I've been giving it some thought and wondered if anyone thought the same way.

Currently, there are three types of content modules that are failry stable and well worth the download/install.

Those are 1) Articles 2) News 3) Soapbox. The Articles module is used to produce informative/how-to articles. The News module can be used to produce heavy articles (i.e. 700+ words) or news blurbs. Typically, however, most people will use the News module for a news blurb type deal. The Soapbox module is used for editorials. It requires the writer to maintain a particular column.

Both News and Soapbox modules have a "Submit News" feature, while the Articles module does not.

One thing I would like to see is to merge these three modules (and possibly WF-FAQ) to make one module that does all three. For instance, when users submit news, they can submit news to 3 different categories (i.e. articles, news or soapbox).

The Administrator can activate/deactivate news ranking, commnents, notifications for all these in one admin interface.

This is how it would work. On the main menu block, there would be "News." Once you click on "News" it would drop down Articles, Soapbox and Submit News.

If users submit news, it would take them to the regular submit news area. the only difference would be there would be an extra field asking which category to submit the news for.

Any news submission would go to the admin panel showing the category, news topic, submission date, etc.

If anyone want to help me merge the three or would like to be paid to merge these three modules, please alert me. I can also have one of my developers take a supportive role. He will donate 40 hours a week to get this done. The only problem is, someone needs to take development lead. He doesn't know XOOPS well enough to do that.

Cheers,

David

There was some thought of a super module... I think the German support site even had a beta or two... but, I think perhaps people are waiting to see what comes next.

There has been talk of having WFSections replace Sections in the next XOOPS core release. I'm not sure when that is or how that stands. But, one thing that I have been thinking about is...

WFsections allows long articles, like "Articles" module. In fact that's what it is generally used for. I was thinking of merging my news into WFSections by creating a category in WFSections called News, and then subcategories under that. As for Soapbox, I think I remember hsalazar saying it was based somewhat on WFSection code, but, I'm not familiar enough with its features to speculate about how easy it would be to create a "SoapBox" category and enjoy similar functionality.

What I like about the "supermodule" approach is there is then one module to focus on maintaining. Perhaps one drawback is, I'm not sure how easy it is to have different sections use different templates. If each section and subsection can easily use different templates, then I can't think of a drawback.

I think having a main content module that can be used in a variety of presentations would allow resources to gather on that module, rather than spread across 15 modules with similar functionality.

So, yes, someone else is thinking like you.

Can we move this discussion forward? I'd like to see development on this. Like I said, I have some resources to devote to this super module and would like to push this idea forward.

-d

As long as we are talking about it, I do wish there was a feature that created a thread in Newbb for discussions. It would take the content piece (news item, or whatever) and put it as the first message of the thread.

Or, if not that, it would be cool if "comments" at the bottom of stories could be viewed as if they were in a forum (though it seems like one needs to pick a horse).

Or, if not that, it would be cool if the first message in a newbb thread could be viewed as a "news item" with comments comprised as other messages in the thread.

Integration between content views from task to task would be nice, I think.

Quote:

I really LIKE this idea! Any movement on it?

Also, I just switched from using PROPS (find it on sourceforge) as a CMS

Check my old site:
http://www.s90601500.onlinehome.us/

The admin panel was MUCH simpler and easier, ESPECIALLY the part for submiting new articles where there where drop-down menus to add the article to whatever news section. And better wieghting functionality.

Would there be anyway to incorporate or port THAT sot of submission thing into xoops?

Cheers