Add Ons directory updated

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 15:14:01 -0800

I've added categories to the Add On store to make it easier to browse. The categories make sense to me, hopefully they make sense to you as well. :D

http://www.interactivetools.com/add-ons/

If you encounter any errors or miscategorizations, or have any other suggestions, drop me an email at theo@interactivetools.com.

Re: [Theo] Two sections on same page referencing same section editor

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:45:10 -0800

(The reason I'm pretty sure this is the problem: when you go to page 2, your headlines sidebar changes as well...)

Re: [cohagan] Two sections on same page referencing same section editor

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:39:25 -0800

I think you still have some conflicting viewer code. Make sure that ALL your variable names for your sidebar are different from your main content.

So if you're using "$latestblogRecords" in your sidebar, and "foreach ($latestblogRecords as $record)" to create your record list, in your page you could use "$chefblogRecords" and "foreach ($chefblogRecords as $chefblogRecord)".

Often using the variable $record is what gets you into trouble.

Re: [moh3] custom jobs

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 14:12:04 -0700

Thanks for letting us know that we had an error in our form! The good news is that it was a minor error and we got your submission! :)

We have a couple of our team away at the moment, but we'll get back to you as soon as we can.

Talk to you soon!

Re: [sfelix] Random Sort Rule ?

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 11:16:27 -0700

There's no built in functionality for random sorting. It might be easiest to find some sort of script to randomize content, then publish a file in a format that the script could read...

Re: [dondemaio] Inserting articles into current page

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 10:27:52 -0700

Hey, looks like you've figured out how to link to your articles, Don! Congrats. :)

Your next step is probably to customize the articlePages/articlePage.html template with the design of your site. Let us know if you have any further questions! [;)]

Re: [dondemaio] Inserting articles into current page

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 12:29:23 -0700

Sorry, Don, I thought you wanted to put the headlines right into your home page? If so, then you'll want to modify your home page itself.

Make sure you're replacing [ARTMAN PUBLISH FOLDER] with the exact path to your publishing folder, i.e.

Re: [dondemaio] Inserting articles into current page

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 12:03:16 -0700

Just a quick addendum:

If you're home page is index.php, your include will look more like this (please note the lack of slash at the beginning of the path):

Re: [felixr] How may I that the Users setup themselves?

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 11:45:22 -0700

Felix,

Thanks for the post! I'm not aware of any addons for an "add user" form.

As long as you're using MySQL, you could use a custom script to add users directly to the database, though.

Re: [entryan] Layout problems after switching to Article Manager 2

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 11:38:16 -0700

Ryan,

Thanks for posting. For 90% of Article Manager 1 sites, the converter does almost all of the work, but the converter just doesn't handle any workarounds or hacks.

In general, the things that you were doing dynamically in Artman 1 can be done through a number of custom publishing rules.

Is this the result of not replacing AM 2 with AM 1 (a server mixup), or is this something someone at IT can help with? I'm very reluctant to replace AM 1, since it could result in nothing but problems for viewers.

It sounds like your old category templates simply have too much custom code that's incompatible with the conversion utility. Our consulting team is really good at converting old Article Manager sites, but it generally goes far beyond the scope of what we can do with the regular support channels.

If hiring our consulting team isn't an option, then I'd recommend learning how to work with Artman 2 from the ground up, specifically try making some of the custom fragments you used to do with search queries using the new Publishing system. Once you've gotten a handle on that, try re-creating your original templates, and continue to publish into a test environment.

Also: during the upgrade process, an instruction says not to have the same publish/article directors as those used in AM1. Does that apply after the upgrade has been finished? One part during the process mentions that can result in files being deleted, but now that it's upgraded, I would prefer that the files be within the same directories, if at all possible.

When I'm finished upgrading (and fully test-complete, etc.), I also prefer to publish to the original folders. I'd follow this process:
- Rename the original publish folder (don't delete, just in case!)
- Rename your new publish folder to the same name as the old one
- Update the folder names and paths in Article Manager 2.

Hope that helps. If you want to get a quote on having us handle the process of migrating your templates, just drop an email to consulting@interactivetools.com.

Let us know if you need any further assistance!

Re: [mingyq] Impaired accessibility options

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 11:26:57 -0700

Thanks for the post!

Article Manager publishes as plain HTML, pretty much any HTML or CSS coding that you want to apply.

Typically, page-modifying features like these work by dynamically changing the style sheet - looking at the AFB.org page, their style sheet is actually an ASP page, so it's a bit of scripting done specifically for this purpose.

Because of the plain HTML and highly customizable templates of Article Manager, I don't foresee a problem with installing accessiblility add-ons. If you can make it work with a regular HTML page, it should work with Article Manager generated content just as well.

Thanks, let us know if you need any further assistance!

Re: [dondemaio] Inserting articles into current page

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 11:17:37 -0700

Thanks for posting, Don.

That link isn't working, so I can't get a perfect idea of what you're trying to do. :D

From the sounds if it, you've installed Article Manager already, and you want to add a list of headlines to your home page, linking to the articles you're publishing elsewhere. Sound about right?

What I'd do is:

1) Create a very simple template listing my headlines. Something like:



    $article.title$

2) Save it as "headlines.html" and upload it to [artman cgi folder]/templates/articleLists/

3) Create a new Publishing Rule in Admin > Publishing
- Click the "Create" button and name your new rule "Headlines"
- Rule Type: "a list of articles"
- Template: select your new /templates/articleLists/headlines.html file
- Placeholder Set Name: headlines
- Publish the headlines as "One File" and call it "headlines."
- Save the new rule, and then click the "publish" link next to it in your list.

3) Add a server side include to your home page.

4) You might need to change your home page to be index.shtml to get includes working with it. Then you can work with your headlines template to tweak the design, etc, or add other article fields like $article.summary$ or the category associated with it.

Hope that helps, Don! Talk to you soon. :)

Regards,

Re: [isdoo] Records Erase having no effect

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 14:09:41 -0700

I have not erased any records for a while, but clicking on erase has no effect - I do not get any confirmation or anything.

Thanks very much for the bug reports, everyone. 1.31 fixes these issues and is available for download now.

Re: [Djulia] Upcoming Beta: New "Editor Advanced Search" feature

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:50:03 -0700

It's live...! :)

http://www.interactivetools.com/iforum/CMS_Builder_v1.30_Search_Filters_P72760/

CMS Builder v1.31 Released (Advanced Editor Search Filters) update

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:45:48 -0700

We've just released v1.31 with many new features and improvements. Note: 1.31 fixes an issue with 1.30 where couldn't erase records.[/#ff0000]

The main feature of this release is new advanced search filters in the program interface. Now you have a great level of control over how your backend program users can filter and search. You could add a field to search by Author, an option to filter to only hidden records, or a pulldown to search by categories.

You can find documentation for this right in the interface. After upgrading, go to the Admin > Section Editors > (Section of your choice) and go to the Searching tab. There you'll find instructions in how to set it up and a list of options for search types.

For a full list of changes, visit the CMS Builder changelog:
http://www.interactivetools.com/products/cmsbuilder/changelog.html

CMS Builder users can upgrade by donation at this page:
http://www.interactivetools.com/upgrade/

I hope you like the new search filters, make sure you post your feedback and questions! We're always eager to get your feature requests and bug reports, every single release is full of use-requested fixes and features. Post in the forum or send Dave an email at dave@interactivetools.com.

Re: [Kimber] categoryMenu Adsense

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 15:43:35 -0800

Hi Kimberly,

Hmm, I can't think of a way to get it to show up in the middle of the category menus... unless you added them as their own special "categories", using something similar to the category menu external link tutorial, only instead of making them an external link, they would just display the adsense.

They wouldn't just show up automatically after every 3 categories, but would wherever you tossed in a special "adsense" category. Would something like that work for you?

Take a look at this tutorial (Putting Links In Your Article Manager Menu):

http://www.interactivetools.com/news/issue0063.html#2

Obviously, there are some tweaks you'll need to make -- for instance, the "External Link" field will need to be changed to a text field that you can insert your Adsense code into -- but other than that, it should be workable.

Give that a try and let me know how it goes. :)

Re: [Kimber] Create filenames with dashes instead of underscores

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 14:12:29 -0800

Hi Kimber,

Looks like that should work -- give it a try and let me know? Making changes like this won't cause any major problems, as it's just a minor javascript that generates an on-the-fly filename while you're typing the title of an article in. That's the only page it affects.

This method only changes the automatic filename assignment that occurs on the fly during an article creation. It wouldn't be able to go back and rename any old articles. The only way to do mass article filename changes is to modify the publish rule, but you wouldn't be able to simple strip out the spaces or underscores or dashes, but you could change it to something different -- say, the category name + article number, or the Article Manager 1 style "article_123" filename. Wouldn't be quite as specific to the article as the current filenames, though.

The other option is to simply type in the filename you want when creating the article, as opposed to using the automatically generated one.

I hope this helps. :)

Release: CMS Builder v1.09 (bug fixes, etc.)

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 17:41:51 -0800

I've just finished releasing v1.09, mainly some quick fixes for a few PHP 4 users.

If you're running v1.08 without any problems, there's no need to upgrade to v1.09.

For a full list of changes, visit the CMS Builder changelog:
http://www.interactivetools.com/products/cmsbuilder/changelog.html

CMS Builder users can upgrade by donation at this page:
http://www.interactivetools.com/upgrade/

Keep your feature requests and bug reports coming in! Every single release we've done is packed full of user requested changes. Post to the forum or send us an email (me at theo@interactivetools.com, or contact Dave at ceodave@interactivetools.com).

Talk to you soon!

Re: [aev] Tutorial: CMS Builder Search Engine

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 13:25:54 -0800

Here's a link to CMS Builder's search engine docs:

http://www.interactivetools.com/docs/cmsbuilder/viewer_search.html

CMS Builder v1.08 released! (PHP 4 & MySQL 4 compatible)

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 19:39:09 -0800

We've just released CMS Builder v1.08. We've put a lot of work into wider compatibility, including older PHP and MySQL support. Here are the version highlights:

COMPATIBILITY:
- Lowered PHP required to v4.3.0+ (over 5 years old)
- Lowered MySql required to v4.1.7+ (over 3 years old)
- Switched to 'mysql' extension (from less popular 'mysqli' extension)
- Added automatic code to disable 'magic_quotes_gpc' for servers that have it left on

SEARCHING:
- Added automatic date search suffixes (_year, _month, _day). Example: viewer.php?date_year=2008&date_month=1

For a full list of changes, visit the CMS Builder changelog:
http://www.interactivetools.com/products/cmsbuilder/changelog.html

CMS Builder users can upgrade by donation at this page:
http://www.interactivetools.com/upgrade/

As with all the updates we've been making, many thanks to all the users for getting us your feature requests and bug reports.

Now is a great time to get us your input, so post your feedback in the forum or send us an email (me at theo@interactivetools.com, or contact Dave at ceodave@interactivetools.com).

Talk to you soon!

New release: CMS Builder v1.07 now available (new searchability, drag-sort uploads, etc.)

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 14:04:02 -0800

CMS Builder v1.07 now available. This has some awesome new features, highlights include:

- Awesome new built-in search queries
- Drag-sort uploaded files
- Auto-create list options from another table's records

The new built-in search queries will make it super simple to dynamically create custom lists and to easily build powerful search engines (with no extra code).

For a full list of changes, visit the CMS Builder changelog:
http://www.interactivetools.com/products/cmsbuilder/changelog.html

CMS Builder users can upgrade by donation at this page:
http://www.interactivetools.com/upgrade/

Thanks so much to everyone for your feedback and feature requests. Between your input and our insanely rapid development cycle, this program has had some amazing additions over the last couple months. Anyone who might be lurking in the forum, now's a great time to send your feature requests and error reports, we can often have them released within days or less.

You can post to the forum, email me at theo@interactivetools.com, or contact Dave at ceodave@interactivetools.com.

Re: [Dave] Keep an article at top of page

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 14:25:50 -0800

You're slowing down now that you've hit 30, old man! Hah hah!

(...hope no one remembers that I'm 34...)

Re: [grauchut] Keep an article at top of page

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 13:43:12 -0800

Thanks for jumping in, Djulia!

If you didn't need the specific control mentioned in the other tutorial, you could have a simple checkbox to "bump" news items to the top. In fact, when you create a new "News" section, it will have this done automatically!

For existing editors, all you need to do is create a new checkbox called "featured", then set the orderBy value in your viewer to sort by date, with any items with the "featured" checkbox set sorted first:

$options['orderBy'] = 'featured DESC, date DESC';

And for another neat trick, you can keep your contributors from making ALL their submissions featured by making that checkbox an "admin only" field. Go to the Section Editors menu, click "Modify" for News, and then "Modify" for your featured field. Under "Advanced Options", setting the field to Admin Only will mean that non-admins can't decide which articles are featured!

Re: [justritedesign] Reorder News Items

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 16:41:51 -0800

Would it be possible to actually number each of the items (for now - until the drag and drop functionality is implemented) by adding a field that we could issue a number to and then use the "order by" option to set them up. I would need help figuring out, if it is possible.

Absolutely!

1) Create a new text field for your news with the fieldname "orderPriority"
2) Set higher values for the ones with greater priority (i.e. the ones you want to show first) because you'll want to sort in descending order. If you sort low-to-high (ascending order), items with blank values for the field will be sorted first!
3) In your list viewer, set the orderBy option to this:

$options['orderBy'] = 'orderPriority+0 DESC, date DESC';

You'll probably also want to set this as your List Order field in the Section Editor, so that the news list in the program interface sorts the same way.

I don't have an ETA on drag-sort for records, but this should help you get by until then. Let me know if you need any further assistance with this!

Re: [justritedesign] Reorder News Items

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 13:49:53 -0800

Michael,

Thanks for posting!

How do you reorder news items in the list view?

You want to update the $options['orderBy'] value in your list viewer page. This might currently be blank, or it might have one or more values already in, like:

$options['orderBy'] = 'date DESC';

Here are some common special sorting commands that you can use:

* fieldname DESC - The suffix "DESC" will sort the field in descending order (i.e. backwards). Attached to a date fieldname, this will sort the newest records first.
* fieldname+0 - sorts the field as a numeric value. Use this suffix if you are sorting numbers, but the sorting is coming out in a strange order (1, 2, 20, 21, 3, 4, 45, etc.).
* RAND() - Sorts the results in a random order. The results will be randomized every time the viewer is loaded.

If you need some help on some specific ordering requirements, please post and we'll see what we can do!

Is it possible to have them drag and drop as in the Sections Editor area?

Drag-sorting records is on the request list. I think it's a great idea, I think I brought it up to Dave while I was testing out 1.00 release candidate. :)

Add Ons directory updated

Re: [Theo] Two sections on same page referencing same section editor

Re: [cohagan] Two sections on same page referencing same section editor

Re: [moh3] custom jobs

Re: [sfelix] Random Sort Rule ?

Re: [dondemaio] Inserting articles into current page

Re: [dondemaio] Inserting articles into current page

Re: [dondemaio] Inserting articles into current page

Re: [felixr] How may I that the Users setup themselves?

Re: [entryan] Layout problems after switching to Article Manager 2

Re: [mingyq] Impaired accessibility options

Re: [dondemaio] Inserting articles into current page

Re: [isdoo] Records Erase having no effect

Re: [Djulia] Upcoming Beta: New "Editor Advanced Search" feature

CMS Builder v1.31 Released (Advanced Editor Search Filters) *update*

Re: [Kimber] categoryMenu Adsense

Re: [Kimber] Create filenames with dashes instead of underscores

Release: CMS Builder v1.09 (bug fixes, etc.)

Re: [aev] Tutorial: CMS Builder Search Engine

CMS Builder v1.08 released! (PHP 4 & MySQL 4 compatible)

New release: CMS Builder v1.07 now available (new searchability, drag-sort uploads, etc.)

Re: [Dave] Keep an article at top of page

Re: [grauchut] Keep an article at top of page

Re: [justritedesign] Reorder News Items

Re: [justritedesign] Reorder News Items

CMS Builder v1.31 Released (Advanced Editor Search Filters) update