2060 replies to this topic

[RobAnderson]

Hi Kristofer, regarding your query:

Quote

Woudn't, this have been fixed anyway, when those lines were deleted with your earlier fix?

Yes it would. This fix is only required if you wish to display links to child-topics. Otherwise, just delete or comment them out and you won't have to worry about it.

Glad to hear your alignment is sorted ;-)

Rob

[RobAnderson]

Quote

Rob... That was it. The Sub-Topic Link issue is fixed.

Excellent, I haven't had much experience with deep sites and multiple levels, so this was new for me (hence my shallow testing ;-).

Just curious, I noticed there aren't similar links from the top level topics nor links going up to parent levels, so how useful is this (or have I hacked the default page too much - never did get my head around how it worked entirely!!!)

Rob

[Salvo]

Thanks all,

I have solved the problem now...

[Unified]

Hello!

This is a great contribution and I absolutely love it! A big thank you to our article contributor Rob!

Ok everything seems to work fine on catalog site (implemented changes previously mentioned).

Only 1 problem - a bug maybe?

When i try and delete a Topic folder with an article in it I get the following error message:

1146 - Table 'shop.table_additional_article_images' doesn't exist

delete from TABLE_ADDITIONAL_ARTICLE_IMAGES where articles_id = '2'

[TEP STOP]

I cannot figure out why this is happening - I did use your sql file and phpmyadmin "successfully" inserted it into the database?

Any ideas?

BTW Thanx again Rob! and other members for great contrib/trouble shooting!

Regards

Jiten

[jonah]

Is there currently a way or plans to make a way for the articles to be searchable? I am going to use it as a knowledgebase and this would be the only thing missing.

[RobAnderson]

Hi Jiten, in response to the problem deleting a topic:

Quote

Only 1 problem - a bug maybe?

When i try and delete a Topic folder with an article in it I get the following error message:

1146 - Table 'shop.table_additional_article_images' doesn't exist

delete from TABLE_ADDITIONAL_ARTICLE_IMAGES where articles_id = '2'

[TEP STOP]

I cannot figure out why this is happening - I did use your sql file and phpmyadmin "successfully" inserted it into the database?

Any ideas?

Yes this is a bug.

To fix, in admin/includes/functions/articles.php, delete line 307, i.e.

    tep_db_query("delete from " . TABLE_ADDITIONAL_ARTICLE_IMAGES . " where articles_id = '" . (int)$article_id . "'");

That should enable topics that contain articles to be deleted successfully.

Thanks for your help.

Regards, Rob

P.S. I'll roll this into v1.2 soon.

[RobAnderson]

Hi Lonnie, regarding plans for searching...

jonah, on Dec 9 2003, 11:54 AM, said:

Is there currently a way or plans to make a way for the articles to be searchable?  I am going to use it as a knowledgebase and this would be the only thing missing.

I am working on this now and it will be along the lines of the products search, e.g. via a Search Articles box (optional) or a more advanced Search Articles page (with options to filter searches by topics, authors and dates).

Basically a hack of the MS2 search facility ;-)

I've done most of it, just need to tidy up a few things (search results) and test.

Before I post, do you or others have any requests for what would be included in the search results, e.g. I'm thinking Article Name (duh), Author and Date Added. Do we need Topic and an Article Abstract?? Also, should I make these options that you can turn on or off in the admin like the basic article listing?

Thoughts appreciated.

Rob ;-)

[ugottasalsa]

Hey Rob...

In regards to searching, I think it should search EVERYTHING! This includes all Topics, Articles, Authors and associated descriptions and Titles. The more info that can be included in the search, the more comprehensive the result. And no, I don't think these should be controlled in Admin. It should be a given that everything gets searched.

Just my $.02

-R

[jonah]

Is this search going to provided via an infobox? If there is a choice I would vote for having a page with a search box at the top and the article folders below. Also a back button would be great for the article pages. I picture something like the image below (search box was taken from Invision Board). Just an idea.

[img]http://www.secureinternetserver.net/~jonah/article_manager.jpg[/img]

[Unified]

Thanx Rob for the fix to the previous bug I mentioned!

You're a genius!

Regards,

Jiten

[Juha]

Hi Rob and others,

I've also installed this ecellent mod and like a lot, so thanks for coding it!

I'd like to modify it a bit, and could use some pointers:

I want to change the articles.php so that when I click All AArticles link, I get a listing of all articles, sorted out according to their topics. In this manner:

Topic 1
Article
Article
Article

Topic 2
Article
Article
Article

How would you make this, with an additional while loop or something?

[RobAnderson]

Article Manager v1.2 has just been released and includes a number of minor bug fixes. Please visit http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,1709 to catch up on these.

I would like to thank everybody who has posted suggestions for enhancements to this popular contribution (Randy et al ;-). A number of these are planned for Version 2 when I find the time to cobble them together!

Suggestions include:
- searching
- ability to contribute articles
- authors' page
- lots of modules, e.g.
- featured author,
- news style listing
- top 10 articles
- topic lists

See http://forums.oscommerce.com/index.php?sho...ndpost&p=270378 for a discussion on these and more...

Please keep the great ideas coming ;-)

Regards, Rob

[RobAnderson]

Hi Juha, in response to your question:

Quote

I want to change the articles.php so that when I click All AArticles link, I get a listing of all articles, sorted out according to their topics. In this manner:

Topic 1
Article
Article
Article

Topic 2
Article
Article
Article

How would you make this, with an additional while loop or something?

I think the best way to do this would be to modify the Browse by Categories contribution which is based on Categories/Products and change it to display Topics/Articles (the architecture is essentially the same). This should produce a similar layout to what you are after and could be inserted as a module in place of the default listing produced in the articles.php page.

This may well be included in a future release, but sorry I don't have working example for you yet (Randy?).

Regards, Rob

[RobAnderson]

Hi Lonnie, about your search idea ;-)

jonah, on Dec 10 2003, 12:54 AM, said:

Is this search going to provided via an infobox?  If there is a choice I would vote for having a page with a search box at the top and the article folders below.  Also a back button would be great for the article pages.  I picture something like the image below (search box was taken from Invision Board).  Just an idea.

[img]http://www.secureinternetserver.net/~jonah/article_manager.jpg[/img]

Hmmm, nice idea, a bit like a Yahoo directory and search combined. I was originally thinking of reproducing the default search fucntionality of OSC, i.e. search infobox and advanced search page, but I like your idea better (more functional).

The problem is that it might stretch my programming skills a bit more, so if you're not in a hurry...

Rob ;-)

[Juha]

RobAnderson, on Dec 10 2003, 07:28 AM, said:

Hi Juha, in response to your question:

I think the best way to do this would be to modify the Browse by Categories contribution which is based on Categories/Products and change it to display Topics/Articles (the architecture is essentially the same). This should produce a similar layout to what you are after and could be inserted as a module in place of the default listing produced in the articles.php page.

This may well be included in a future release, but sorry I don't have working example for you yet (Randy?).

Regards, Rob

hmm, would it that hard to modify articles.php in your mod to do this? I mean, it's quite easy to order the articles by topic and date as it is, just by editing the 'ORDER BY' in the query.

After that all I had to do would be to come up with a routine that lists the articles under each topic title. That way I could get rid of the topic name listed for each article on the right side of the page.

I might also add that I don't use nested topic categories, just one level of them. Plus in the articles box, I have only All Articles listed.

What do you think?

[Sinister-Racing]

Rob,

The one thing I was thinking about with the article manager was to be able to have articles in specific parts of the web site. I have a ton of extra room at the bottom of my pages and If you could put specific articles under the new products for the month are refferring to the category of product you are looking for. ie: Suspension Articles in the Suspension category. Take a peek at the site to get a better idea.
http://www.sinister-racing.com/catalog/ind...p?cPath=103_100

Imagine a few articles underneath the new products for december, say 4.
They would be displayed as:

ARTICLE TITLE By: Whoever
blah blah blah.. The article starts
and there is a designated size for the article to fit in
say 200 x 200 area box and at the bottom of
the preview of the article it says
Check out the rest of the story.....
as a hyperlink to the actual full article.

Just an Idea but I think many people would realy like it if it had the feature.

Thanks,

Mike

[RobAnderson]

Sinister-Racing, on Dec 11 2003, 06:25 AM, said:

Rob,

The one thing I was thinking about with the article manager was to be able to have articles in specific parts of the web site. I have a ton of extra room at the bottom of my pages and If you could put specific articles under the new products for the month are refferring to the category of product you are looking for. ie: Suspension Articles in the Suspension category. Take a peek at the site to get a better idea.
http://www.sinister-racing.com/catalog/ind...p?cPath=103_100

Imagine a few articles underneath the new products for december, say 4.
They would be displayed as:

ARTICLE TITLE By: Whoever
blah blah blah.. The article starts
and there is a designated size for the article to fit in
say 200 x 200 area box and at the bottom of
the preview of the article it says
Check out the rest of the story.....
as a hyperlink to the actual full article.

Just an Idea but I think many people would realy like it if it had the feature.

Hi Mike, that's a really good idea. A bit like the cross-sell module but related to topics instead of products. I'll add that to my list!

Thanks very much for your suggestion, I'm going to have a lot of great ideas for the next version. I'm only sorry I don't have the time to devote to it right now (with Christmas looming).

I hope you understand ;-)

Regards, Rob

[RobAnderson]

Juha, on Dec 11 2003, 03:10 AM, said:

RobAnderson, on Dec 10 2003, 07:28 AM, said:

Hi Juha, in response to your question:

I think the best way to do this would be to modify the Browse by Categories contribution which is based on Categories/Products and change it to display Topics/Articles (the architecture is essentially the same). This should produce a similar layout to what you are after and could be inserted as a module in place of the default listing produced in the articles.php page.

This may well be included in a future release, but sorry I don't have working example for you yet (Randy?).

Regards, Rob

hmm, would it that hard to modify articles.php in your mod to do this? I mean, it's quite easy to order the articles by topic and date as it is, just by editing the 'ORDER BY' in the query.

After that all I had to do would be to come up with a routine that lists the articles under each topic title. That way I could get rid of the topic name listed for each article on the right side of the page.

I might also add that I don't use nested topic categories, just one level of them. Plus in the articles box, I have only All Articles listed.

What do you think?

Hi Juha, yeah, given that you're only dealing with one level of articles, then your suggestion would be the way to go. I guess I was thinking of multiple levels (and as you've seen from my bug fixes, there are some people out there that want 3+ levels of articles!!!). For my part, like you, I wrote this contribution with only one level in mind (but naturally wanted it to support more).

Dang, OSC is so damn flexible, it's hard to cater for everybody ;-)

Looking at what you're trying to do then, a simple sort by topics and then article name should do it with a bit of tweaking (removing the topics as you mentioned). The rest is just layout really which is straight HTML stuff.

By all means send me some code if you get stuck. I'll try my best ;-)

Regards, Rob

BTW. How do you have only articles listed in the articles box, yet are using one level of topics. Did I miss something?

[Salvo]

Hi all,

Just 1 little question. How does the insert images works?

I have tried but with not success.

Thanks

Salvo

[Juha]

RobAnderson, on Dec 11 2003, 09:14 AM, said:

BTW. How do you have only articles listed in the articles box, yet are using one level of topics. Did I miss something?

Rob,

I put my 'articles' link in a box which also contains 'news', 'forum', 'FAQ' and 'links' -links. I simply removed all the subcategory stuff and the authors box and added the other links. I made the 'articles' link from 'all articles' link just by changing its name.

I also have a 'latest articles' box on my main body. It lists the 5 latest articles (just like in the latest news which I also have.)

I wanted to simplify the articles category structure as far as possible.

That's why I also would like to have a simple listing of all articles by topics when you click the 'articles' link.

About the code, I am thinking that I should divide the sql query in two parts. A bit like this:

query first topic
list the topic
query articles under this topic
list the articles

query second topic
list the topic
query articles under this topic
list the articles

...etc. The article query & list part is there already but I need to figure out how to get the correct topic first before the articles and keep looping this until all topics are covered. That's why I suggested using an additional while loop around the original which would handle the topics.

I am learning PHP slowly but steadily, so I should figure out this eventually but I certainly could use some pointers, and pelase do let me know if my reasoning is faulty here.

Cheers!