51
rlankford
Re: Xoops Search - A Better Implementation?
  • 2007/7/28 23:20

  • rlankford

  • Not too shy to talk

  • Posts: 158

  • Since: 2004/8/27


Yeah, sure. All the stuff is at work and I won't have time to gather it all together until Monday morning...



52
rlankford
Re: Xoops Search - A Better Implementation?
  • 2007/7/27 18:47

  • rlankford

  • Not too shy to talk

  • Posts: 158

  • Since: 2004/8/27


Here's what I ended up with:

Resized Image

What's the point? A couple of things. First, the modules are sorted by number of hits. This guarantees that modules with little to no hits are grouped toward the bottom of the page. This may help people using the search engine since if they see something like "0 hits returned" at the top ... then 0 hits really were returned. Admittedly, that's subtle and doesn't seem like much, but I'll test it here with my users to see if it gets a better reception.

The second point is that it obviously looks a little different than the output from the normal search.php page in Xoops. I took the time to create a template for the search page. This is something that probably should have been in XOOPS all along, but simply got overlooked. Having this as a smarty template makes it much easier to lay out the results however you'd like!

I'll see about submitting this 'template' change to the XOOPS team to see if it can be rolled into the future 2.0.17 version (anyone know how to do that?).



53
rlankford
Re: Xoops Search - A Better Implementation?
  • 2007/7/25 15:01

  • rlankford

  • Not too shy to talk

  • Posts: 158

  • Since: 2004/8/27


Point taken (edited post). Sorry.



54
rlankford
Xoops Search - A Better Implementation?
  • 2007/7/25 14:38

  • rlankford

  • Not too shy to talk

  • Posts: 158

  • Since: 2004/8/27


I understand how the XOOPS search engine generates the search page. Namely:

1) It 'polls' each of the selected modules and asks them for the top 5 results (based on the given search terms and search conditions).
2) It aggregates these results (grouped by module) and provides a link to the user to 'delve deeper' for any particular module. The resulting page shows a bunch of results -- but only for that module.

I 'get' this. I'm sure you all do to. This page is designed around the way the search engine works in Xoops. But, considering that other popular search engines don't present results in this way, it can be confusing for a site's users to quickly understand what it is they are seeing.

Why is that? Well, for instance, the first module searched (for my site) is one that has very little content in it. So, for a typical search, one of the first things that a user sees is "No Match Found for your Query". There are most likely matches found further down the page ... but that statement throws them off. The first two words probably throws them off. Read "No Match" and (presumably), you're off and wondering what to do now.

So, yeah, it's a matter of training, sure. And I'm lucky enough to be behind a firewall, so better training isn't completely out of the question. But what about you Xoopsers out there that rely on complete strangers to successfully search your site? Have any of you come up with a better search.php implementation that better organizes the search engine's results?

I fooled around with my search.php and came up with a slightly different look-n-feel (9 MiB gif):

Link to Animated Gif

You can see that I've divided each module's results into slots (or drawers) that can be clicked on to view the results. I don't think this has really helped anything in terms of usability ... so I'm back where I started.

Any ideas out there??



55
rlankford
Re: Lock the webmaster group?
  • 2007/7/19 9:29

  • rlankford

  • Not too shy to talk

  • Posts: 158

  • Since: 2004/8/27


My only thought to all this is that the functionality would probably be better served if someone (I know, I know, who has the time?) created a module that did nothing but allow people to edit groups/users on the front side of the website. Creating this module would probably involve copying and modifying a lot of the code already on the admin side of the XOOPS core.

The advantage of this method would be that you wouldn't have to hack the XOOPS core at all. You could install/un-install this feature in a couple of minutes at will. Finally, it would be great if you could configure the new module quickly and easily so that you could specify *who* could access the module. Maybe even specify who could add/remove folks from groups on a group-by-group basis.

And in fact, I know the recent move was to pull out any default modules that came with Xoops. But I think modules like the old "members" module (and this one), would make sense to have back in the XOOPS core install package again. Specifically, those modules that simply extended admin features/functions to the front side of a XOOPS site could (should?) be included in the default XOOPS package, IMO.

It'd probably take some time and thought to get worked out right, but it'd really be pretty neat in the end...



56
rlankford
Re: changing background color of redirection page?
  • 2007/7/5 17:09

  • rlankford

  • Not too shy to talk

  • Posts: 158

  • Since: 2004/8/27


Hmm.

Well then, you should know that you have to do the following first:

1) Clone the default template set into a new one.
2) Tell your XOOPS site to use the new cloned template set.
3) Edit the new template set by clicking on the "List" link next to "System".
4) Click "Edit" for system_redirect.html.
5) Add a style="background-color: green;" attribute to the body tag (or something like that).

Does that help??



57
rlankford
Re: 2.0.16 Block Bug (with fix)
  • 2007/6/27 16:56

  • rlankford

  • Not too shy to talk

  • Posts: 158

  • Since: 2004/8/27





58
rlankford
Re: 2.0.16 Block Bug (with fix)
  • 2007/6/27 16:14

  • rlankford

  • Not too shy to talk

  • Posts: 158

  • Since: 2004/8/27


Quote:

Please remember to report the bug here as well


Got it (link).

Thanks!



59
rlankford
2.0.16 Block Bug (with fix)
  • 2007/6/27 15:56

  • rlankford

  • Not too shy to talk

  • Posts: 158

  • Since: 2004/8/27


I gotta believe this has been mentioned somewhere else already ... but I couldn't find it so I am posting anyway.

I'm writing a module with a simple block defined in my module's xoops_version.php:

// options[0] - NumberToDisplay: any positive integer
// This example has only 1 block option.  Multiple options are separated with the pipe ("|") character.
$modversion['blocks'][] = array(
    
'file'         => 'b_sm_newwidgets.php',
    
'name'        => _MI_BLOCK_NAME_1,
    
'description'    => _MI_BLOCK_DESC_1,
    
'show_func'    => 'b_sm_newwidgets_show',
    
'template'     => 'b_sm_newwidgets.html',
    
'edit_func'    => 'b_sm_newwidgets__edit',
    
'options'    => '4');


Installing the module goes fine. Then, when updating the module, I get a message about my block template being deprecated. The block is then removed. I have to uninstall and reinstall the module to get the block to show back up again. Trying to update the module again doesn't work since the block was removed during the previous update attempt.

What's the problem? Well, the fact that I'm appending my block definition onto the 'block' array above means that it is in the zeroth position (since I only have 1 block defined). This block is getting skipped by the update process (Note: but not by the installation process). You can find the following code around line 337 of file 'xoops\modules\system\admin\modulesadmin\main.php':

for ( $i 1$i <= $count$i++ ) {


The loop that checks the blocks starts looking at array position 1. Since the install process starts at 0 (and correctly installs the block initially), I presume this to be a bug here during the update process.

Instead, the line should look like this:

for ( $i 0$i <= $count$i++ ) {


After making this change, my module seems to install, update, and uninstall correctly without incident.

I know XOOPS development seems to have stopped, but if a new version is ever released, please consider making this small change to the core.



60
rlankford
Re: Xoops 2.0.17 released (Unofficial version) by Hervé
  • 2007/6/5 1:56

  • rlankford

  • Not too shy to talk

  • Posts: 158

  • Since: 2004/8/27


Quote:

[img]http://sourceforge.net/project/stats/graph/detail-graph.php?group_id=41586&ugn=xoops&type=svn&mode=12months&graph=1[/img]


Ouch. Time to move on, I suppose.




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