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[newbie] setup for issue (by-monthly) based site
Hi,
I’m looking for a cms to use for a local music site. It’s bi-monthly and each issue will need an intro, plus 3 categories: Interviews, Reviews, Features.
I’d like to be able to allow low level [admin] users to create a new Issue, and then any articles (a review, an interview or a feature) are shown just for that Issue. I’d also like to be able to list all articles by category chronologically.
What I don’t want is every other month to have to create a new section for the new issue, and the same categories (or, that’s what I’d like to avoid, if that’s the case I’ll build my own system).
I know it’s a bit vague but is this realistic? I’d love to see examples of this type of thing using textpattern.
Many thanks,
jon
www.jben.net
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#2 2005-09-23 21:38:14
- Mary
- Sock Enthusiast
- Registered: 2004-06-27
- Posts: 6,236
Re: [newbie] setup for issue (by-monthly) based site
Categories are global, meaning they span all sections, so you’d setup your categories only once.
Each issue would have to be a new section, no way around it that wouldn’t be a lot more difficult. But, creating a new section isn’t that hard. You’d only have to create the page for your sections once, then just have all your sections use it. Users allowed to create (but also edit and delete) sections are: Publisher, Managing Editor, Copy Editor and Designer.
The listing by category can most likely be acheived with the rss_suparchive plugin (check the resources site).
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Re: [newbie] setup for issue (by-monthly) based site
hi mary,
Ok, that doesn’t sound too tricky. I’m assuming it won’t be too tricky to display only the most recent issue (section) by default, thus allowing me to have a sub section menu ‘archives’ that list all the other issues? I ask becuase many of the pages will be static (apart form the forum, which I think punBB has just got the gig for over miniBB), my structure is as follows:
Home (basically this would be the current issue), Subscribe (to printed version), Forums, Send us your stuff (demos and wot not), Advertising info, Contact the editor.
Now most of these pages are static, or at least only contain one page. It would be good to have everything running from one place though, so perhaps I’ll look into running everything from TP.
many thanks,
Jon
www.jben.net
Last edited by jben.net (2005-09-24 08:10:07)
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#4 2005-09-24 15:07:46
- ss
- Member
- Registered: 2004-03-31
- Posts: 20
Re: [newbie] setup for issue (by-monthly) based site
i’m not at all an expert on textpattern matters, but how about:
[section] – issues
[category1] – Intro
[category1] – Interviews
[category1] – Reviews
[category1] – Features
[category2] – Issue 1
[category2] – Issue 2
[category2] – Issue 3
etc.
[section] – subscribe
[section] – forums
[section] – send us your stuff
[section] – advertising info
[section] – contact
no need to create a new section each time, and ‘home’ pulls out the latest from each category. not sure if ‘category2’ is necessary but could be useful when you want to archive by issue.
Last edited by ss (2005-09-24 15:09:01)
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Re: [newbie] setup for issue (by-monthly) based site
I’ve tried to do this but think I may have missed the mark somewhat, I’ve just tried setting up 2 main categories:
Articles
Issues
I then added some sub categories to each
Articles > Reviews
Articles > Interviews
Articles > Features
Issues > Issue 1
Issues > Issue 2 (etc etc)
What I was hoping to be able to list all the articles sub categories (reviews, interviews, features) but only for the selected ‘Issue’ – however when I used:
txp:category_list category=“Articles” wraptag=“ul” break=“li”
I expected it to output a list of 3 links:
• Reviews
• Interviews
• Features
instead though I was greeted by a list of links to all my categories and child categories in alphabetical order!
Where am I going wrong?
Thanks,
Jon
Last edited by jben.net (2005-10-26 13:55:43)
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Re: [newbie] setup for issue (by-monthly) based site
Right
I’ve had a re-think after some more digging around.
I’ve now decided to use the rdt_dynamenus and ‘sections’ to navigate through issues. There are obviously lots of things I need to iron out, so this won;t be the last time you hear from me!
cheers,
Jon
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Re: [newbie] setup for issue (by-monthly) based site
I guess I missed the mark somewhere, but my journal site is set up as follows:
*<i>catagory one</i> – issue number
*<i>sections</i> – issue content, news, information about the journal
I do understand the logic of using sections for containing issues, BUT.. if sections control presentation, and catagories store different types of linked information, then the above makes sense. On our mage, issue content always follows the same layout, as does news and the like. I haven’t had trouble settting table of contents pages that output lists of each issue (at least no trouble yet).
Am I way off here?
Last edited by Jeff_K (2005-10-28 17:18:10)
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Re: [newbie] setup for issue (by-monthly) based site
That said, I just reread the original post, and the difference between your site and our is the bimonthly. We publish our offline journal three times a year. That means far less issues, and thus fewer catagories.
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Re: [newbie] setup for issue (by-monthly) based site
Hi,
I’m starting to think that using TXP might not be the ideal solution, as there are a few things I’m finding it very hard to accomplish like:
1. Using sections as containers for Issues, I need my templates to automatically update themselves when a content editor adds a new section. Currently I’ve only been able to make the template set a default using txp:if_section name=“Issue-1”, which means hard coding logic into the template every 2 months, and also potentially could lead to a lot of code after a few issues! I also want the most recently added section to be auto-selected on the homepage, but have found no way to do this bar hard coding the values into the template.
2. Having an introduction article for each section listed on the frontpage of a section. I have had real trouble picking out a single introduction article (in category ‘Introduction’) for the currently selected issue. I’ve tried using txp:article_custom form=“Single” limit=“1” category=“introduction” sortby=“Posted” sortdir=“desc” listform=“Single” but without being able to dynamically reference the current issue, it always pulls out the latest article in ‘Introduction’ regardless of which issue is selected. I can of course get round this by hard coding the issue number into the txp:article_custom call, but again this means me making a change every couple of months and will end up with very bulky code.
3. Automatically setting a category if there one hasn’t been selected. Basically I want the fontpage for each issue to contain just the introduction article, with links of somesort to the other articles in reviews, interviews, features, but I can not find a tag to actually set the category!
4. Listing sections for nav in reverse order. At the moment I’ve hard coded this into the popup function, but really I would need more flexibility when ordering items – see http://forum.textpattern.com/viewtopic.php?id=12259 for more on this.
Think that’ll do for now, hope some more experienced TXP’ers can help out. I’ve no web dev newbie, and usually develop my own php/mysql systems for this kind of thing, but I’m looking for a flexible alternative to that, and from the sites on TXP Mag thought that TXP could be the answer (I think it is, it’s just tricky to setup).
Thanks,
Jon
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