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#1 2007-12-01 19:36:07
- zooeyripka
- Member
- Registered: 2007-07-15
- Posts: 12
using comments to create a list of recent bird sightings
This is my first use of textpattern and was wondering if someone can tell me if what i’m thinking is possible using textpattern. And if so, nudge me in the right direction.
I am starting my own website: www.nepabirdproject.org which is up just with static markup. I’m a front-end designer and usually leave all the backend voodoo to other people, but since it’s a personal project, I want to do it myself and not have to spend money other than hosting. And so I stumbled into textpattern.
If you notice I have the sidebar as a list of recent bird sightings. They are formatted as a definition list and under them is a submission form with all the criteria to enter. I was thinking I could make an article called recent_sightings and have that sidebar area output just the comments of the article. Then, when you click on sightings on the header, it will bring up the article with body text (just a blurb about “this is recent sightings…” and then the comments would expell a list of the last 50 comments/sightings.
Can I create custom fields for comments so i have more than just name, message, email, time posted? I thought I could just use the name field as the bird name, the email name as place name, message as the notes… but realized that posted would be when the actual comment posted and not when the actual sighting happened. So it leaves me one short of inputs/outputs.
Also, if i used that approach, I don’t know if i would be able to use comments on other articles?
Is there a better way to do what I am doing? Is that a good way? I would really appreciate it if someone could put me on the right track. I tried looking for a plug-in that had custom field comments but didn’t see any. Maybe it’s called something different?
Last edited by zooeyripka (2007-12-01 19:37:48)
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Re: using comments to create a list of recent bird sightings
That is unfortunately not a very good approach as there is no limit attribute as far as comments go so the sidebar will grow at infinitum.
I would use article_custom for the sidebar with limit="50"
Last edited by colak (2007-12-02 07:39:00)
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#3 2007-12-02 13:08:11
- zooeyripka
- Member
- Registered: 2007-07-15
- Posts: 12
Re: using comments to create a list of recent bird sightings
Thanks for the reply. But if I make it articles, don’t i have to populate it? I was hoping to use comments so that anyone could go on and submit a sighting and i wouldn’t have to manage that section myself daily.
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