I'm not interested in causing a kerfuffle but I'm getting increasingly frustrated with the various content management modules available for Xoops. I understand that it is a humongous undertaking to create a module in PHP for managing all of the complex aspects of a good content delivery system. In the module repository of XOOPS there are a good half dozen or more document managers, all with rudimentary capabilities but none as robust as even the simplest freeware HTML editor. Not to single anyone out but I'm referring to things like News, Tiny D, Articles, ARMS, WF Section, XF Section, WF Channel and so on in no particular order. All are in various stages of development and all are moving forward toward essentially the same goal. Yet none seem capable of handling anything much more sophisticated than placing text and a few images on the page. Nearly every day now I try to add a little content here, add a little eye candy there, add a bit of interactivity over there and the whole thing ends up just getting messed up, breaking out of the page or adding in excessive line breaks [even with XOOPS codes disabled] or not working at all other than to display garbled text. This is not a criticism this is just simply a statement of where things seem to be from the point of view of a heavy content creator.

My comment then is this: with so much energy going into reinventing the wheel wouldn't it make more sense for all these developers and development teams to put their heads together and create the document management system to end all document management systems? Something that can handle “advanced” HTML like tables for instance, JavaScript, Flash and Shockwave with equal aplomb. Or better yet create two development teams along with a sponsored competition to provide motivation and reward. Such a process could start with a call for features and functionality from the wider community, ending with the adoption of the best implementation into the core.

As things are I'm increasingly beginning to think I made a mistake in going with Xoops. Initially, I checked out at least a dozen other systems. I was originally drawn to the fact that the XOOPS Japanese language development community seems particularly active. More and more it seems like XOOPS is a content management system that doesn't really manage content. Lots of things sort of work but not really. This is a fatal flaw in my estimation. I have all the respect in the world for the development community and what they have created. It is truly awesome. Yet I'm sure that I'm not the only one who has run up against some severe limitations in the handling of content. I don't know. Am I way off base? What do others think?

Well, Happy Birthday then.

I didn't know one could do backups through XOOPS Protector. Perhaps I have an old version. If backups are what you are after then check out Backpack, it seems to do a good job though I've never had to restore anything with it.

Somewhere along the line I've seen a menu item that allows one to switch site languages by clicking on a flag icon or something like that but I can't seem to find it. Perhaps it wasn't a XOOPS site after all. PHP nuke?

What I'd like to be able to do is view the administration area in English either by default or by some simple switching mechanism while everyone else would access the site in Japanese. I'm not interested in upgrading the site to some obscure version of XOOPS as with the Smart languages module and I'd rather not hack the common.php file as with the Xlanguage module. It's a simple matter to toggle back and forth between English and Japanese for all users, is there no way to achieve that SIMPLY on an individual basis?

I managed to get the right menu added but it appears floating over the grey background rather than within the white main area. I hacked around the style.css but somehow can't get it to appear as I want it to. Aynway, I've given up for the time being. It's not crucial right now though it would be nice to reduce some of the clutter in the left menu. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

Thanks for the offer Adrock. You make it sound so easy I'm going to take the plunge myself, sink or swim! No better way to learn than get the old feet wet, eh? If I start to flounder, maybe you could throw me a line. Will keep you posted....

I'm using a fixed width theme that has had the right column removed. I'm just wondering how simple would it be to add that column back in. Of course it depends on the theme and lots of other stuff but generally speaking how onerous a task is it likely to be? I'm a little bit afraid of tinkering at that level lest I really foul something up. Is there some standard boilerplate code that can be dropped in to theme.html to make the right column appear magically? I've already read through the faqs but I don't really have a sense of how monumental an undertaking this could be. Should I just leave well enough alone?

This is the site here: Hima Ari Online Portal

I thought I had seen a module/block that allows users to toggle between various installed languages. Is something like that available for XOOPS -- I looked everywhere -- or was that one of the Nukes that has that capability?

I've spent a gazillion hours on the same quest and have concluded that probably the most robust article management module out there is WF-Section. I also use a Japanese iteration called XF Section. It's a little bit more user friendly. Both are deployed at Hima Ari Canada Online Portal but the site will not be open to the public for another two weeks. The learning curves for both are steep but they have most of the features you could ever want.

I also use a module called simply Articles that is more straightforward and adaptable to more linear projects. You'll find it in use here BC Car-Free, registration required. I kind of regret not finding WF-Section first.

I hope that helps.

I'm trying to add photo captions to the random photo block from myAlbum but frankly it's hopelessly over my head.

I took some of the code <{$photo.description}> from myalbum_photo.html and dropped it into a likely spot in the random photo block: myalbum_block_rphoto.html.

Naturally that screwed everything up. I'm not even sure if photo.description has anything to do with the captions but it looked like a likely suspect.

Any insights you could share would be most appreciated.