 what is views  the views module allows administrators and site designers to create manage and display lists of content each list managed by the views module is known as a view and the output of a view is known as a display displays are provided in either block or page form and a single view may have multiple displays optional navigation aids including a system path and menu item can be set for each pagebased display of a view by default views may be created that list content a node view type content revisions a node revisions view type or users a user view type a view may be restricted to members of specific user roles and may be added edited or deleted at the views administration page the building block design of the views system provides power and flexibility allowing parameters to be specified only when needed while an advanced view may use all of available parameters to create complex and highly interactive applications a simple content listing may specify only a few options all views rely on a conceptual framework that includes  fields  or the individual pieces of data being displayed adding the fields node title   node type  and node post date to a node view for example includes the title content type and creation date in the displayed results relationships  or information about how data elements relate to one another if relationship data is available like that provided by a cck nodereference field items from a related node may be included in the view arguments  or additional parameters that dynamically refine the view results passed as part of the path adding an argument of node type to a node view with a path of content for example dynamically filters the displayed items by content type in this example shown with clean urls enabled accessing the view through the path  http wwwexamplecom content page  displays all posts of the type page the path  http wwwexamplecom content story  displays all posts of the type story and  http wwwexamplecom content  displays all posts regardless of type  sort criteria  which determine the order of items displayed in the view results adding the sort criteria node post date  in descending order to a node view  for example sorts the displayed posts in descending order by creation date filters  which limit items displayed in the results adding the filter node published  and setting it equal to published to a node view for example prevents unpublished items from being displayed displays  which control where the output will be seen every view has a default display which doesn t actually display the view anywhere but is used to hold the default settings for the view and is used when the view is called programmatically if another display is not specified much more useful to users are the page display which gives a view a path and allows it to be the primary content of a page or the block display which allows it to appear as secondary content on other pages  