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#1 2009-11-11 22:38:00

whaleen
Member
From: Portland
Registered: 2006-05-11
Posts: 373
Website

[request] Write tab multiple cats menus / companion to rss_u_c

I was reminded that a plugin for building category selection drop downs for the write tab would be a very nice thing.

I use rss_unlimited_categories and for my purposes would like to use selected parent-categories’ children for individual category lists in the Write tab. A plugin could have power to choose from either (rss_u_c store cats in another place) of the category tables simultaneously perhaps…

  • Horses (Parent / Heading for a drop down in Write tab)
    • Small
    • Medium
    • Large
  • Letters (Parent / Heading for a drop down in Write tab)
    • A
    • B
    • C

A plugin might have a menu builder where you can choose which parents to add as an individual menu. That alone would be a powerful advantage. Further options to exclude certain children or anything else are not important to me but I know others have different needs. So, to have the simple first purpose to be to make a parent a drop down would be enough.

Just throwing this out there as an official plugin request. I would not commission the whole thing but would gladly pay a ransom. I suspect others would too.

note: The functionality of sed_section_fields could be borrowed from for fancier stuff like show certain category lists per section…


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#2 2009-11-11 23:28:05

pieman
Member
From: Bristol, UK
Registered: 2005-09-22
Posts: 491
Website

Re: [request] Write tab multiple cats menus / companion to rss_u_c

Do you mean something akin to the Write tab effects of adi_menu – but displaying nested categories rather than nested sections?

I have a few sites which rely heavily on users remembering which combination of sections & both categories to use in each context. Something like you suggest is very sensible — it would help eliminate the risk of user error, and make for happier clients.

note: The functionality of sed_section_fields could be borrowed from for fancier stuff like show certain category lists per section…

As would this, and the other idea you linked to.

I don’t use rss_u_c, but in my own personal dreamland, you’d be able to
  1. ‘group’ categories together and give each group a non-selectable heading. (A straight copy of the functionality would mean that the options for ‘Horses’ and ‘Letters’ in your example would be selectable category options rather than optgroup labels, which might not be ideal.)
  2. Choose which of the two category selects each ‘group’ should appear in
  3. Choose to show/hide categories or category ‘groups’ according to the section select value (like sed_section_fields)

That’s a rough concept — I’m sure there are flies in the ointment — but it might just work…

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#3 2009-11-12 00:38:30

whaleen
Member
From: Portland
Registered: 2006-05-11
Posts: 373
Website

Re: [request] Write tab multiple cats menus / companion to rss_u_c

Do you mean something akin to the Write tab effects of adi_menu – but displaying nested categories rather than nested sections?

rss_u_c does exactly that: showing nested categories in an additional category select displayed below the cat1 and cat2 selects in the Write tab. That is helpful of course but to take each ‘nest’ and give it it’s own select would be the idea.

the options for ‘Horses’ and ‘Letters’ in your example would be selectable category options rather than optgroup labels, which might not be ideal.)

Ah, so it might be best that a Publisher would create optgroups which contained any combination of categories. Default category Parent/Child relationships would be left alone and not hooked into so that existing front-end tags and back-end conditions of categories could carry on un-bothered. The plugin could simply allow you to build a select, load it up with cats, and then name it what you like.

So after thinking about what you said:

Plugin Admin Workflow:

  1. Choose Section(s) your new CatGroup should be available for
  2. Name a CatGroup
  3. Add Categories to that CatGroup
    • Option to choose a Parent’s Children to speed up selection process
    • Option to remove individual categories as all cats from previous option’s Parent’s Chidren selection might not all be desired
  4. Choose display order as illustrated below

The admin for this plugin might show you your constructed menus like this:

  • Section1
    • Group1 | 12,54,678,34,23
    • Group3 | 34,76,87,34,54
  • Section2
    • Group2 | 23,56,,78,56
    • Group4 | 1,5,3,7,56,87
  • Section5
    • Group9 | 8,3,6,5,2,54
    • Group4 | 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9

Where each list of numbers would otherwise be your categories contained within each CatGroup.

Last edited by whaleen (2009-11-12 00:38:55)


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#4 2009-11-12 07:18:40

pieman
Member
From: Bristol, UK
Registered: 2005-09-22
Posts: 491
Website

Re: [request] Write tab multiple cats menus / companion to rss_u_c

That would certainly do it for me.

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#5 2010-07-14 16:36:20

aswihart
Member
From: Pittsburgh, PA
Registered: 2006-07-22
Posts: 345
Website

Re: [request] Write tab multiple cats menus / companion to rss_u_c

In addition to the thoughts above, it would be quite useful if you could use suckerfish menus to select nested categories (maybe using the existing Remora code for the top nav menu?) on the admin side. Of course this would be useful for nested sections also. Let’s hope someone can make this happen, or that it even be the default behavior in Txp 5.0..

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