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Could someone walk me through this?
Hi Guys,
I’ve just started getting comfy with TXP and realize that it has lot’s of potential. However, I seem to be stuck…. I would like to do the following:
-Display a ‘member’ logon form on my default page [homepage], from which registered members can enter their User Name and Password, and un-registered members can click on a ‘register now’ link that will bring them to the registration form.
-Display a ‘newsletter sign up’ form, that basically uses the above ‘registration form’ for them to register.
-Display a ‘members poll’ result, when clicked, goes to the actual poll which shows various member’s comments to the actual poll, and, possibly other ‘less important’ polls. Poll topic will be administered/ rotated from TXP backend. Registered members will be able to ‘vote’, and post comments.
-Display ‘top 5’ active discussion forums’ title-links. Registered members only can participate in the Discussions.
So far, I’ve been hunting around for the various plugins, and trying to implement them. I’ve come accross the following:
-ign_password_protect : For memberships [i.e. restrict some pages to ‘members’ only. Still cant fully figure out head or tail about the plugin]
-mem_self_register : For User registrations [ can’t figure out how to implement this ]
-Postmaster : For newsletters [can’t fully figure out how to implement this ]
-TXPhorum : For user forums [completely lost, cant figure out how to implement this]
Unidentified: Still haven’t come across any suitable ‘polls’ plugin.
Any ideas, help, comments, or pointers will be highly appreciated.
Cheers.
Que,
Que-Multimedia
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Re: Could someone walk me through this?
quemultimedia wrote:
So far, I’ve been hunting around for the various plugins, and trying to implement them. I’ve come accross the following: <snip>
Well you’ve found the good ones. They are the ideal candidates for doing exactly what you want but they are more “advanced” plugins that require a bit of knowledge. I’d also add to your list zem_contact_reborn (for sign-up forms and I believe it’s a necessary component of Postmaster) and pap_xpoll is the polling plugin you’re after (though I don’t know how well it works on 4.0.7 as it’s not been updated in a while).
I know it’s hard graft, but the best thing to do is trawl through the relevant plugin threads because there are loads of snippets and examples to get you thinking in the right direction. There may also be a tutorial or two for making password-protected/self-registration signup forms lurking around somewhere in the forum or on Texbook.
What you propose is well within the capability of Textpattern. I’m doing something very similar for a client right now: TXPhorum and ign_password_protect are part of the spec so I’ll be playing with them both over the next few weeks. I know TXPhorum is a tricky one to set up, so if I come across anything useful as I mess about with it I’ll post it on the TXPhorum thread.
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Txp Builders – finely-crafted code, design and Txp
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Re: Could someone walk me through this?
Thanks Bloke,
Well, with the listed plugins, say mem_self_register, or ign_password_protect, could you be having any idea as to how I could achieve the above? I’ve already installed the plugins, but, don’t seem to make head or tail of how to implement them for the site.
Looking forward to becoming a TXP pro someday…
Que,
Que-Multimedia
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Re: Could someone walk me through this?
Member login form on your page:
<txp:ign_show_login />(yes, that’s it :-)
You can protect an entire page by putting:
<txp:ign_page_privs privs="1,2,4" />at the top. Or:
<txp:ign_if_logged_in privs="1,2">
// do
// some
// secret
// stuff
</txp:if_logged_in>The priv numbers are pre-defined
I haven’t played much with self_register so can’t really help you there at the moment.
The smd plugin menagerie — for when you need one more gribble of power from Textpattern. Bleeding-edge code available on GitHub.
Txp Builders – finely-crafted code, design and Txp
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Re: Could someone walk me through this?
Que, have a look at MrDale’s write-up on setting up a client area to understand how mem_register and ign_password_protect work.
The last version of TXPhorum is in my view still incomplete in the last version. I got it working with a lot of tinkering and revisions. Bear in mind that it provides only basic forum functionality. That was fine for the project I was working on at the time but if you want more bells and whistles and nice user functionality consider a full-blown forum such as PunBB or Vanilla and link the user databases. Google/search the forum for more information on how to do this.
TXP Builders – finely-crafted code, design and txp
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Re: Could someone walk me through this?
Well, I think for now TXPhorum will have to do….
I would like just one central interface from where I would manage the entire site [as opposed to implementing PunBB, where I’ll have a separate ‘admin interface’ for the forum], including the forum.
I think TXPhorum will do this, wont it?
Que,
Que-Multimedia
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Re: Could someone walk me through this?
quemultimedia wrote:
I think TXPhorum will do this, wont it?
TXPhorum is really just an ingenious cheat using articles and comments to simulate a forum (article = thread / topic : a comment = a reply).
There’s not much in the way of configuration to do so yes you can “administer” it from TXP because administering it really means looking after articles and comments. But as jakob said, it depends on how much featurage you require. TXPhorum is very very basic unless you want to start writing complex forms and logic with ign_password_protect etc.
fwiw, PunBB (as it used to be in 1.2.xx) works quite well integrated into TXP… with a lot of tweaking first. You can even set it up so when you log into one, you log into the other so it appears seamless to the user. But true integration is quite an involved process and not for the faint of heart.
The smd plugin menagerie — for when you need one more gribble of power from Textpattern. Bleeding-edge code available on GitHub.
Txp Builders – finely-crafted code, design and Txp
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Re: Could someone walk me through this?
TXPhorum is really just an ingenious cheat using articles and comments to simulate a forum (article = thread / topic : a comment = a reply).
Yes, but TXPhorum actually uses an article per post and an article per reply (i.e., not comments) which are linked to one another. This means that if your forum is very active it quickly fills up your admin articles pane and if you use the same installation as the rest of your site, all these articles will be mixed up with the rest of your site. To find replies to existing threads you need to look for the ID number of the post in the section “replies”. So if your site is busy, administering the forum can get complex.
TXPhorum is basically a txp site set up to behave like a forum. Its functionality is limited to the basics of writing and answering and editing your own post. There are no fancy facilities such as favourites, statistics, private messaging, thread subscription or whatever. If you think you may want these in future, consider using a dedicated forum and styling them to look part of the same site.
By way of example: on the site where I have used TXPhorum, it serves essentially as a kind of notice board so that people can post information about a meeting or initiative and others can ask questions about it, verify attendance and so on. In the end I set up txphorum in a separate installation to keep site content and forum apart and linked the two back-ends via the dashboard to make it easier to switch between the two (that’s a separate plugin).
For another project I used vanilla, which offers far greater administration control and far greater user functionality while remaining fully tailorable and easy to use. Dedicated forums have the functionality for user login-handling and user-profiles already built in and several also have polling modules as a plugin.
TXP Builders – finely-crafted code, design and txp
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Re: Could someone walk me through this?
jakob wrote:
but TXPhorum actually uses an article per post and an article per reply (i.e., not comments) which are linked to one another.
D’oh, thanks for the correction jakob, I’d forgotten about that. For some reason I had it in my head it used comments as a ‘reply’ mechanism. Hmmm, I wonder it doesn’t do that? It’d be cleaner from an admin point of view. But then I guess you don’t get the searching benefit of having the replies as articles. And being able to use the article tag is beneficial. And…
Last edited by Bloke (2009-01-06 17:11:44)
The smd plugin menagerie — for when you need one more gribble of power from Textpattern. Bleeding-edge code available on GitHub.
Txp Builders – finely-crafted code, design and Txp
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Re: Could someone walk me through this?
@Bloke,
I wouldn’t say that I’m feint hearted, however, I’m trying to have the ‘test project’ through, so that I can upload the project to my web server [baptism by fire, from my view]. The ‘loose ends’ can be worked on gradually. As such, I’m somewhat ‘stuck’, the TXPhorum thread seems to be revolving in circles….some pointers would serve great…..anyone?
Que,
Que-Multimedia
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Re: Could someone walk me through this?
Downloaded a copy of PunBB, and have seen a plugin that can allow to show status msg’s on TXP, however, how can one get to use the same user details accross TXP and PunBB? Any hacks? Any tricks?
Que,
Que-Multimedia
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Re: Could someone walk me through this?
quemultimedia wrote:
the same user details accross TXP and PunBB? Any hacks? Any tricks?
You hit on the holly grail here. No hacks or tricks available at this moment… but who knows! With the current upgrades of both punBB and txp something might become available.
Yiannis
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