I'm working on a XOOPS site which uses a customized version of the default XOOPS theme, and one of the things I did early on in creating my variant theme was to place a header graphic at the top, extending all the way across the page.

Looks great, but I am now discovering, just a few days before the site is due to launch, that that was where the banner ads were apparently supposed to go in the default layout. Oops. I had wondered why no ads were showing up anywhere. :)

I really don't want to mess with the design too much at this stage, but the client really wants banner ads, so I'm wondering if I can put them somewhere else. If I find the original theme files, from before I modified them, and copy the code that originally displayed the banner at the top, can I put it somewhere else in the template and have it still work? Is there anything in particular I need to know before doing that in order not to break anything?

Also: I've found that sometimes when I make changes to templates, they don't show up on the site at all. Like right now - I changed the footerbar in the theme.html file to include a custom copyright notice a couple of days ago, but it still just shows the default "Powered by Xoops" graphic there. And today I made a bunch of changes to the AMS templates (ams_item.html and ams_article.html), to remove all the extraneous stuff like article ratings, reads and ID numbers (since there appears to be no other way to disable those), but those changes aren't showing up either.

I thought at first it was a browser caching issue, but clearing my cache and even switching browsers didn't help. Any ideas? Is there something I have to do in the admin to make my changes show up?

Thanks,

Lynna

New content not showing in AMS should be fixed by clearing the cache-folder inside your xoops-directory, you may also play around with the cache-function.

Editing of templates not showing, can be solved with clearing your templates_c folder.

If you want ads somewhere else on your site, you can use blocks. (click Blocks from you adminpanel).
Or you can use a module, for example the Catads module.
If you prefer something other than this, I would recommend phpAdsNew. You should also read the guide for implementing phpAdsNew over @ It Headquarters

Best Regards,
Bananadude

Cool, thank you! That's fixed the footer issue - the copyright is now showing up fine.

But it doesn't seem to have helped AMS - there was nothing in the main cache folder except a copy of the admin menu. Nothing from AMS. I checked the site preferences in the admin, and caching is already turned off for all modules that it lists there (which unfortunately does not include AMS). I checked AMS's own preferences, but I didn't see any reference to caching there. And I checked all through the AMS directory via FTP to see if it had a cache folder of its own hidden somewhere, but I didn't find one. So I'm still stuck on that one. It's obviously caching stuff somewhere, but I can't figure out where.

On the ad blocks thing - I didn't see a banners block in the block list, so I'm assuming I need to make one? Can I just define a new block and put the banner code from the default template into it, and then set the block to display where I want the ads?


Lynna

Yes, make a Custom Block. Set the format to HTML and paste your code in it

Best Regards,
Bananadude

You can fix the AMS template problem by Clicking Admin/Modules/AMS - Update Button or by Remove/Reinstall of AMS Module.

Thanks - updating AMS did the trick! I didn't realize it put the templates in the database.

And I am working on a custom block for the ads.

I have to say, despite the few things that have given me problems with this site, overall I like XOOPS so much! It's much more pleasant to work with than Mambo or Postnuke, the only other CMS's I've tried. And it's so customizable. They all claim to be, but XOOPS seems to be much more so.

This site that I'm (hopefully) almost done with now is the first XOOPS site I've done, but now I'm planning to use it on three others I can think of. I'm that happy with it.