Re: [Donna] New Version of AM2 in the works?

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 14:40:55 -0700

Thanks Donna. We'll start on the project!

New Version of AM2 in the works?

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 05:48:51 -0700

I'm back after a year+ hiatus from my AM2 development;)

We're about to rework our site, including an upgrade to the latest version of AM2 (2.16 I think). FYI, our current site is on 2.02.

However, before we do the upgrade, I just wanted to check to make sure there is no "next best thing" coming down the pipe from Interactive Tools. Minor updates are certainly expected but I don't want to do the upgrade now, only to find there is a major release imminent.

Thanks for your understanding and support.

www.robertbunker.com

Re: [rebunkerjr] Initial Install - Admin/General Settings is Blank

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 13:27:06 -0800

I solved my own problem. The uploaded general.php file had a length of 0 (empty file). Makes me a bit nervous about the integrity of my upload and the quality of my FTP program (CuteFTP MAC).

Initial Install - Admin/General Settings is Blank

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 11:31:42 -0800

I just installed CMS Builder. Everything seems to be fine with the exception of the ADMIN/General Settings menu. I click the ADMIN menu item and I get the ADMIN screen with all the options (General Settings, User Accounts, Regional Settings). However, when I click the General Settings button, I get a blank page - no error message, just a blank page. Other ADMIN buttons work e.g. Regional Settings.

Any clue?

Re: [Donna] Error: SERVERBUSY: Timed out waiting for a filelock

Sun, 27 May 2007 09:06:27 -0700

I started getting these errors recently as well. I sent a nasty gram to my hosting provider thinking it was on their end. My PC based crawler, which checks for spelling errors and broken links, is also getting similar filelock errors; hence why I thought it was a hosting issue.

As suggested in the post, I checked my permissions on the /data directory. The directory was 777 but all of the cgi files within the directory were 666. I changed all files in the /data directory to 777 and ran a "publish all" to see what would happen. Following the publish all, the article.dat and the category.dat cgi files are now back to 666. Curiously, the other cgi files are still 777.

The good news is that the publish all ran without error.

Why are the permissions getting changed?

Thanks!

Adding a "New" Indicator Dynamically

Fri, 06 Apr 2007 10:26:40 -0700

This is an FYI post.

I was looking for a way to draw attention to "new" (i.e. recently added articles) on our site (www.robbunkerracing.com). There are several Categories on the site and the Home page only gets you so far. For people who visit the site regularly, all the articles tend to run together over time.

I also wanted the process to be dynamic, meaning that I didn't want to have to edit the article once it's published. Essentially I was looking for a way to dynamically tag each article with a "new" tag that would stay with the article for a predetermined period of time (in my case 30 days).

To do this, I created a small piece of Javascript that I inserted into the categoryHeadlines and articlesForGroupedHeadlines templates. I'm certainly NOT a Javascript expert so there may be a better or more efficient way to do this but the code is working for me... Scroll down in each template until you find the start of the articleRow. The color highlighted code below is new code that I added to both templates...

$article.title$
[/#0000ff]

It's important to note that Javascript starts counting months beginning at 0 (i.e. January = 0, February = 1, etc.). However, the AM2 article date variable (in green above) returns months starting at 1 (i.e. January = 1, February = 2, etc.). Accordingly, when you compare the two dates (in orange above), you automatically get a one month difference which was exactly what I wanted (strictly by chance).

You can very easily extend the time that the "new" indicator will stay on the articles by adding more days to the newUntilDate variable. To do this, all you need to do is change the following line from this:

newUntilDate.setFullYear([/#0000ff]$article.date:format(yyyy,MM,dd)$[/#00ff00])[/#0000ff]

to this:[/#0000ff]

newUntilDate.setFullYear([/#0000ff]$article.date:format(yyyy,MM,dd)$[/#00ff00]+60[/#ff0000])[/#0000ff]

This last line of code would give you the new indicator for 90 days; 30 days due to the Javascript anomaly plus 60 more days for a total of 90 days. You can also subtract days just by changing the + to a - in the last line above. This would allow you to keep the "new" indicator for only a few days. For instance, if you changed it to -10, the "new" indicator would be on the article for approximately 20 days (one month minus 10 days = approx. 20 days). The cool thing about the Javascript method is that it takes care of adjusting the months and years for you automatically. You simply add or subtract any number of days and the method figures out the new month, year, day of week, etc. for you automatically.[/#0000ff]

I'm sure there are other ways to do this but this worked for me. Hope this helps! Checkout the site to see it in action!![/#0000ff]

[/#0000ff]

Re: [Donna] Reverse sort order not working for next>> link

Mon, 19 Mar 2007 11:47:26 -0700

Thanks for the post Donna [;)]

Since there won't be that many articles in this specific category, I think I'll take the easy way out for now and just increase the limits to include all the articles on a single page.

However, is there a list of parameters for the dynamic search? This may come in handly in the future...

Thanks again!

Reverse sort order not working for next>> link

Sun, 18 Mar 2007 18:22:33 -0700

For one of my categories, I need to sort the articles in the opposite order from all other categories on the site. I created a custom template and publish rule for this category. The initial load of the category indeed sorts the articles in the order i specified in the publish rule - so far so good. However, when you click the next>> link at the bottom of the page, the subsequent page is not in the order specified in the publish rule. I'm not sure why this is... the resultant search.cgi call seems to be correct:

http://www.robertbunker.com/cgi-bin/artman2/search.cgi?action=search&page=2&perpage=5&template=articleLists/categoryIndexEvents.html&categoryNum=35&includeSubcats=0

It points to the correct template which is associated with the publish rule I mentioned. So it would appear that the sort order should be as specified in the publish rule for this template - but it's not. Not sure if this is a bug...

An alternative would be to specify the sort order (if this is doable) on the search.cgi string. I looked through the various posts, including the posts for the search engine, but I can't find a list of commands for the search engine.

Three questions:

1. Is the problem I've described a bug
2. Is there a list of commands available for inclusion on the search.cgi command
3. Is there a specific command to specify sort order and sort field for the search.cgi command

Thanks!

Bug in article date field

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 07:44:45 -0800

I have an existing site. I added a field via the Database Editor to the db_article table called Event Date with a field name of eventDate with type Date/Int. I only want a date in this field and do not need/want a time. Accordingly, I unchecked the Specify Time and Specify Seconds checkboxes in the Field Options. When I try and edit an existing article, i.e. one created before this new field existed, I get the following error message:

Error: no appFieldOptions specified! at (eval 179) line 3, line 99.

If I check he Specify Time box, the error goes away. I can live with this but it seems that we should be able to add a date only field without needing to add a time...

Thanks

Re: [ross] RSS feed includes illegal formatting for

Sun, 18 Feb 2007 08:10:46 -0800

This one is fixed! Thanks again.

Please refer to post titled "RSS Feed has an error" for resolution!

Re: [summer] RSS Feed has an error

Sun, 18 Feb 2007 08:05:03 -0800

[;)] Ross - you rock! This fixed my problem (in an earlier post) as well!

Thanks!

I need help finding a "shopping cart" for my site

Sun, 18 Feb 2007 07:47:30 -0800

I have a site under development using AM2. The site is just about to go live (www.robbunkerracing.com) but I want to add a simple lightweight shopping cart. Initially, the cart would allow visitors to order autograph cards and other free items but eventually we want to offer licensed products (t-shirts, etc.) for sale so the cart will need to accomodate credit card, PayPal, etc payments.

Any suggestions would be welcome.

Thanks!

Re: [dbramley] RSS feed includes illegal formatting for

Sat, 03 Feb 2007 14:40:19 -0800

Thanks for the post!

Actually, my feed works fine with Google Feed Reader and Newsgator but DOESN'T work with IE7 due to the special characters you mention (as well as some other [;)]).

My IE7 RSS light is WORKING, it just gets errors trying to read the special characters.

Re: [rebunkerjr] RSS feed includes illegal formatting for

Thu, 01 Feb 2007 20:01:50 -0800

We're not quite out of the woods. The feed works great when viewed by an aggregator (like NewGator or Google Reader). However, it doesn't work with IE7. IE7 is apparently looking for strict XML compliance and the use of certain special characters makes the feed reader in IE7 fail.

In my articles, the most common special characters are for things like m and Montrl.

Perhaps you could consider a placeholder modified of xmlEncoded to properly "escape" these special characters.

Need help with sorting issue

Wed, 24 Jan 2007 13:01:00 -0800

For my globalIndex page, I set the publish rule to specifically EXCLUDE one particular category (multimedia). When you bring up the globalIndex page for the first time, the results appear correct, i.e. no articles from the multimedia category appear. However, if you use the Next Page>> navigation to go to the next page, and then go back to the beginning by selecting the <
try it... http://www.robertbunker.com/artman2/publish

Thoughts?

Re: [dbramley] Article Printer Pages: Tip

Wed, 24 Jan 2007 07:36:24 -0800

Great tip. I have a robots.txt file at the top-level directory in the site, but as you point out, this will avoid duplicate info as the robot crawls through the published sub-directory.

Re: [jferry] Image Tag Problem

Wed, 24 Jan 2007 07:33:28 -0800

As I uderstand it, AM2 intentionally places uploaded images in the /1/ subdirectory. Presumably this is being done to better manage the number of images in any given subdirectory. Again, as I understand it, as the /1/ subdirectory grows, AM2 will at some point start putting the uploaded images in a /2/, /3/, etc subdirectory.

I think you'll probably need to do the copy you suggested.

Re: [ChetW] RSS feed includes illegal formatting for

Wed, 24 Jan 2007 07:27:20 -0800

Thanks Chet

Over the past month or so I've managed to do a fair bit of customization to the rss template. It's working great. Thanks again for the help.

Re: [ross] Can I use existing images in new article?

Wed, 24 Jan 2007 07:16:16 -0800

Thanks for the reply. Please keep me posted [;)]

We need a mini-tutorial on proper setup/use of checkbox

Wed, 24 Jan 2007 07:14:50 -0800

I've been reading through many of the posts and have implemented bits and pieces of the various posts in our site. One of the areas of confusion for me is in how to setup and use the checkbox feature. A mini tutorial in this regard would be very helpful :))

There are two areas from the posts where checkboxes are key to our design - "featured" and "not onfrontpage". However, there appears to be contradictory advise concerning the setup of the checkbox. For instance, from the Admin Panel, I select the Database Editor and then select edit table & fields for the db_article table. If you are creating the field for the first time, you select add field at the bottom right corner of the panel. Alternatively, if the field already exists, you select modify for the field in question (e.g. featured or notonfrontpage). In either case, you are then presented with the Field Editor screen where you can setup/change the attributes for the field in question. Of note is the "field type" dropdown which is set to checkbox.

So far so good but from here, the story starts to get a bit fuzzy. Under Database Options, you need to select the correct "Stored as" attribute. The posts are contradictory here. Some of the posts suggest selecting integer while others recommend string. Given that there is no option for boolean field types, and given that the checkbox is a binary object, i.e. it's state is either checked or not checked, it would be logical to assume (oh boy!) that the integer field type is the best choice and that the checked/not-checked state of the checkbox would be represented as the integers 1 & 0 respectively. This all seems to make sense until you get to the "Field Options" section where you are asked to specify "Checked value" and "Unchecked value". There is a note on the panel which says "(displayed by placeholders)". I'm not sure exactly what to make of this but I'll come back to this in a moment. On the one hand, I'd assume (here we go again) that if the "Stored as" is set to Integer, then the "Checked/Unchecked values" should be set to 1 and 0 respectively. Alternatively, if the "Stored as" is set to "string" then it would seem that the correct setting for "Checked/Unchecked values" are Yes/No respectively (actually I think it could equally be Green/Red or even Checked/Unchecked).

So why does this matter? I've tried both ways (Integer and Text) and I'm having issues getting the sort sequences to come out the way I expect. In addition, I will (eventually) need to use some templateIf statements in the templates and I'm not sure if I'm testing for feature eq "Yes" or feature == 1. Perhaps the Checked/Unchecked value fields are meant for this purpose. Perhaps the checkbox is treated internally as a boolean object (for thinkgs like sorting) and the Checked/Unchecked values are simply intended to represent the "placeholder" values associated with the checked/unchecked state of the checkbox. If that's the case, then one would assume that the templateIf would check for Yes/No, Green/Red, Checked/Unchecked or whatever else you specify in the "Checked/Unchecked value" fields (assuming the field is set as string).

In summary, the questions are:
- what is the correct "Stored as" parameter?
- what is the correct way to test for the state of the checkbox?
- how does the state of the checkbox effect the sort sequence?

Some clarification here would be very helpful. Thanks!

Re: [ChetW] Google Sitemap and AM2

Sun, 21 Jan 2007 11:48:43 -0800

Thanks to everyone who contributed here. I wanted to create a Google sitemap and had no previous experience so these posts were extremely helpful - Thanks!

I downloaded the template file (provided earlier in this thread) and created the publishing rules as noted. I modified the names a bit to conform more closely with the standard AM2 formats but essentially I followed the recommended steps.

However, the provided template did not produce a "clean" xml file - as noted in this thread, Google shows a status of "errors". When I reviewed the template file, I noticed it had several templateIf's that it didn't need. Most notably, it was trying to specify article attachments in the generated xml file. This could have been causing the problem...

After cleaning up the template file, the generated sitemap is read and processed by Google successfully! Thanks again to everyone who posted - I'm a happy camper :))

I've attached my template file for reference. Please note that you would need to change the topmost URL to point to your site. You may want to play with the changefreq field but, according to Google, this is a guideline not a command. I take that to mean that they pretty much ignore it :))

Regardless, my strategy in the template was to establish a "daily" frequency on the top-level globalIndex page and a "weekly" frequency on the underlying articles. This may or may not work for you so you'd need to change the changefreq parameter as required. Note also that I used the "last change date" of the article rather than the "article date" for the "lastmod" parameter. For me, this makes sense given that I periodically change some of the articles subsequent to their actual article dates. Again, you may want to use the article date rather than the last change date here.

I also did not bother with the "priority" parameter since all of my articles are essentially equal in priority. In addition, the priority parameter does not actually effect the indexing of the articles. Rather it is used as a prioritization for the bot when crawling very large sites - not an issue for me as I have relatively few articles.

Other than that, it's a simple template. It assumes that you have articles published so there is no templateIf to check for a "no articles" condition. I figured if you were interested in generating a sitemap then you probably have articles :))

Good luck!!

Can I use existing images in new article?

Sat, 20 Jan 2007 11:47:48 -0800

I frequently use the same image for multiple articles. The problem is that I have to upload the (same) image for each article. This results in wasted space on my server. When creating a new article, is there a way to point the image placeholder to an existing file rather than uploading the same file again and again?

The interesting thing is that the article creation page says "Add or Upload File(s)" but in reality you can only Upload...

Thanks!

Re: [ross] Unable to open file attachements in new browser window

Tue, 19 Dec 2006 18:18:24 -0800

Thanks for the post.

Yes, that is what I had to do but hard coding only goes so far - in this case it works but I can imagine a day soon where it won't be sufficient at which point I'll have to get into the whole separate template/publishing rule thing which I'd really like to avoid. Bottom line... yes please put in the enhancement request.[;)]

Thanks!

Re: [Donna] No ability to sort image uploads

Tue, 19 Dec 2006 18:14:47 -0800

Thanks for the post.

Well, I guess it's sorta working as expected given the scenario you describe (and probably how the images were originally intended to work). However, I don't use them in a conventional fashion. In other words, I don't embed them in article using placeholders. Rather, I use them as a workaround for the fact that my server does not support thumbnails (so I had to come up with a different approach). If you read my posts concerning Photo Gallery you'll see exactly what I mean.

Example can be found here: http://www.robertbunker.com/artman2/publish/published_articles/cunningham_motorsports_test_photo_gallery.shtml

So, given the way I use the images, the order does matter. This wouldn't be too much of an issue if the upload process kept them in order. However, contrary to what you'd think (and what you imply in your post) if you put say 5 images on the upload screen, they are actually uploaded in some random order, not in the order you place them in the upload list. As a result, I have to upload them one at a time to ensure the proper order which is very time consuming.

Thanks

Unable to open file attachements in new browser window

Sun, 10 Dec 2006 21:32:14 -0800

If you upload images during article creation, you are given the ability to specify extended attributes, such as links and more importantly, the ability to open the image in a new browser instance.

I would like to be able to open my attached files in a new browser window in the same way as with images files, i.e. via the "open in new window" check box.