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  4.  / What's a block? (versus a 'section')
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1
philroy
What's a block? (versus a 'section')

  • 2003/8/29 12:03

  • philroy

  • Friend of XOOPS

  • Posts: 107

  • Since: 2003/8/23


Hi all,

I'm getting a bit confused. I can't quite figure out the difference between a block and a section.

If I wanted a heading in my menu that was not clickable...but then had 3 or 4 links under it to pages that have content, what would I use...a block or a section?

E.g....

Latest Stories
-- From overseas
-- From here

(where "From overseas" and "From here" would load content if you clicked on it)

I'm trying to understand how to shape the menu so that it has headings and sub-headings.

Or should I be using some sort of module??

Phil
2
ackbarr
Re: What's a block? (versus a 'section')

A block is a section of your website that is common across several pages. Most XOOPS websites display blocks in the left and right sidebars.

Conversely, sections is the name of a simple article management module.

In your case I would recommend using a custom block to create your navigational links
3
philroy
Re: What's a block? (versus a 'section')

  • 2003/8/30 2:38

  • philroy

  • Friend of XOOPS

  • Posts: 107

  • Since: 2003/8/23


Thanks.

OK, so I create a custom block which has my various sub headings. How do I then point those links to content that people can update?

If you want to see specifically what I mean, check out a work in progress...
http://www.superhost.co.nz/~intnrm/

I'm hacking into a theme to make XOOPS the back-end of this site ultimately (I'm working on a copy locally under OS X at the moment) and have got the header and left menu working.

So I create a custom block called "About PNINS" for example, then how do I link the smaller headings to pages?

Any idea how I can do a sort of bread-crumb effect under each link?

And, final question (yes, I've asked too much!)...any idea how I can pull one news item from a news section onto that area on the very first page called "Important News"?

Many thanks in advance for any advice.

Phil
4
hsalazar
Re: What's a block? (versus a 'section')

  • 2003/8/30 4:56

  • hsalazar

  • Just popping in

  • Posts: 78

  • Since: 2003/2/6 1


Phil:

Here's some answers.

1) You seem to have three content sections, each with several pages. I'd make three clones of Tiny Content and name them "About PNINS", "Events" and "Teams". Then I'd feed the content using Tiny Content's editor, in order to build the navigation block. An at the end, I'd put the three navigation blocks together to form the complete left menu. This way, you'll be able to edit every page using Tiny Content's built-in editor.

2) The breadcrumb's not so easy. I've looked at some scripts so far without luck. The most promising one can be found in the snippets of XMDT, but has no decent instructions so I haven't been able to make it work. Sorry about this.

3) The one news item calles "Important news" can be deployed using the module Spotlight. The new version was just uploaded to the CVS yesterday, and it'll let you do this: select a story to spotlight or let the system pick the latest one, as you wish. Then, this spotlighted story will include the headline and the intro text. Optionally you can include a picture. You can also add more links to other news, et cetera. What you need is a "minimalistic" Spotlight module: just one story, just one text.

I hope this is useful.

Cheers.
5
philroy
Re: What's a block? (versus a 'section')

  • 2003/8/30 5:09

  • philroy

  • Friend of XOOPS

  • Posts: 107

  • Since: 2003/8/23


Thank you so much! I thought the altering of the look and feel would be hard, but I've been getting into CSS recently and it's easy once you know how. Your advice adds to the content side of things and will get me going.

Cheers,

Phil
6
philroy
Re: What's a block? (versus a 'section')

  • 2003/9/1 8:51

  • philroy

  • Friend of XOOPS

  • Posts: 107

  • Since: 2003/8/23


Quote:
1) You seem to have three content sections, each with several pages. I'd make three clones of Tiny Content and name them "About PNINS", "Events" and "Teams". Then I'd feed the content using Tiny Content's editor, in order to build the navigation block. An at the end, I'd put the three navigation blocks together to form the complete left menu. This way, you'll be able to edit every page using Tiny Content's built-in editor.


Hmm...any advice anyone on how to clone Tiny Content? It's not as easy as duplicating the folder as there are database conflicts, so I think I need to update HTML pages and MySQL in the module.

I posted on the site that Tiny Content comes from, but am yet to get a reply.

Phil
7
adamsmar
Re: What's a block? (versus a 'section')

  • 2003/9/1 9:56

  • adamsmar

  • Just popping in

  • Posts: 4

  • Since: 2003/8/28


What XOOPS needs (and probably a lot of other CMS) is a kind of frames module, that allows XOOPS to wrap around existing web pages. I'm also working on a school website, and I'm thinking of just creating a new template for all my pages that looks like the one I'm using with Xoops. Then I'll probably use iMenu for the links.

imenue

The user won't know the difference.

You can also create your own mod see here. You may have to register to see this link.

I made a very simple "mod". Simply a folder with index.php and xoops_version.php. The index.php file contained a few links, nothing more. What would be nice is if upon pressing a link, the content stayed inside xoops. Anyone?

Which brings me to a general question. XOOPS is great as it links together some important things: forum, calendar (like Agenda-x), faq, etc., which are all searchable as they are part of the same system. However, most of the CMS that I've looked at don't account for site with lots of pages. For example: On a school site we might want to have pages for every class, club and program. What's the best way to get these pages up?

Sections is content, but mostly text.

Freecontent, etc., seems like a good alternative, but what if my content has child pages? Do those stay in the XOOPS wrap?
8
hsalazar
How to "clone" Tiny Content

  • 2003/9/1 14:38

  • hsalazar

  • Just popping in

  • Posts: 78

  • Since: 2003/2/6 1


@ Philroy:

Cloning Tiny Content it's not hard at all. What you have to do is a lot of replacements:

1) Replace every instance of "_TINYCONTENT_" with "_YOURMODULENAME_".

2) Replace every instance of "tinycontent" with "yourmodulename".

3) Replave every instance of "_TC_" with "_YOURMODULENAME_".

4) Change the names of three files:
-- blocks/tc_navigation.php
-- templates/tinycontent_index.html
-- templates/blocks/tinycontent_navigation_block.html

to

-- blocks/yourmodulename_navigation.php
-- templates/yourmodulename_index.html
-- templates/blocks/yourmodulename_navigation_block.html

5) Replace the necessary language constants in the language files

6) And most important, open xoops_version.php and replace the two instances of "_MI_DIR_NAME" for "_MI_MODULENAME_DIR_NAME".

7) Also very important: do whatever changes you need, but please leave Chapi's credits in their place. It's his work and won't cost you anything to have this credits there.

I think that's all. If you have any problems, please post them here to make the necessary corrections.

Cheers.
9
hsalazar
How to "clone" Tiny Content

  • 2003/9/1 14:39

  • hsalazar

  • Just popping in

  • Posts: 78

  • Since: 2003/2/6 1


@ Philroy:

Cloning Tiny Content it's not hard at all. What you have to do is a lot of replacements:

1) Replace every instance of "_TINYCONTENT_" with "_YOURMODULENAME_".

2) Replace every instance of "tinycontent" with "yourmodulename".

3) Replave every instance of "_TC_" with "_YOURMODULENAME_".

4) Change the names of three files:
-- blocks/tc_navigation.php
-- templates/tinycontent_index.html
-- templates/blocks/tinycontent_navigation_block.html

to

-- blocks/yourmodulename_navigation.php
-- templates/yourmodulename_index.html
-- templates/blocks/yourmodulename_navigation_block.html

5) Replace the necessary language constants in the language files

6) And most important, open xoops_version.php and replace the two instances of "_MI_DIR_NAME" for "_MI_MODULENAME_DIR_NAME". In fact, also make this replacement directory wide.

7) Also very important: do whatever changes you need, but please leave Chapi's credits in their place. It's his work and won't cost you anything to have this credits there.

I think that's all. If you have any problems, please post them here to make the necessary corrections.

Cheers.
10
philroy
Re: How to "clone" Tiny Content

  • 2003/9/2 3:21

  • philroy

  • Friend of XOOPS

  • Posts: 107

  • Since: 2003/8/23


Hi there,

Thanks for that. I went through with Dreamweaver and hunted down each instance and replaced what was needed. It looks close, but still some bugs.

FYI...my module is to be called "sportsdraw"

1, 2, 3, 4....done

Quote:
5) Replace the necessary language constants in the language files


Not sure what you mean here?

Quote:
6) And most important, open xoops_version.php and replace the two instances of "_MI_DIR_NAME" for "_MI_MODULENAME_DIR_NAME". In fact, also make this replacement directory wide.


I could only find those two instances...no others. Point 7, of course I'll leave in the credits!

OK...back to point 6...I'm not sure if this is the right thing to do? When starting up Xoops, the first thing I notice is that the image/icon for this module isn't showing. Looking at the source code, I see the url listed as....

http://127.0.0.1/xoops/modules/_MI_SPORTSDRAW_DIR_NAME/images/logo.png

So maybe I misinterpretted what you meant in point 6?

Installing the module appears to work, but then you get it listed as "Module File for Not Found!", with a broken image and a version setting of '0'.....so I don't think it has worked.

I'm also not sure if the sql functions were actually carried out and if I was meant to update any sql?

Cheers,

Phil
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