good content... there has to be a better way

Posted: Mon Mar 27, 2006 3:53 pm

Ok, time for a rant.

I HATE the way phpNuke and it's varients show content pages.

Basically, I think the way the themes and content were designed is quite silly.

I would like to do it better and am looking for feedback on my ideas.

I envision a side nav module called "articles" for instance.
Under this would be a list of categories, each with a triangle for expansion if there are articles or subcategories under the cateogry.
Hovering over the name would then cause a DHTML (dynamic html / javascript) menu top appear shoing the items at the next level (either articles or subcategories.
My thought is that there could be an unlimited number of nested sub categories.
From an admin side, articles would be html stored in the db, and the menu would be DHTML, with the links determined from the db.

So, the logical questions I have at this moment are:

Do I use the existing content code from nuke to create pages, and just change the categories code to allow sub categories? In that case, maybe it is just a new nav module that is needed?
Or do we just disable the content module and make something completely new?

I look forward to your thoughts

registered · Site Admin Joined: Jun 04, 2004 Posts: 6437

There are several modules block replacements, including Sommaire Paramétrable, which provides some of what you're describing. Have you checked them out?

Posted: Mon Mar 27, 2006 9:23 pm

Sommaire Paramétrable is indeed a good menu, and I use it.

It is not however a content navigation block.

You have to manually add pages and point them to static links.

Additionally,. I don't think it supports sub categories

Posted: Mon Mar 27, 2006 9:29 pm

Not sure if CNB Contenudo has that, or if another content tweak has it. Have you considered other content types, like Tutorials or FAQ?

Posted: Tue Mar 28, 2006 1:53 am

Im not sure what tutorials are... I assume that is a custom module to offer tutorial content? If so, I have not seen it.

FAQs as I have seen them would not work, as they do not beak content in to seperate categorized html pages

Im thinking more along the lines of something like:

http://www.opensourcecms.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=373&Itemid=159
or maybe even
http://www.phpwcms.de/index.php?id=14,0,0,1,0,0

Im suspecting nothing like this exists in nuke

registered · Posted: Tue Mar 28, 2006 6:37 am

The Tutorials that kguske is referring to is Tutoriaux.

You are running into the same limitation that has been bugging me for over a year. Even just a basic tool to create "static content" pages, let alone the fancy dynamic menu, is lacking. Someone here mentioned writing one and I have looked at it and am re-writing it to use for a site I manage. I need to get with the original author to see what he/she intends to do with it, because I have pretty much re-written about 70 - 80% of it and I think it could serve a purpose in the community. Unfortunately, that means it isn't close to release nor am I sure I will release it (depends on original author discussions).

Others have tried to take a more "Wiki" approach, like the Guiki module, but I don't think that has really progressed much.

Sorry that I wasn't much help at the moment... Sad

Posted: Tue Mar 28, 2006 3:14 pm

I am about 80% done writing the code for a dynamic expanding/contracting module.

All I have to do now is get the links from a db table instead of hard coding them.

I was planning on trying to hook the menu entries to the existing nuke content pages and categories and somehow trying to add subcategories, but if your content page approach works better I would consider hooking my menu up to it instead.

Thoughts?

Posted: Tue Mar 28, 2006 6:01 pm

dingfelder, if you can get it working with the Content module, then it should not be too much of a stretch down the road to hook it up to what I'm working on. I am just too far away from releasing anything right now. I have to "speak" with the original author first too... not sure how long it is going to take. I am working this in my "spare time" that none of us really have... Sad

Hangin' Around Joined: Apr 01, 2006 Posts: 30

We have made a nice hack of the content module.

we set the administrator to categorie.

so we can give an administrator the permission to edit one or more categories.

we als made a hack that the siteadmin get an email and we can made person the chief of a categorie so he wil be informed when a change is done.

maybe this is wat you can use

Posted: Sun Apr 02, 2006 12:57 pm

We are looking for

- way to filter the content articles. when you have almost 200 articles it would be nice to select by categorie.

- we would like to use overlib in the content articles.

Posted: Sun Apr 02, 2006 2:34 pm

It would be extremelgood if the resultant data could be formated into xml for fast, no fuss syndication Smile

Posted: Sun Apr 02, 2006 9:19 pm

dutchnuker wrote:

We have made a nice hack of the content module.
we set the administrator to categorie.
so we can give an administrator the permission to edit one or more categories.
we als made a hack that the siteadmin get an email and we can made person the chief of a categorie so he wil be informed when a change is done.
maybe this is wat you can use

Dutchnuker, I'm not sure what this is in reference to...
You seem to be saying you already have a module that does something like what we are talking about, but I don't see a reference to a url or to see it or details about the project.

I'm also not sure what you mean by "we set the administrator to categorie". In the current nuke category code, admins are the only ones who can change or define categories.
Is your module a category editor or something?

dutchnuker wrote:

we would like to use overlib in the content articles.

Im not sure what overlib is... care to elaborate?

Guardian2003 wrote:

It would be extremelgood if the resultant data could be formated into xml for fast, no fuss syndication

Although this sounds like a good feature for a CMS system (an xml exporting module for content) I think this is pretty mocuh out of scope for the project as it stands.

________________________________________

Getting back on track:

I am about done with the graphic portion of the menu
I am now looking at the db pulling from the existing nuke categories.

once this is done, we can look at:

adding sub categories to group articles better
adding code to auto-expand the menu to indicate the current page being viewed
anything else that make sense here?

[/list]

Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2006 6:57 am

Quote:

anything else that make sense here?

Yeah, being able to show/hide content pages and / or whole categories based on NSN Groups. Wink

Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2006 10:13 am

managing possible by admins by categorie would be a nice feature.

Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2006 3:18 pm

montego wrote:

Yeah, being able to show/hide content pages and / or whole categories based on NSN Groups. Wink

I think that is a very good idea!
________________________________________

I think I should break it into 2 phases...

Phase 1 will only work using the exisiting category code, as it stands now, where each article has a main category (and no nested categories)

Phase 2 will introduce nested categories and group permissions.

I have never looked at the NSN code so I have no clue how difficult that part would be.

Cheers,

Ding

Client Joined: Jan 21, 2006 Posts: 87 Location: Arizona

just an interested party, dropping through......I've been looking for a content module with the ability to give NSN group permissions to individual categories or pages. That is what I would call complete.

Nomad!~!

Regular Joined: Feb 18, 2006 Posts: 87

this is sounding like what nuke has been looking for, just the addtion of sub categories and browsing is good.

This would also look good with news articles as well.

Posted: Thu Jun 29, 2006 6:47 am

Actually, been thinking alot about porting something like WikiMedia over to Nuke to serve this need better. I agree. To create simple HTML content pages is a chore in this system. Some have written modules such as Nuke Guiki and I believe something that might have been called HTML Page Creator, but I ended up re-writing the later for my own personal use.

If I can ever finish any of these projects, I'll be announcing it on this site too.... but, don't hold your breath. Laughing

Any other modules that come close? Any other requirements that folks would find sorely missing?

Posted: Thu Jun 29, 2006 7:46 am

It would definitely be helpful to maintain a wish list for an enhanced content module. That would make it easier to compare what's available or to know what's needed for a new module. Several comments are here, but it would be great to have it in a single place. I hope to do that sort of features list for YA and calendar modules. Someone willing to do that for content?

Posted: Thu Jun 29, 2006 8:06 am

Quote:

Someone willing to do that for content?

I am... but I'm outa here for a few days... have fun guys!

Posted: Thu Jun 29, 2006 8:18 am

From a design perspective, keep in mind it would be advantageous to use use it's own dedicated tables rather than altering core nuke tables to simplify install/destall and nuke maintenence.

Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2006 3:04 pm

Guardian2003, absolutely! I wouldn't think of doing it any other way. However, having something to "port" existing content over would be a "nice touch"...

kguske, I'll add a new Forum Topic here in the next day or two.