Rodney Joyce
Gold Membership
Nuke Master
Posts:272
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| 5/16/2005 4:25 AM |
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Hi Scott
What are the fundamental differences between your News Article module and Dave's from http://www.efficionconsulting.com?
I currently use his article module but I would be interested to see a
high-level comparison (if they are fufilling similar requirements).
cheers
Rodney
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Thanks
Rodney
Smart-Thinker & The DotNetNuke Directory
PokerDIY - Free tools and leagues for home poker players |
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Scott Bosarge
Registered Users
Nuke Super Newbie
Posts:22
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| 5/16/2005 7:14 AM |
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Let me take this... DNN Forges "News Articles" Rules Efficions "Articles" Does Not Rule  All kidding aside...I have used both and the Efficion module works fine but lacks most of the advanced functionality of "News Articles" ... "News Articles" has... User configurable templates... these are extremely easy to configure and allow you to tailor the look and feel of the module to your sites theme, Efficion does not have this Multi-page articles. Articles can have a summary plus multiple pages of text, With Efficion you get a title and the article text An article approval mechanism. This allows you to have users submit articles and have control over when or if they get approved and published. This feature is not available in Efficions module Plus there tons of other features but these are the three that really stand out, IMHO Scott B. |
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Rodney Joyce
Gold Membership
Nuke Master
Posts:272
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| 5/16/2005 4:19 PM |
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Hehe - thanks for that indepth (if slightly biased  reply.
I'm currently using Dave's but I'll have to check out this one as well sometime... they both seem of pretty high quality...
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Thanks
Rodney
Smart-Thinker & The DotNetNuke Directory
PokerDIY - Free tools and leagues for home poker players |
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Scott McCulloch
Administrators
Nuke Master
Posts:12450
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| 5/16/2005 4:24 PM |
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Actually, Dave's module is a direct derivative of the news articles module. At one point, he didn't like the way I was going, e.g. the more detailed article management solution so he created his own forked version. I would like to think News Articles has more functionality, more configurability and is moving at a faster pace. Dave's module does have it's placed, if you wanted a more simpler solution. I have done a similar thing with Simple Gallery. |
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Scott McCulloch
Site Administrator |
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Scott Bosarge
Registered Users
Nuke Super Newbie
Posts:22
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| 5/16/2005 4:45 PM |
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Truth be told... I use both on my site, but for completely different purposes
I usually use Dave's Articles for small, announcement type articles that can be placed randomly through the site. its good for things like that. where the site admin is the prime contributor. The DNN Forge News Articles module occupies two separate pages one for RPG game reviews and one for RPG gaming industry news. different people contribute to each page. which the site admin then approves or rejects. Don't forget the the categories... Dave's module requires a separate module for categories where DNN Forge has them integrated. I can not figure out why that is.. it always seemed odd that they were separate in Dave's module Anyway, hope this helps Scott B. |
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Dax Davis
Gold Membership
Nuke Master
Posts:328
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| 5/17/2005 6:08 PM |
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Ahh, it kills me when you close a browser window and lose a posting
full of pure genious. Then of course can only come up with
dribble to replace it. 
I use Dave's Articles quite a bit but have recently discovered News
Articles. It is definitely more powerful. But there is one
basic thing that they both lack. The ability to put an article
date on an article. This is useful for when I want to use a date
I control to easily sort announcements. It also works well for
Press Releases. Is this something you can add, Scott?
As for the comment about the separate categories module, I believe that
that is to allow for a centralized common list of categories to use
with other modules. In that regard, it is a good idea. You
can write another module and have them all work off the same Category
ID's and names, etc. This is valuable when used in large content
sites.
Something else I like about Dave's is the ability to pull articles from
other Articles modules around the site. This allows me to create
a "view" of featured items on the page while still maintaining articles
in once central place.
Finally the ability to link to a page, external url, no where, or to a
file is a nice option besides just going to a detailed view of info.
All that said though, I have decided that News Articles is the way to
go and I will end up adding these features into the code. Great
work, Scott. Do you have any plans to add any of these features?
Dax
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Andrew Haslett
Registered Users
Nuke Wiz
Posts:102
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| 5/18/2005 1:35 AM |
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Dax, you can use the 'submit date' or 'last updated' date against an article. You just need to specify them in the template.
You can also aggregate articles from different pages by using the 'Add
Existing Module' option and then filtering by category / featured etc
on whichever page you wish to filter.
This is actually more flexible than Dave's articles as you don't have
to have a reference to all other articles on the site if you don't want
to. ie - by assing a new instance of the module (and not using
the 'add existing' option), then you have a completely clean dataset of
articles to work with,
Cheers,
Andrew
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Dax Davis
Gold Membership
Nuke Master
Posts:328
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| 5/18/2005 3:04 AM |
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Thanks, I did not realize you could do that with existing modules.
By using those dates, it still does not give the user control of the
date (in the case of Press Releases this date needs to be
specific). The create date is not necessarily the date the PR
should have, and the modified date is changed any time you update and
can't be forced to the date (and stay there) that the user wants.
FYI, the latest version of Dave's articles allows you to use "Site Wide" articles or just module specific.
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Dax Davis
Gold Membership
Nuke Master
Posts:328
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| 5/18/2005 3:21 AM |
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Bunce, I just realized what you mean by adding an existing module, you
mean the functinality in DNN in the control panel, correct? Sort
of off topic, but can you explain that function? Does it make a
copy of the other or are they linked? And can I modify the
settings of one and not the other (e.g. different category to display
or diff. skin)?
Thanks for the info.
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Scott McCulloch
Administrators
Nuke Master
Posts:12450
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| 5/18/2005 3:32 AM |
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Bunce, I just realized what you mean by adding an existing module, you
mean the functinality in DNN in the control panel, correct? Sort
of off topic, but can you explain that function? Does it make a
copy of the other or are they linked? And can I modify the
settings of one and not the other (e.g. different category to display
or diff. skin)? Hi Dax, You can use the add existing module to add a news article module that already exists. Effectively sharing the articles between those 2 modules. You can then "filter" the modules displayed in each to display only certain categories. This is a way of sharing articles throughout a portal. You could use Publish Data (Or Start Date) I need to check name, but this is a good way of displaying the date of the article. I am going to make the create date editable in an upcoming release. I'll be adding some enhancements to attach links, files to a article like it does here. |
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Scott McCulloch
Site Administrator |
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Dax Davis
Gold Membership
Nuke Master
Posts:328
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| 5/18/2005 3:41 AM |
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Thanks Scott, I appreciate the reply and the module!
I would recommend you add a editable date field and not modify the
create date since that is a useful date for security reasons, etc.
The link you gave is definitely some nice functionality. I would love to see that.
The only thing (besides the date change above) that I would love to see
is the ability to specify whether you want to link to a Tab or a file
directly like Dave's does. The nice option there is a person can
enter an article to announce a new product or service and when you
click on read more, it sends you to the products existing page
directly. The ability to have the link not display if the article
is really just the title and the description, to link directly to an
existing page, to link to HTML detail that is only in the article, or
to link directly to a file has proven to be very useful.
Dax
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Scott McCulloch
Administrators
Nuke Master
Posts:12450
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| 5/18/2005 3:47 AM |
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Hi Dax, I definately want to add the link to tab or file. I often want to use that functionality myself. |
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Scott McCulloch
Site Administrator |
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Rick Toner
Gold Membership
Nuke Addict
Posts:99
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| 4/10/2006 10:38 AM |
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Has anyone tried to make a script that would move your existing data from Efficion Articles to News Articles?
Thanks
Rick |
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Scott McCulloch
Administrators
Nuke Master
Posts:12450
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| 4/10/2006 4:59 PM |
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| I don't imagine it would be too difficult, as they were both spawned from an earlier article module instance. The tables should be very similar. |
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Scott McCulloch
Site Administrator |
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