Section maintenance option

marios · 2006-04-17 00:14:57

Option to enable and disable sections instead of deleting them from backend.
(Switch on and off) NEEDED

What do you think ?

regards, marios

squaredeye · 2006-04-17 02:14:49

oohhh, I likey. yeah, I think that would be handy.
Nice thought Marios. Were you thinking of maintenance reasons?

What would happen if you had articles drawn to another section via the article_custom tag?
I suppose it would have to cull all articles that were assigned to that section…probably a no brainer.

M

Sencer · 2006-04-17 08:05:40

What problem are you trying to solve?

thebombsite · 2006-04-17 09:00:42

Well, oddly, I was thinking exactly this a couple of days ago when I wanted to “switch off” my Guestbook. I didn’t want to delete anything, just stop access to it. Being able to “switch off” the Guestbook section would have been a very simple solution.

I can see this being a very useful addition especially when you want to re-design or restructure a section without visitors being able to see it in it’s “messy” state.

Sencer · 2006-04-17 09:13:42

Add the following to page for that section:

<txp:txp_die msg="This Section is currently no available" status="503 Service Unavailable" />

The shown page can be customized via the error_503 page (And if you decide to use another another HTTP-status code, with the respecting error-page; though 503 seems to fit just fine and is widely understood).

If the page is shared between different sections, the tag can be wrapped in a conditional.

marios · 2006-04-17 10:46:04

mathew, when you have a non-existing section assigned to an article_custom tag, the tag will just not output anything, there is no error messages generated. (Think about it now , as a additional conditional, it would be quite a powerfull technique, to have sections that apperar and disappear for example on a specific day,just by switching it on or off for now, from the backend)Sencer, on the other hand it really doesnt take much time just to recreate the new section with the same name and settings, but it would be easier the other way through a radio button, to avoid mistakes like typos or the like.
(That’s why I sayd maintenance, because allso unexperienced Users could just switch the thing on or off, without messing the whole Site up.)
Another reason is exactly what bombsite mentions, restrict access, on my experimental blog I have setup all the menus to update automatically, which means:If I delete a section, the relevant navigational menu items disappear instantly from the Live Site.

@Sencer,
You are right,that is probably the more appropriate convention to deal with temporary restricting access,
(I’ts good you mentioned these, I forgot that TXP provides these new features for status error customization),
But:Q.:
Wouldn’t it be a little hard for beginners, to handle these ? Or how about Sites that are maintained by more than one person?

Bottomline as I could conceive this: You add a new powerfull feature to TXP, without hurting anyone.

EDIT: Take a look allso at this forum thread
which is allredy inserted in Textbook here as a feature request.
Could prove a solution for that problem as well, If it would get combined at some point with some questionary conditionals during setupprocedure, like so:
What kind of Site do you want to set up,Blog,3level, or custom ?(Just a random Idea) ,Then TXP will select the according sections allready during setup, assign the right pages, and switch of those that aren’t needed.
Another reason, why this could prove usefull is for the Theme engine support.

regards, marios

Last edited by marios (2006-04-17 11:14:05)

Textpattern CMS

Textpattern CMS support forum

#1 2006-04-17 00:14:57

Section maintenance option

#2 2006-04-17 02:14:49

Re: Section maintenance option

#3 2006-04-17 08:05:40

Re: Section maintenance option

#4 2006-04-17 09:00:42

Re: Section maintenance option

#5 2006-04-17 09:13:42

Re: Section maintenance option

#6 2006-04-17 10:46:04

Re: Section maintenance option

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