NEWS CATEGORY BLOCKS

A way to display News Topics by Individual Categories
in Blocks - with automatic bullets to distinguish headlines. So on the Home Page you can have 4 Blocks
for 4 Separate Topic Categories. Top News, Top Reviews,
etc... The ability to display these by recently added.

And maybe a single Top Line Block for the Headline of
the moment, where you can have a big photo with some
intro text or something. Which goes to the question of multi-column news.

REVIEWS MODULE

Although not at the top of my personal wish list, I know a lot of other people have been requesting some sort of reviews/ratings module for awhile now.

<b>TOTALLY REVAMPED SECTIONS or a SEPARATE DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM</b>

That allows for Unlimited Categories, User Uploads for documents, Chaptering Feature for individual articles, and unlimited category. See Fanfiction.net for an example of complete functionality.

NEWS MODULE

1) The Ability to upload pictures with Admins having the ability to set the picture size.

2) A real article ordering system, with the ability to set article order by length of time or "sticky articles" so we as editors, have more control over what articles permanently stay in the top one - three slots on the home page, with any newer articles going after those top three stores. I.E. I like my feature stories to remain at the top of the home page for at least a week, but I have writers who will just post 7 articles in one day, which screws up the look of the home page for that week. Beyond yelling at my writers, I would like a little more control over my home page and how/when articles post on it.

<b>DEACTIVATING READS/Views and any Article related stats FROM ADMIN SYSTEM</B>

I've been lobbying for this for several versions now, hopefully we'll get it for 2.1. But I think it's important
that site admins are able to activate or deactivate, or
set group permissions on the Read/Views in the forums and
articles. I don't think it looks professional to have the number of "reads" on display, and if you are just starting a new site, and people see that your articles or forums are getting (3) page views, I don't think that encourages participating. Like I would like writers and maybe the pr folks that I deal with to see the Reads/Views, but I don't want anonymous or regular readers to see that information.

I would also like to be able to deactivate the number of words, and bytes numbers as well.

<b>BUILT IN USER POINTS SYSTEM</B>

One of the most popular features on my site was the old User Points Mod, which doesn't work in the 2x Series. This feature would be completely customizable, allow us to assign points based on posting activity, and allow site admins to randomly change the start and end dates, etc...
The system already tracks all this activity, and we already have to the Top Members block, it's just a matter of adding more functionality to it.

<B>UNLIMITED HEADLINE CHARACTERS</B>

Characters in the headlines need to be unlimited. I hate being forced to change my headlines because they won't fit into the headline box.

<b>THEMES</b>

The only thing I'd like to see with the themes is to create 3 or 4 standard theme packages (A Corporate Package, a Magazine Layout Package, and?), but allow site admins to customize the colors, fonts, button navigation, etc., from within Xoops. Similar to how PHP BB and other apps do it. I think this "simple" feature will really open up XOOPS Themes to non-designers.

The ability to set different theme sets based on Categories.
Similar to how the old PN did it. I haven't used PN since the first few versions, so I don't know if they still have this feature, but it is very usefull for distinguishing sections.

<b>CATEGORY/SUB CATEGORY GROUPING AND BETTER URL PATHS</b>

I would like a way to really properly group all the various
news categories. So for instance I would like to have
users click Movies in the Navigation menu, and then have a
dedicated Page (with its own theme) for Movies. And then on that Home Page you have all the latest Movie Information nicely organized by Interviews, Movie Reviews, Movie News, etc.... And then if Someone clicks DVDs, or Technology we would be able to have something similar. As it is now, there's no way to do that.

Better URL Paths, that will make it easier for other sites to automatically index our contact. So if we tell someone that all our Movie Reviews are under Movie Reviews, all someone would have to do is link or write search scripts that pull content from "www.yoursite.com/moviereviews " right now the url path is really messy, and it's one of the reasons that my partner Google News, MRQE and other such indexing services is having trouble indexing our content, because it's properly categorized in the URL string.

<b>MENU NAVIGATION</b>

Automatic DHTML Menu Generation and the ability to put navigation on either the side or a top - drop down system (ala MS)

<b>META TAGGING</b>

A cleaner, more intuitive metatagging system. A way for the module to automatically generate metatags based on the actually documents, and not the static catch all way that it's doing now.

<b>MAIL USERS AND REAL NEWSLETTER FUNCTIONALITY</B>

I would like to get a Newsletter or Mail Users function that actually works. To this day I still can't get the Mail Users thing to work all that well. I would like to be able to send out a weekly newsletter with the option of sending it in HTML or Text format, Send A Specific Page (i.e. homepage, or maybe a special non-linked custom designed newsletter page, etc...) And then have automatic opt-out process.

<b>A Quiz/Contest Module</b>

A contest module would be pretty cool. A way to randomly select winners based on correct answers, after they post a certain number of times.

Win free stuff, visit us online at
http://www.eclipsemagazine.com

It'll be out sometime BEFORE Harry Potter Book 6 is out. :)

ok, fine, whatever. I no longer care.

I'm trying not to get annoyed here, but modules ARE a very important part of The Core, and as such, the community should way in on what they'd like to see in the core modules. Otherwise stripping the modules out of XOOPS will totally ruin the system and make it no different than PN or PHPNuke, and one thing that XOOPS has always been good about is including a good number of quality modules out of the box.

And again, end users shouldn't have to hack files or create files, as you say, to get XOOPS to do very basic things that a CMS NEEDS to do to qualify as a CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM. Without NEWS as part of the core, or any discussion on how CONTENT is displayed then, what in your opinion is the point of even using a CMS??????

Since I'm the one that will ultimately be responsible for trying to create these various XOOPS Packages for the community, having a discussion about the Core Mods that will be supported by the Devs IS IMPORTANT.

Quote:

Yes, it's easy and possible to hack blocks, but the point of improving XOOPS is to make it so that the less things people have to hack the better, and these block/display issues, imo, are a major part of the core of any CMS, otherwise A CMS becomes "pointless" if you end up forcing people to hack blocks and news/article posting modules to get it to do certain basic things that all relate to handling "CONTENT."

And the News Module is part of the "core." The core comprises several standard modules which the new module development team is working on and these include News, Sections, Blocks, Forums, Downloads, Headlines, etc. At the moment the first module getting the major overhall treatment is the Sections Mod. But all of these modules are part of the "Xoops" standard "Core," such as it is.

I don't think you can have any realistic discussion about the "core" without talking about improving these modules and what the end user and administrative processes are going to be. Sure you can talk about function classes until you are blue in the face, but without real world applications it's pointless, especially for all of us non-coders.

Well, is not the News Module and how content is displayed MAJOR part of the core?

Quote:

You have a very cool little site, with lots of page views :). I like the way you have the top forums topic
block on the Forum Home Page.

REVIEWS MODULE

Although not at the top of my personal wish list, I know a lot of other people have been requesting some sort of reviews/ratings module for awhile now.

NEWS CATEGORY BLOCKS

A way to display News Topics by Individual Categories
in Blocks - with automatic bullets to distinguish headlines. So on the Home Page you can have 4 Blocks
for 4 Separate Topic Categories. Top News, Top Reviews,
etc...

And maybe a single Top Line Block for the Headline of
the moment, where you can have a big photo with some
intro text or something.

Well I think XOOPS is great the way it is, but personally I'd like to see

<b>TOTALLY REVAMPED SECTIONS or a SEPARATE DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM</b>

That allows for Unlimited Categories, User Uploads, Chaptering, and unlimited category.

<b>DEACTIVATING READS FROM ADMIN SYSTEM</B>

I've been lobbying for this for several versions now, hopefully we'll get it for 2.1. But I think it's important
that site admins are able to activate or deactivate, or
set group permissions on the Read/Views in the forums and
articles. I don't think it looks professional to have the number of "reads" on display, and if you are just starting a new site, and people see that your articles or forums are getting (3) page views, I don't think that incourages participating. Like I would like writers and maybe the pr folks that I deal with to see the Reads/Views, but I don't want anonymous or regular readers to see that information.

<b>BUILT IN USER POINTS SYSTEM</B>

One of the most popular features on my site was the old User Points Mod, which doesn't work in the 2x Series. This feature would be completely customizable, allow us to assign points based on posting activity, and allow site admins to randomly change the start and end dates, etc...
The system already tracks all this activity, and we already have to the Top Members block, it's just a matter of adding more functionality to it.

<B>UNLIMITED HEADLINE CHARACTERS</B>

Characters in the headlines need to be unlimited. I hate being forced to change my headlines because they won't fit into the headline box.

<b>THEMES</b>

The only thing I'd like to see with the themes is to create 3 or 4 standard theme packages (A Corporate Package, a Magazine Layout Package, and?), but allow site admins to customize the colors, fonts, button navigation, etc., from within Xoops. Similar to how PHP BB and other apps do it. I think this "simple" feature will really open up XOOPS Themes to non-designers.

The ability to set different theme sets based on Categories.
Similar to how the old PN did it. I haven't used PN since the first few versions, so I don't know if they still have this feature, but it is very usefull for distinguishing sections.

<b>CATEGORY/SUB CATEGORY GROUPING AND BETTER URL PATHS</b>

I would like a way to really properly group all the various
news categories. So for instance I would like to have
users click Movies in the Navigation menu, and then have a
dedicated Page (with its own theme) for Movies. And then on that Home Page you have all the latest Movie Information nicely organized by Interviews, Movie Reviews, Movie News, etc.... And then if Someone clicks DVDs, or Technology we would be able to have something similar. As it is now, there's no way to do that.

Better URL Paths, that will make it easier for other sites to automatically index our contact. So if we tell someone that all our Movie Reviews are under Movie Reviews, all someone would have to do is link or write search scripts that pull content from "www.yoursite.com/moviereviews " right now the url path is really messy, and it's one of the reasons that my partner Google News, MRQE and other such indexing services is having trouble indexing our content, because it's properly categorized in the URL string.

<b>MENU NAVIGATION</b>

Automatic DHTML Menu Generation and the ability to put navigation on either the side or a top - drop down system (ala MS)

<b>META TAGGING</b>

A cleaner, more intuitive metatagging system. A way for the module to automatically generate metatags based on the actually documents, and not the static catch all way that it's doing now.

<b>MAIL USERS AND REAL NEWSLETTER FUNCTIONALITY</B>

I would like to get a Newsletter or Mail Users function that actually works. To this day I still can't get the Mail Users thing to work all that well. I would like to be able to send out a weekly newsletter with the option of sending it in HTML or Text format, Send A Specific Page (i.e. homepage, or maybe a special non-linked custom designed newsletter page, etc...) And then have automatic opt-out process.

<b>A Quiz/Contest Module</b>

A contest module would be pretty cool. A way to randomly select winners based on correct answers, after they post a certain number of times.

Win free stuff, visit us online at
http://www.eclipsemagazine.com