I've been researching XOOPS for several weeks now, and I have to say I haven't been this excited about something since I started using Smalltalk. I think I've learned enough to start asking some questions.

First, my reasons for wanting to use XOOPS are perhaps a little different. I manage the sites for some non-profit orgs I belong to, and I need to allow some absolute non-techies to edit their own content while maintaining strict control over the structure and the graphical presentation of the site.

Now the questions:

1) Can someone please discuss the intersection of templates and blocks?

I totally get the OO stuff, and the difference between templates and themes is clear, but is there some non-trivial usage of templates I can look at to understand when I should build a template and when I should build a block? For example, I have one page that I need to convert, which has some static text at the top and then what should be converted to a table built from database entries. So is that a block or a template and a block, or what?

2) Is there somewhere out there a detailed discussion of how to build a module?

I need a very simple event list: date/time/location/presenter/phone, and I'm thinking I could probably modify TinyEvent to do what I need, but I would feel more comfortable with more detailed instructions. Database and SQL do not bother me, but I don't yet see the big picture and what pieces go where.

3) I want to use TinyContent, and I have the base module working, but I can't figure out how to enable the numbered clones.

4) I'm planning to use MultiMenu (for its TreeView presentation) but I can't seem to get the menu items hooked up to the TinyContent pages.

5) Can someone please jump the gun and tell me how to replace the SPAW editor in TinyContent with the new Koivi editor. Some of my non-techie people have Macs and this thing looks great.

This should be enough to get me going.
And thanks so much for the strong Community. It's been a joy to step into something with the base functionality already pre-constucted.

Can't seem to edit my own post, but I've answered my own question #4.
[interesting ... I can edit this one (same session?) but not the original]
Thanks.

in the new version of newbb post editing is disabled to the user after a set number of minutes. The number of minutes currently escapes me however.

For information about module development, I recommend hopping over to the XoopsForge (dev.xoops.org) site. There is a strong development community at this site, as well as module development resources.

In addition the Xoops Wiki has a section on XOOPS Module development. For detailed documentation on the Smarty template engine used in XOOPS I would recommend PHP's Smarty site. The only difference between XOOPS's implementation and Smarty's default implementation is the smarty tags - XOOPS uses <{ }> and Smarty uses { }

Now to your questions:
1. I think what you want to do is make a module that uses a smarty template. Think of blocks the pieces that show up in the sidebar, like the search box on the right bar of this site, or the user menu box on the left bar of this site. Blocks are typically displayed across many pages within a site.

2. See above

3 & 5. I have little experience with either, so I can't help you here.

Quote:
Thanks.
Looks like the No-Ah stuff might be exactly what I need.

I just recently installed TinyD, which is an offshoot of Tiny Content. It did stump me at first, but here is how to make those numbered modules work.

You'll have to FTP into your server and create individual directories for how many modules you want.

Example:

tinycontent
tinycontent1
tinycontent2

After you create the directories, just upload the original contents of the module. Then go to your module page and you should see those created modules. From there just install.
I think that's what you wanted to know.
Here's a screenshot of my FTP