Steve J.
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| 8/25/2008 7:56 AM |
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Great, thanks!
Steve |
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Steve J.
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| 8/25/2008 8:03 AM |
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Posted By goBlanks on 8/19/2008 4:03 PM
I can see where "report abuse" might be useful for instance in the comments section. Not sure about "broken link" though.........
Report Abuse would be great for this and for Property Agent as well.
Steve
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GlenWin
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| 8/25/2008 3:52 PM |
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Posted By Scott McCulloch on 8/17/2008 10:48 PM
Over the past few days, I've been completing a code overhaul of the news articles module (Restructuring and refactoring elements of the code into a more manageable form).
While looking at the elements at the top of the form, I have been tempted to merge a few into the following:-
{Categories, Search, Syndication} becomes Archive. The archive page would default to a category list showing a list of categories and the articles belonging to each (similar to this page). There is also scope to have a link to show the exact same format for authors.
The only piece of functionality we would be missing out on is the RSS feed to subscribe to the last 25 articles, but I think that can be added on the current listing page in the template.
{My Articles, Create Article, Approve Articles, Approve Comments} becomes Article Manager, the one stop page for managing all of these items.
So, we would then have:-
Current Articles, Archive, Article Manager, Admin Options at the top.
Doe sthis sound like a good idea?
Scott, this is looking good ! I much prefer this - Current Articles, Archive, Article Manager, Admin Options at the top.
On my site I just have Current Articles|-|-|Syndycation (I commented out Categories and Search)
Any posiblity to show Related Articles anywhere yet ?
Glen |
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Robert Axford
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| 8/25/2008 4:52 PM |
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Posted By Scott McCulloch on 8/17/2008 10:48 PM
While looking at the elements at the top of the form, I have been tempted to merge a few into the following:-
{Categories, Search, Syndication} becomes Archive. The archive page would default to a category list showing a list of categories and the articles belonging to each (similar to this page). There is also scope to have a link to show the exact same format for authors.
Current Articles, Archive, Article Manager, Admin Options at the top.
Doe sthis sound like a good idea?
This looks pretty good to me. I've always removed that top menu with all the links to the non-templated pages entirely. I then provided an RSS feed icon as part of the article listing. The archives module deals with the rest. Removing those three older pages nicely removes three points of confusion for visitors.
But from the new version on, it looks like I'd be able to go with the way you're setting it up and no longer remove the menu.
Perhaps the new archive page could even pick up some additional click-browsing functionality over time... in the same manner as is being discussed for Property agent elsewhere... e.g. click-browse by alphabet, date, popularity, author etc.
All looking good :)
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Robert Axford
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| 8/25/2008 5:04 PM |
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Posted By Scott McCulloch on 8/17/2008 10:48 PM
{Categories, Search, Syndication} becomes Archive. The archive page would default to a category list showing a list of categories and the articles belonging to each (similar to this page). There is also scope to have a link to show the exact same format for authors.
I like the way that archive example shows cateogries, titles, comments, date etc.
It would be important to be able to specify the order of this organisation. The example puts the category at the highest level and date second. I would probably normally want to have the archived articles displayed by date, organised into weeks, months, years.
Then being able to filter the same list based on author, title, comments, category, featured, secure, etc would really finish it off as an article browser.
In cases where the module is used as a directory/catalogue of publications, it would be important to be able to browse alphabetically by author, title, or date added.
Having these things handled in a single archives page like this might even save a lot of hassles with trying to shoehorn extended browsing capability into the main and latest articles modules.
Very nice
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Robert Axford
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| 8/25/2008 5:39 PM |
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Posted By Steve on 8/25/2008 8:03 AM
Posted By goBlanks on 8/19/2008 4:03 PM
I can see where "report abuse" might be useful for instance in the comments section. Not sure about "broken link" though.........
Report Abuse would be great for this and for Property Agent as well.
Steve
The trick might be to have a "Report issue" token that could be used for multiple purposes.
Someone once did an "Issues" module. It popped up a tiny contact form that would send the url of the page and had a tickbox to select what type of issue it was. It was buggy and ugly so I never used it, but it would still be handy to have for all site pages. |
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Scott McCulloch
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| 8/25/2008 11:20 PM |
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Posted By Robert Axford on 8/25/2008 5:04 PM
Posted By Scott McCulloch on 8/17/2008 10:48 PM
{Categories, Search, Syndication} becomes Archive. The archive page would default to a category list showing a list of categories and the articles belonging to each (similar to this page). There is also scope to have a link to show the exact same format for authors.
I like the way that archive example shows cateogries, titles, comments, date etc.
It would be important to be able to specify the order of this organisation. The example puts the category at the highest level and date second. I would probably normally want to have the archived articles displayed by date, organised into weeks, months, years.
Then being able to filter the same list based on author, title, comments, category, featured, secure, etc would really finish it off as an article browser.
In cases where the module is used as a directory/catalogue of publications, it would be important to be able to browse alphabetically by author, title, or date added.
Having these things handled in a single archives page like this might even save a lot of hassles with trying to shoehorn extended browsing capability into the main and latest articles modules.
Very nice
Rob, you are right, it does group by category. I assume you want an option to group by "date" organised into weeks, months, years? I'll need to think about how to best organise the other filters.
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Scott McCulloch
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Robert Axford
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| 8/26/2008 12:23 AM |
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If I think about how I use archives on other websites, the thing I'm usually looking for is something I saw recently... like an article published in the previous days. If the item wanted is older than that, then one would really have to know when it was published in order to find it by date.
So at that point I would normally start browsing backwards by category or author, and if that shows nothing in the first page or two then I'd have to start taking pot shots at the article using a search tool.
What I'm getting at with the above is that any one archive display system doesn't have to cover everything all the way back in time. Even covering just the previous month (or X items) in great detail and then reverting to the search tool for older items can be sufficient.
This whole searching, browsing, filtering thing is obviously a complex but important area of operation for more than one of your modules, so taking some time to think about it is a very good idea.
Given that all the data is sitting there in tables, there must be some sort of way to pull together 2 or 3 methods of listing and filtering it. Some developers use those tables where you can drag column headers up to a bar and it creates queries to sort the contents. Those are quite powerful, but are also completely useless as most end users wouldn't have a clue how to use them.
I'll post any further examples if I find some.
Rob |
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Scott McCulloch
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| 8/26/2008 12:46 AM |
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I like the link I showed of providing categories and the related articles belonging to those categories. A similar method could be provided to group by date (month/year) or author.
What could be a problem however:-
* Categories/authors with MANY articles (1000s?)
My thoughts was to make it configurable, templateable and allow the end user to switch between categories/authors/dates. |
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Scott McCulloch
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Steve J.
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| 8/26/2008 5:09 AM |
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Scott,
Will the new version be able to handle Next/Prev article so the user doesn't have to go to current articles?
Thanks,
Steve |
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Scott McCulloch
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| 8/26/2008 5:12 AM |
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| Possibly, only in the current articles list though, I'm concerned it might be behave strange if they click from an archive or a latest articles module, the ordering would not be correct as you are now in the main module. This is not a priority for me at the moment. |
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Scott McCulloch
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Steve J.
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| 8/26/2008 5:33 AM |
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It really only makes sense to do that in the current articles - more than likely anyone going into an archive is looking for something specific.
Thanks!
Steve |
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Robert Axford
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| 8/26/2008 8:52 PM |
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| Same here.. going from one to the next in current articles is the biggie... anything else would be a luxury bonus. |
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Robert Axford
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| 8/26/2008 8:58 PM |
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Posted By Robert Axford on 8/25/2008 5:39 PM
Someone once did an "Issues" module. It popped up a tiny contact form that would send the url of the page and had a tickbox to select what type of issue it was. It was buggy and ugly so I never used it, but it would still be handy to have for all site pages.
heheh I think Chris has been reading the thread:
Report-It
Looks the stuff.. I'll check it out.
Rob |
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Steve J.
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| 8/27/2008 4:52 AM |
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I emailed asked him if it was possible with his module last week....so I suppose indirectly it was from this thread!! :)
Steve |
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Dax Davis
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| 8/27/2008 5:58 AM |
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I'm surprised I haven't seen this question yet. Is this update a soon thing or longer term? I need some of the fixes you mentioned will be in it.
Dax |
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Scott McCulloch
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| 8/27/2008 6:11 AM |
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| In the short term, I spent today rewriting the comment code, it now includes BBCode and automatic linking of urls. |
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Scott McCulloch
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Scott McCulloch
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| 8/27/2008 9:23 AM |
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Just a further note to my last post, I've finished the templating changes to the existing screens, I am just about to tackle the categories/search/syndication page and then it will be ready for release.
I've deliberately made it a big release, as there are some templating changes that may affect some existing templates. |
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Scott McCulloch
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Robert Axford
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| 8/28/2008 12:47 AM |
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| And I hope you're set to load it up on snowcovered as a big new release... gotta keep it visible - there's only so much all us fans can do by word of mouth. |
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Scott McCulloch
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| 8/28/2008 12:55 AM |
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| Yep - Rob, do you have a test environment that you could potentially test out the new release for me? |
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Scott McCulloch
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