This is a themed tutorial because our sister newsletter with WordPress tutorials is covering the same topic this week: Creating Printer-friendly Versions of WordPress Posts.
Without this solution you'd likely need to create a separate CSS file with styles specifically for the printed page. Fortunately the Print Module makes this much easier. It will automatically create a printer-friendly version of each page. As an added bonus and it can also do "Email to a Friend" and "Download as a PDF" link (if your server has the correct features).
Installing the Print Module to Your Drupal Site
- Step 1: Click here to download the latest version of the "Print Module".
- Step 2: Extract the files into a folder on your desktop. The folder will be called simply "print".
- Step 3: Login to your site's files via FTP and navigate to /sites/all/. If there isn't a folder called /modules/ here, create one.
- Step 4: Upload the "print" folder to /sites/all/modules/
- Step 5: Go to Administer >> Site building >> Printer, e-mail and PDF versions. Check the box next to each of the features that you'd like to enable:
Placing Your Print Button on Your Articles
Now that module is installed we can go to Administer >> Site configuration >> Printer, e-mail and PDF versions and configure the options. By default the module places links at the bottom of the article like this:
- "Content corner" will move the print option to the top-right of the article.
- "Icon only" will use a small printer button instead of the full text: "Printer-friendly version".
- "Use URL alias instead of node ID" will use friendly URLs rather than /node/48.
- "Open the printer-friendly version in a new window" is a good idea as people won't have lose track of the original Drupal page.
- "Send to printer" will send the article directly to the printer without any more clicks being needed.
