Hi,

i am considering using AMS but there are some things I'm not sure it can do, or weather it's planned for a future release (an "estimated" time frame would be thanked, if possible).

+ I want to use this as a recipes collection, not actual articles. I would love to have two fields available. i want to make it so that in submit.php users can have a field where they would list the ingredients, and the on the other field the preparation instructions. ideally I would like to describe the ingredients text behind the recipe name (w/o line breaks) and the same text (w/ line breaks) plus preparation isntructions on the 'article' page, but I can live without that...

if this is not possible and wont be available soon, is it possible to use the 'banner sponsor' field and use that in teh article page for 'preparation'. of course I looose that field, but I dont think I'll need it for now.

+ is it possible to install two ams, or even change its name, so that the url reads 'modules/recipes' instead of AMS (and the other one for real articles)? I saw post on how to do this, not sure if in this forum, but the main question would be someone has done it? I am a php newbee but I can follow instructions.

Thats all I think. Main reason for considering AMS over wfsections (which is the other module that looks like it fit my needs) is that AMS can use XOOPS notifications, which I intend to use as a way of "internally bookmarking" recipes, plus some number of articles considerations I read (and almost undestood ). since this is recipes and not articles the number is likely to grow quite a bit, or so I expect. Any experience doing something similar, or other advice is welcome.

Thanks

I don't think AMS will do *exactly* what you are after straight out of the box, but it wouldn't be too far off. I don't think there is anything currently available for XOOPS taht will do exactly what you want, so you might want to look into having a custom mod built. Keep in mind though that getting a module built is very expensive, and AMS has cost $1100 USD to develop so far.

With AMS 2.4 when using the Koivi editor there are two different text fields. It would be a five minute modification to rename these fields to "Ingredients" and "Preperation Instructions". Do you think this would be something like you need?

or perhaps

ingredients
[pagebreak]
instructions

That would put them on separate pages, though.

That would work also, but if I understand patagon correctly (which I probably don't) he is wanting to make the submit process as user friendly as possible. If you have one box saying put ingredients in here, and another saying preperation instructions here, that should make it a lot more accessable to the technically challenged. I might be wrong on this though.

Thanks brash and Mithrandir. brash, you understood it right. the only reason for actually having two fields is that its easier for users to add ingredients and preparation separately if you have two fields with those names (I could ask them to layout their recipe like ingredients, two line breaks and preparation, but in my experience a lot of people wont follow that).

i looked at all modules I could find and there is nothing that does what I want. there are some modules that seem to almost do it, but are not finished, or not supported. paying to develop is out of the question since this is just a hobby site (I and other people contribute in the form of time, maybe there is a chance of sponsoring a module like AMS though).

I dont know what the koivi editor is, I originally intended to use XOOPS built in editor (there is more potential for abuse than benefits in this case with one of those word like editors, that I understand could be very useful in an articles context) but any solution will do for now...BTW do you see any problem in using banner for the preparation text? suposing i manage to modify the template to place it below ingredients? I would love to keep that field for its intended use, but we dont see banners in the near future, so the only actual concern is that this simple change makes it harder to upgrade in the future.

thanks

Koivi is basically just a WYSIWYG editor that makes it a LOT easier to make pretty looking text and image formating (plus other stuff). I'm using it now with AMS 2.4 and am loving it .

As for using the banner area, I probably wouldn't advise on that as if one day down the track you do want to use the banner area to display advertising then you're in a bit of trouble. The banner area also jsut wasn't designed for this, and isn't included in the version control system of AMS.

Thanks brash. I hope you dont mind a last question: is there a roadmap for AMS development somewhere? I'm a little worried that since this is a paid development (even if then its a free plugin) it may not get updated eventually, because as I see by your post development can be expensive...actually the other one I'm considering (wf-sections) doesnt seem to have that many updates.

IMO (and this is another issue) the dev team should 'endorse' (hope this is the word) one of these projects and make sure its development continues at a good rithym, since a content management module seems really necessary..just my opinion of course, maybe there is something like this going on and I missed it...

thanks

Hi patagon,

I do have a rough roadmap in my head for 2.6, 2.8 and even a few things for 3.0. I still need to discuss them with Mith though as what I have in mind mightn't necessarily be the best way forward programming wise. I'm not going anywhere (that I know of), so the only real thing that will bring AMS development to a halt is a lack of funds. If I can get a few more AMS Partners on board as well as a handful of AMS Sponsors here and there, the dependency on the XOOPS community to donate all the time will be substaintially reduced. At present though AMS is still completely dependant on AMS user donations.

As for the XOOPS core team endorsing a single module, I don't think this should be their taks, plus I also think they have enough on their plate as it is. The XOOPS QA team is putting something together to help users pick the quality modules out there, but this will do nothing for ensuring these modules continue development. I think that is just nature of the beast of open source I'm afraid.

Just one hint - I see one russian site, Recipes site, where recipes part was done using Arms AFAIR

Thanks brash. I see the dev team has a lot on their hands, just it seems to me for some reason the content management part of XOOPS seems to be a bit behind other modules (like forum for example), but I'm not sure how this could be fixed..or even if its true actually, just that I have been reading a lot about these two modules (AMS and wf-sections, the others I found them somewhat less powerfull/suited for my intended use) and found a lot of people would want some improvments on both...I'll also see if I can convince the people I'm doing this with to donate to this module, I would love to see this module further developed.

LazyBadger, do you know the url of that site? I tried looking for it but couldnt find it...thanks