1
alandail
improving my site
  • 2006/4/18 5:05

  • alandail

  • Just popping in

  • Posts: 94

  • Since: 2006/4/18


I built my site with XOOPS and have a few questions about how to improve my site. My site is up here

http://71.50.41.166

- I want my main page to do more than just give the title of the news items - I'd like a scaled down copy of the image and the start of the text as well, is there a way to do this?

- right now my site is only about the Cleveland Cavaliers, but I plan to expand that soon (and give it a new name if I can find a good one that isn't already owned). What I'd like to do is have a page for each team that shows the current news for that team as well as the latest posts on the team's board - is there a way to do something like that?

- I'd also like to have my game reports include links to things like box scores, photos, etc. Is there a way to do that?

- if someone has already voted, can the poll on the home page show the current results of that poll instead of looking like the person can vote again?

- I like the built in banner support for putting banner ads at the top of the window - is there a way to also manage banner ads in the sides.

- is there a way to have the banner ads sensitive to the context they are being displayed in? i.e. different ad content for different boards/news areas, etc?

I guess that's enough issues for now - any feedback on how to otherwise improve my site is always appreciated.

2
gestroud
Re: improving my site
  • 2006/4/18 5:37

  • gestroud

  • Home away from home

  • Posts: 1538

  • Since: 2004/12/22


Nice lookin' site.

Quote:
- I want my main page to do more than just give the title of the news items - I'd like a scaled down copy of the image and the start of the text as well, is there a way to do this?


To do this, you need to have topic images for each of your categories and use the Recent News block to display it/them. If you're using XOOPS 2.2.x you can use multiple instances of the recent news block and restrict each one to one or more categories/topics. If you're using XOOPS 2.0, you're limited to using the Recent News block once, but you can also use the Top News block and set it to display articles by date. You can also use a spotlight block.

The current recent news blocks don't display images in a very eye-catching way (IMO). If you need a modified template, send me a pm.

Quote:
- right now my site is only about the Cleveland Cavaliers, but I plan to expand that soon (and give it a new name if I can find a good one that isn't already owned). What I'd like to do is have a page for each team that shows the current news for that team as well as the latest posts on the team's board - is there a way to do something like that?


Couple of alternatives:

You could use a module called xhld, which is basically an rss reader for XOOPS. It's clonable, so you can have up to 5 copies of it on your site. That won't be enough for each individual team, but you could do it by divisions. You could also create a custom block containing a menu that links to each individual feed/team so that someone could just click a link to visit that team's page.

Another option is a module named rssc - another rss reader. It gives aggregated news as well as individual feeds. It also keeps up to 100,000 articles in a searchable database. As long as the news links from the source are still good, you've got a pretty good sports news library on hand.

Quote:
- I'd also like to have my game reports include links to things like box scores, photos, etc. Is there a way to do that?


You got me there. What are you using to produce your games reports?

Quote:
- if someone has already voted, can the poll on the home page show the current results of that poll instead of looking like the person can vote again?


I think that may have been covered somewhere in the forums here - not too certain. You'd have to do a search for polls.

Quote:
- I like the built in banner support for putting banner ads at the top of the window - is there a way to also manage banner ads in the sides.

- is there a way to have the banner ads sensitive to the context they are being displayed in? i.e. different ad content for different boards/news areas, etc?


XOOPS does have a built in banner system, but you'll also want to do a search on this site for phpAdsnew. Make sure to read the instructions at least twice.

Quote:
I guess that's enough issues for now


And enough answers

3
alandail
Re: improving my site
  • 2006/4/18 6:03

  • alandail

  • Just popping in

  • Posts: 94

  • Since: 2006/4/18


ok - I'm trying to start with the spotlight - I don't see spotlight in my list of blocks, so I searched this site and found news version 1.44 - is this a newer version of the news module I have now? Mine says v1.1 and came from the XOOPS install. If so, can I just overwrite this with what I just downloaded and click on update in the action column? I've only written 3 news articles thus far, but I'd rather not lose them.

thanks for the help - it's much appreciated.

4
alandail
Re: improving my site
  • 2006/4/18 6:12

  • alandail

  • Just popping in

  • Posts: 94

  • Since: 2006/4/18


also, I'm writing my own game reports, which is why I'm just sticking with the cavs for now.

Eventually, I'd like to have a page similar to this

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/teams/schedule?team=cle

where it shows the results to date - one for each team

and game reports like this

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/recap?gameId=260417002

where you can go between the report, the box score, photos, play by play, etc., on a game by game basis as well as the side bar that has other info specific to the game report.

And I'd like to be able to do something like this

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/clubhouse?team=cle

a page for each team

and then something like this

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/index

consolidates the top individual team stories on an NBA page

and then something like this

http://espn.go.com/

consolidates all of the sports

so if people are contributing articles to my site, I can automate logically groping them.

And what I want to do that the ESPN site doesn't do is integrate a message board for each level. i.e. recent replied topics for a specific message board tied to a specific page.

I suspect I'll have to do some programming to make some of this work.

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