight or advice here would be immensely helpful. Thank you!

Answer 1

If it is a page with unique structure and no other pages will have same structure, I usually do this by creating an empty page (not a node, just a page - an item in drupal menu system).

You can create a page in your module like so:

function YOUR_MODULE_menu() {
    $items = array();
    $items['your-page-url'] = array(
        'type' => MENU_NORMAL_ITEM,
        'title' => t('Page title'),
        'page callback' => 'your_callback_function_name',
        'access callback' => TRUE
    );
    return $items;
}

function your_callback_function_name() {
    return '';
}

the code above will provide an empty page. If you need custom page structure for this page you can always declare a template specifically for this page just put:

page--your-page-url.tpl.php

to your theme template folder.

Then you can create blocks for each piece of content and assign them to proper regions. Your users will be able to edit content through blocks edit while all styling and layout tags will be built into template file.

Answer 2

In most simple case you can use CKEditor module and some css in your theme for blockquote tag inside node content. Also you can define your custom element style for CKEditor that will wrap disred text into tag with class or inline style. This way allow you to avoid metting your user with raw HTML. Panels and Views or blocks is good approach for small amounts of pages with complicated structure(for example), but not always it is appropriate way.

Answer 3

You might consider whether Skinr meets your needs. The idea is that you can apply extra CSS selectively, and your client can, too.

Answer 4

I like using views to output content, but this could be done in lots of ways. One way could be to create your columns as taxonomies and then in a newly created content type, create an existing term reference to the taxonomy. Then create the other content from fields and then once all your content is in the node, style it accordingly with CSS. A second way could be to use a combo of blocks and views. In this solution your could create a view of taxonomy terms that displays them as list items in a block, so you could specify what URL's to route your block to. After you have the columns as views you could create the bottom content as a block and the top content as view with a field for the body and a field for the image (from a referenced content type). You can always move your elements around on your page with a bit of CSS. Hope this helps.