Quote:
Essentially, to gain more perspective on my round about way of talk, I would like to in essence, display a website (structure) within the XOOPS environment.
Basically there are two ways to include/wrap HTML pages into your Xoops
1 Including 3 basic inlcude statements into your HTML file
2 Use a content module to wrap your HTML pages You have already explored this idea from what you have said, found it inadequate for your needs.
here is the other wrap method using existing static files.
1. Basic include statements
You have to edit your HTML file and add the following lines above and below your HTML content. The relative path to mainfile.php depends on the folder you saved your HTML file. You can delete $xoopsOption['show_rblock'] = 1; if you don't want the right blocks to appear!
include("../mainfile.php");
include(XOOPS_ROOT_PATH."/header.php");
$xoopsOption['show_rblock'] = 1;
?>
The content of your original html file goes here!!
include(XOOPS_ROOT_PATH."/footer.php");
?>
After you have done that, save your file as filename.php and no longer filename.html! The extension is important! Now when you call filename.php it will be perfectly included into your XOOPS theme!
Merit of using this method is that you will not lose the link integrity even if the links are relative.
You could also use auto-prepend and auto-append feature of PHP to append and prepend the above snippets to the HTML files.
The downside here is that the file structure is not integrated within the XOOPS system, they are merely linked in a menu system that works discreetly and allows pages to be wrapped in the site layout. That means any file wrapped in this way can not be 'seen' by some of the built in XOOPS features like seach, commenting, rating, etc. etc.
If that is not a problem, this is a possible option.
The subject you raise is very relevant to my own requirements, as I'm planning on how to migrate a large 500 page site into the XOOPS structure AND inherit all the features that XOOPS offers to the content. To date Ive not found a satisfactory 'module solution' but I suspect modules like ARMS and WF-Content come the closest. I'm sorry to say (as far as I'm aware) there is no magic bullet module that whips a whole site complete with directory structure graphics and the like into XOOPS as if it were made to measure! Remember XOOPS primarily uses a database not static pages, otherwise one might be able to implement a mass url replacement device like BK replaceEM. This of course WOULD be useful if you opted for the simple wrap method outlined above.
Hope this helps, please post if you find a better solution
Richard