Of course the user password is OS independent. If you take a look at the xoops_users table you'll see there a field pass defined as varchar(32). So the default is a maximum of 32 characters but you can, of course, change this value in the database and have as many characters as you may need. And the minimum is controlled from the admin interface.

Cheers.

All:

Here's my two cents on this matter.

Xoops has many instances of whole blocks defined at the core level, which means you can either have the block or not, but the problem resides in the fact that many of those blocks include content belonging to different categories.

Immediately comes to mind the line displayed by default on the news items. The line has the topic name (with a link to the topic), then a colon and then the news item name (with a link to the individual story), and your retrieve this with a single Smarty variable.

I can imagine the reason for doing this: making the job of the webmaster easier.

It's easier, yes, but another consequence of this is that in some cases you can "turn off" these "geeky" stuff while in some others you can't do it without killing things you want.

The long term solution implies two different tasks:

1) To separate all displayable items and put them in separate variables, that is, a still more granular variable assignment process.

2) To include in each block configuration option the ability to include or not each displayable item. This, of course, will have an effect in the code: there'll be more of it, but then again that's the price of more user power.

I agree on the need to control these things, as well as the more than "geeky", "youthful" smilies and more assorted things having to do with the building of communities. XOOPS was born from a dinasty of community building efforts; now it has matured to the point that the lack of corporate seriousness is seen as a disadvantage. Maybe, so I'd say it's time for XOOPS to evolve to a more complete solution, and the granularity of control over what gets displayed it's certainly an important step in that direction.

Cheers.

Kelly:

If you check carefully the way the index is built in xoops.org, you'll notice that the menu options that open to reveal submenus are all contained in the category "Community". All other options are links. So the category "Community" is handled by Xoops' native main menu.

The other blocks ("General Information", "XOOPS Wiki", "Miscellaneous" and "Who's Online") are built quite easily using custom HTML blocks. To make them look exactly like the main menu options, all you need is to make sure to use the same styles: the class "menuTop" for the first option and the class "menuMain" for the rest of them.

To manage these menus, you'd need to edit the custom blocks. If you want a different kind of control, you can use, instead of iMenu, a variation of it called multiMenu (download it here). This module lets you build four different menu blocks with the same flexibility that iMenu.

Hope this helps.

Cheers.

Kelly:

Generally speaking, XOOPS offers you a frame to show your modules, so for instance many sites, including Xoops.org, have the News module defined to show in the top page. You can, of course, set XOOPS so it shows different stuff in the top page. If you choose newBB, you'll see the Forums in the top page, and so on.

As to what content appears in that top page, it depends on two things: the nature of the module AND the blocks definitions. For instance, the News module by default shows the latest news in a chronological reverse order; the newBB module shows the names and descriptions of the forums available; Members shows a form to search for a member. These are the things that show when you select News newBB or Members as the startup module.

But here in Xoops.org you see also Forum headers and more stuff in the top page, right? Well, you do that just configuring blocks to appear in the top page. For instance, for the forums you can choose to show a block with the latest discussions, or with the more active ones; for the Downloads module, you can show in the top page a block with the Top Downloads, or the Recent downloads (addition), and so on.

All in all, select the module you want to be central to your site, and define it to show as the startup module. Then dress it with more content selecting diverse blocks to wrap up the page. Each of these blocks have to be configured to appear only in the startup page, and of course you need to make sure anonymous users can see them.

Cheers.

Kelly:

Just as a sanity check, I don't remember well the mechanics of iMenu, but if it does create a block, you have to be sure that block is set to appear in all pages. Also you need to set its permissions so that all users can see it.

Cheers.

kjs222:

Thanks for sharing your thoughts about WebSlave. It's author, Gronice, has listened carefully to every suggestion and since its first appearance the module has grown both in quality and in functions. So don't despair; maybe Gronice will hear and incorporate your ideas into future versions.

And BTW, in the core team website we also use WebSlave to keep tabs in some of our projects.

Cheers.

comegona:

With that many pages, it's gonna take time no matter what solution you choose, because you want more than an inclusion, you want an integration.

I assume you don't have 10,000 directories, but rather maybe ten, with subdirectories beneath them, etc. If this is correct, the options mentioned in this thread will surely work, though they may be overkill.

Another less known option is the french module called iContent. I helped a bit Vivi to repurpose the module for version 4 and now he's got version 4.5 in the works. This module is available here. You'll still have to create the directory structure yourself, but this module does a good job at handling HTML files.

Maybe your predicament could be the basis of a discussion about the more efficient way to incorporate non-structured content into Xoops. We'll think about it.

Cheers.

comegona:

Perhaps the lack of a satisfactory answer was due partly to the fact that the question doesn't have enough detail. You say you have a regular Web site: what does this mean? You have a lot of HTML pages and some PHP pages. What do they have? What kind of content is it? What is its structure? Please understand we need some more detail in order to suggest you an appropriate road to follow.

Cheers.

MadFish:

You're correct about this. This particular theme has a very lean style sheet, and has a lot of settings hardcoded in theme.html. In particular, the background color of the left and right columns is defined in lines 39 and 120.

The same is true about the table holding the logo and the banner. Has its bgcolor defined in the theme.html file, line 26.

To ease the maintenance work in this theme, it might be a good idea to follow sunsnapper's advice and give these TDs a specific name, as occurs in the default theme. This way, to change the appearance of the theme you'd edit the style file, not the HTML file.

Cheers.

Carlos:

As another mexican, I can only feel happy about the incoming launch of XOOPS México. Congratulations!

Cheers.