Hi,

First I discovered xoops, and I thought it was good. ;).

On the second day, I tried to install xoops, and failed miserably on the MySQL setup (probably because my shared hosting provider doesn't have a clear faq on what server the MySQL database resides on, and if my passwords are the same on the ssh/web login and the MySQL server, and my lack of understanding if I should enter a MySQL user/password or my hosting account user/password.

Then I discovered a web script at my hosting provider called "Fantastico" that allows point-and-click installation of common server-side scripts. Among those, Xoops.

So on the fourth day I had xoops.org running. And I thought it was good. But then I started reading about XOOPS and started getting confused by the lingo. For instance, what are blocks?. When I create "sections", do these refer to the news module?. I even tried reading the "Visual Guide to xoops" which was not very visual at all (besides some irrelevant screenshots).

My needs are simple: I'd need to setup a news site that would show the site logo at the top, followed by all the story headlines, with subtitle and date (and ONLY story headlines, not including a lead or summary!). My goal is to have news headlines displayed in two in two columns and sorted by date (last posted appears first).

like this:
<PRE>
---------------------------------------------
SITE LOGO HERE
Date, log-in / search
---------------------------------------------
STORY 4 TITLE[link] STORY 3 TITLE[link]
Subtitle here Subtitle here
02/26/05 01:30am 02/25/05 11:51am

STORY 2 TITLE[link] STORY 1 TITLE[link]
Subtitle here Subtitle here
02/25/05 10:30am 02/24/05 12:51am

----------------------------------------------
Copyright message...
----------------------------------------------
</PRE>
On the left side, the news sections as buttons, and on the right side, an advertising banner.

However, I've found that most CMS systems I have tried feature an slashdot-esque news module that's not exactly what I want.

Any XOOPS module does what I'm looking for?.

Perhaps for the "next big XOOPS release" it would be possible for you guys to design a "start page editor" that would work in pseudo-wysiwyg mode letting one define box sizes (in pixels or screen percentage) and move boxes around, just like "my netscape" works? (seehttp://my.netscape.com ).

FC

You can use News module, but rewriting of index page template will be needed (now it uses single-column paradigm)
Also instead of intro you can write only wanted subtitle in first news edit-area