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#1 2005-03-20 10:35:31

thoresson
New Member
From: Sweden
Registered: 2005-02-02
Posts: 6

"daily frontpages" and other needs

Hi,

I need a CMS for a daily online newspaper. I’ve looked at most of the options listed on opensourcecms.com and other sources. But I’ve found one that fit my needs. Do anyone know one that does?

- Have “daily frontpages”. One frontpage for 19th of March, one for 20th of March and so on. Each frontpage should be accessible even in the future. The newspaper publishes on issues each day, and we need to have them archieved.<br><br>

- Let editors choose both what articles should be on the frontpage and in which order. Last 10 with newest first is not enough. We need to choose from older articles as well, and not have them in chronological order.<br><br>

- Have different placements on the frontpage for different categories. We want a two column layout where News and it’s sub-categories runs in the left column, Features in the right.<br><br>

- Have both caption and bylines to images.<br><br>

- Have a datebase where we can store information about images (date, photographer and so on) and categorize them.<br><br>

- Easily link to other articles in the database.<br><br>

- Easily change alignment and size for images in articles.<br><br>

- Password protect everything except the frontpage.<br><br>

- Preview of both the individual articles and the “daily frontpages”.<br><br>

I like the simple interface in TXP, since most of our editors are not that technical. Mambo seems to solve most of my problems, short of “daily frontpages”, but it’s admin interface is to complicated.

I’m thinking about using a separate section for each day, but that way, I can’t have the same article in multiple sections? And what about more than one image in an article?

The password protection can I probably solve with some php hacking of my own.

So. Is TXP up for the task? If not, where should I look instead?

//Anders

Last edited by thoresson (2005-03-20 10:37:00)

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#2 2005-10-27 14:29:35

stinkoman
New Member
Registered: 2005-05-16
Posts: 5

Re: "daily frontpages" and other needs

This was half a year ago, does anyone know if this feature is doable now: “Let editors choose both what articles should be on the frontpage and in which order. Last 10 with newest first is not enough. We need to choose from older articles as well, and not have them in chronological order.”

??

That would be rocking

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#3 2005-10-27 15:28:01

Elenita
Member
From: Falls Church, VA
Registered: 2004-05-16
Posts: 407
Website

Re: "daily frontpages" and other needs

See <a href=“http://textpattern.com/weblog/98/daily-contents-with-txpif_different”>Daily Contents with txp:if_different</a> in the blog. May be a good starting point.

Last edited by Elenita (2005-10-27 15:28:43)

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#4 2005-10-27 16:02:12

stinkoman
New Member
Registered: 2005-05-16
Posts: 5

Re: "daily frontpages" and other needs

Interesting. To be honest, I’m not sure I get that. I’m thinking if I wrote 10 artcles, I might want a specific 5 of them to be on the homepage.

Can that plugin achive that if I assign each article a 2nd category (homepage, or something) and have the plugin only display articles from the date I update the site? Did that make sense?

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#5 2005-10-27 19:46:28

Mary
Sock Enthusiast
Registered: 2004-06-27
Posts: 6,236

Re: "daily frontpages" and other needs

That’s not a plugin actually, but a built-in tag. However, it isn’t in 4.0.1, but its in the forthcoming 4.0.2, which may be here in a week.

I’m not exactly sure I understand what you’re after, but check the manual references for already available tags, you might find what you’re looking for: article, article_custom

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#6 2005-10-27 19:54:28

stinkoman
New Member
Registered: 2005-05-16
Posts: 5

Re: "daily frontpages" and other needs

I’m just saying, I’d like to pick and choose what articles go on the homepage with relative ease. It’s probably not something that can be done yet though.

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#7 2005-10-27 20:08:50

Mary
Sock Enthusiast
Registered: 2004-06-27
Posts: 6,236

Re: "daily frontpages" and other needs

Yes, you can. Read the manual links I provided.

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#8 2005-10-27 23:48:13

aesop1
Archived Plugin Author
Registered: 2004-09-19
Posts: 142

Re: "daily frontpages" and other needs

Mary is right — the documentation is invaluable. Just to help you along, however, you can identify particular articles by “id,” <code><txp:article id=“10” form=“default” /></code> or by narrowing your criteria in other ways. Let’s say I always want to display the nearest upcoming “calendar of events” article (or an excerpt) on my front page: something like <code><txp:article_custom section=“events” limit=“1” sortdir=“asc” time=“future” form=“eventbox” /></code> would probably do the trick. The various attributes — section, limit, sortdir, time — provide the criteria that ensure that I always get the upcoming event.

But there are other ways of accomplishing this as well . . .

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#9 2005-10-28 00:21:29

stinkoman
New Member
Registered: 2005-05-16
Posts: 5

Re: "daily frontpages" and other needs

I guess either I don’t get the documentation or I’m not being clear.

If I write 26 articles, A-Z, for one update (say a news site). I might want specifcally articles C, F, N, O & Q on the homepage. The next week it might be totally different.

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#10 2005-10-28 00:30:05

Mary
Sock Enthusiast
Registered: 2004-06-27
Posts: 6,236

Re: "daily frontpages" and other needs

One way of doing it:

You write 26 articles, A-Z, and let’s say for the sake of discussion that the articles
C, F, N, O & Q

have the id#s
3,6,14,15,22

On the homepage you could put in your page template:

<code><txp:article_custom id=“3” />
<txp:article_custom id=“6” />
<txp:article_custom id=“14” />
<txp:article_custom id=“15” />
<txp:article_custom id=“22” /></code>

Last edited by Mary (2005-10-28 00:30:22)

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#11 2005-10-28 04:28:08

aesop1
Archived Plugin Author
Registered: 2004-09-19
Posts: 142

Re: "daily frontpages" and other needs

Or . . .

if you don’t want to change your homepage template frequently, you could instead create special “homepage categories” for your articles so that a non-technical writer/editor could select them during the content creation process. A simplified homepage template could look like this:

<code>
<div id=“feature_story”>
<txp:article_custom category=“home_feature” limit=“1” />
</div>
<div id=“news”>
<txp:article_custom section=“news” category=“home_news” limit=“1” />
</div>
<div id=“events”>
<txp:article_custom section=“events” category=“home_event” limit=“1” />
</div>
</code>

To rotate the “home_feature,” “home_news,” and “home_event” stories (the assumption here is that there is only one article selected for each of these categories at any time), you would simply assign new articles these categories and then turn the previously chosen articles (from the last issue) off by selecting a non-home category or no category at all.

The “limit=1” should be unnecessary in this case, but is just a safeguard in the event that the content creator accidentally has more than one of the various home categories chosen at a time.

As you can see from the different examples that Mary and I have provided, there are different approaches that can be used which is why TXP is such a wonderfully flexible system.

Last edited by aesop1 (2005-10-28 04:39:47)

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#12 2005-10-28 09:38:51

paolo
New Member
Registered: 2005-09-28
Posts: 6

Re: "daily frontpages" and other needs

I was also looking for the same “daily frontpage” feat, but without its statical behaviour that would let a user see a previous FP.

And I was thinkin about the use of article_custom to tag in association with custom1 field:
1) Put in custom1 fied the order number of the article (a 10-20-…-100 number should be ok)
2) Modify the PHP code of the article_custom tag to let the “sortby” attribute to also have “custom1” as an avaible value.
3) Put the in homepage that tag

Just my unreadable 2 c,
P.

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