possible to link open certain topic and only list items?

Worker Joined: Dec 22, 2004 Posts: 135

When you click on a topic in the news section, the topics are all shown there with the first part of the story shown and a "read more" link but is there a way to only show the specific items of a topic in a list like when you click on the "Topics" link? When you click on the "Topics" link you are shown only a list of the titles in each topic. I'd like to have a link to a topic and only have the lists of the items shown as links, not full articles... is this possible?

Posted: Fri Sep 23, 2005 4:26 pm

Let me ask some questions to get a better grip.

Are you saying that you do not have the news module as the "home" module for your site?

And if so, what you want is to have list of topics instead of being brought to the news module page when people want to read news?

Or are we talking apples and oranges here?

If so, the solution is simple, use the Topics module as your news module link.

In other words you could display a "Topics" block on your homepage and that would just show the topics, or you can change the "Name" properties of the "modules" block (the list that people select destinations to visit) so that you could rename (for example) the option for the "News" module to be "Articles" and rename the topics module link to be "News". This way when people clicked on "News" they would be brought to the topics page. If they click a link in any topic, they would be brought to the article.

To set that up, simply go to the Admin/Modules screen and change the custom titles. Be sure to change the News module title FIRST and then change the Topics title to News.

Hope this helps.
Steph

Posted: Fri Sep 23, 2005 6:27 pm

I have a page that cannot have News as the front page for security reasons. News is for member's only. What I want is to click on a single topic, not "Topics", just a single topic and instead of it opening the topics in full display (try it, click on a topic in the "news" section) I want the topic items to be displayed the way they are displayed when you click on the "news" link, which is nice and neat in single-spaced links which can be clicked on separately.

Posted: Fri Sep 23, 2005 7:41 pm

I'll have Raven look at this. I don't understand what you are trying to tell me here.

Site Admin/Owner Joined: Aug 27, 2002 Posts: 17088

Thanks a lot ROTFL

I'm sure you are being clear in your mind. The problem with my mind is that it's 55 years old and needs more clarity Laughing

Can you mock up a screen or click on my Topics link and take us for a drive from there?

Posted: Fri Sep 23, 2005 8:43 pm

Ok, when you click on "News" in the menu, you get almost the entire stories all laid out. When you click on "Topics" you get all the topcs with neat links singles-spaced under each Topic. When you click on one of these topics, you see the articles in almost their entirety which is too much stuff. What I want is to click on a topic and first see the neat links like when you click on "Topics", but only one topic, not all of them. In other words, I have a topic called "Legislative Updates" and the articles are large. When you click on that topic, the resulting page is huge and there's just too much going on for my members to trudge through. I'd like to click on one topic and have only that topic there with its articles neatly underneath the icon as if I had clicked the "Topcs" main link. I know I could just create a content page and do this by hand, but I am way too lazy for that.

Posted: Fri Sep 23, 2005 9:44 pm

I read it, but I still don't get it.

Posted: Fri Sep 23, 2005 9:46 pm

Can you do a mock up in Word or Open Office and send a link?

Posted: Fri Sep 23, 2005 10:06 pm

After reading this 10 times, I think I know what you are asking.

Are you asking to have the Topics module (or whatever, but based on that look) to list stories on a list, but instead of having it list all topics stories, to have it only list stories for one particular topic versus how it does it now, listing all Topics and all stories within all of those topics on a list?

If so, the short answer is no. Meaning the topics module is not coded to do that. It is only coded to gather the lists of stories for all of the topics.

It could probably be coded, but it would take some work as the present module design queries the database for the entire list of topics and stories and sorts them by category first, and then by stories inside each category.

In what you want done, it would have to grab only the 1 topic (category) and list the stories of that 1 topic and as I said, it's not designed to do that.

Posted: Sat Sep 24, 2005 6:48 am

Yep, that's what I thought. I was hoping I could steal some code from the news module... and only show the topic that I want to show... I could do that, right? could I rename the news module "Legislative Updates" and remove the code that posts any other topic other than "Legislative Updates"?

Posted: Sun Sep 25, 2005 3:24 pm

In thinking this was an interesting concept, I have begun coding a new Topics module.

In that process, I also discovered a Nuke Core bug in the news module, so as it turns out, this not only adds a new feature, but also wasn't a wasted effort in that finding and fixing Nuke bugs is what I do anyway.

Anyway, please look at http://78.64bit.us and tell me if this is what you are looking for.

Steph

Posted: Sun Sep 25, 2005 6:18 pm

Exactly... good job 64bitguy... I want to put alink in the menu to a topic like you have, I want to be able to click on a topic and have the articals listed like when you click on your topics... not with the full articles, but only the links to them... can I get that code?

Posted: Sun Sep 25, 2005 6:27 pm

I just finished fixing a few bugs in the news module relative to how the topics icon link would produce results.

This is the bug that I discovered in the process of setting this up.

Apparently, this bug exists in all Nuke versions from 6.5 on... who knew? I sure didn't.

Anyway, It appears that everything on my test domain is working correctly, but you might want to take a look at it now. I just barely finished making some changes.

Before I make the file available, I want to add some more topics so that I know the layout of the Icons is going to be okay.

Feedback is appreciated.

Steph

Posted: Sun Sep 25, 2005 7:23 pm

You can download the new solution from http://64bit.us/download-file-13.html
Smile

Enjoy
Steph

Posted: Sun Sep 25, 2005 9:55 pm

....excellent...........

Posted: Mon Sep 26, 2005 11:37 am

Piston

I wanted to give you a heads up that I wasn't real happy with the main "Topics" page layout in how it dealt with different spacing depending on how many topics you had.

In addressing that, Raven modified it with some new code and sent me his code changes while I was actually working on it at the same time as well.

I used some of Ravens code for spacing the images (funny how great minds think alike) and then I added an entirely new section to handle the proportioning of the table based on how many Topics are actually there and of course also made all of those changes 100% W3C Compliant.

Thus, there is a new zip file at my domain to reflect those changes.

From what you have now, the only change is the modules/Topics/index.php, so when you get the zip, that is really the only file you need to re-upload.

You should notice the difference immediately. You can of course checkout what I mean at my test domain at: http://78.64bit.us/modules.php?name=Topics

Hope you like it.
Steph

Posted: Mon Sep 26, 2005 12:31 pm

so is that the only file I'll need? I'm using a patched 7.6. Should I upgrade? I was told that patched 7.6 is better than 7.7 or 7.8. I have tweaked my installation so much I'm almost afraid to upgrade

Posted: Mon Sep 26, 2005 12:38 pm

You should continue using Patched 7.6.

What I am saying is that if you got the module yesterday, the only file in it that changed is the modules/Topics/index.php.

This module was written as part of "After-Patched" for PHP-Nuke 7.8; however, it is fully compatible with all other Nuke versions after PHP-Nuke 6.5 given that the Nuke version in question is at Patched revision 3.1 or later.

In other words, get the module. You can re-load all of the files if you want, but the only changes are to the /modules/Topics/index.php.

Steph

Posted: Mon Sep 26, 2005 1:23 pm

ahh, thanks again.