View Website

So what if we had the following:

On the record list page: A "View section >>" link that went to the "List Page Url" defined under Section editors.

On the record modify we have a "View Page >>" link that went to the "Detail Page Url" defined under Section editors.

The on the record create page we could have that link grayed out since there's no public link yet.

Would that work for everyone?

It is an good idea!

You can indicate the implementation ?

Thanks,

Djulia

That would be great. That's what I was looking for. I also understand Donna's point about the fact that the records could go anywhere, but if we could define the link as you have mentioned that would work great.

Thanks Dave!

I've added a "Preview" button to the record list page. You need to have "List Page Url" defined under section editors for it to appear.

This will be in 1.20, I've attached the latest list.php.

Back up your existing /lib/menus/default/list.php and then replace it with the attached file (Make sure you're running 1.19 first!)

I'm going to give some more though to how to best do the record previews.

Hi Dave,

That functions perfectly. [:)]

It will be possible to apply this for "[font "Verdana"]View Website >>" in header.php ?

Thank you for your answer.

Djulia

Yes, you can use the schema _listPage value for this:

<?php if (@$schema['_listPage']): ?>
<a href="<?php echo @$schema['_listPage'] ?>"> ... </a>
<?php else: ?>
<a href="<?php echo $SETTINGS['websiteUrl'] ?>">...</a>
<?php endif ?>

Hope that helps!

Dave,

I'm really glad that you're dealing with this whole view/preview issue.

Just to add my 2 cents, again...

I think that it's extremely important to be able to preview/approve materials before they go "live" and replace the existing materials.

A) In case trhe material is not for public consumption at the time it's being created and will ultimately be hidden until a launch date.

B) The person who is entering the information really screws it up and needs to fix it BEFORE the old information is off the live site and gone forever.

C) In many companies there's a hierarchy of approval that must be adhered to before information is released to the public.

I think that the implications of these types of issues could be real "deal breakers" for potential customers, and possible job security and legal challenges for those in the IT development chain.

Please give some thought to these "end user" issues during your near term revisions.

Thanks

Jerry

Hi Jerry,

There's some support for this with the following features:

Special checkbox field "hidden" - you can create this field to hide a record. You can set it to be an admin only field to only admins and section "managers" can make a record live.

Having regular users who can create articles but not make them live, then a section manager or admin user who marked a record as live, then changing the owner (Created By) is one way to implement an approval process and prevent further changes by the user.

There's also fields for publishDate, removeDate, and neverRemove to have records go live and be removed on specific dates. You can read more about special fieldnames here:
http://www.interactivetools.com/docs/cmsbuilder/special_fieldnames.html

These are pretty basic as far as "hierarchy of approval" features though. Those types of features would require a major overhaul and advances to how the user accounts work, records are stored, as well as new features to enable users to compare changes between new and changed records, approve them, rollback, etc.

And there's certainly different views on whether advanced approval hierarchy processes are even the best way to deal with the issue.

That said, we'll certainly continue to add incremental features and if someone was interested in having this done as a custom job I'd be happy to talk to you about it. Feel free to email me at dave@interactivetools.com

Hope that helps!