Two things:

1) Can you make it so when you click on a column header it sorts by that column in an alternating asending/decending mode?  It would make it easier to find things.

2) Discovered an oddity (not a major issue or a problem).  When I look at my profile's posts it appears they sort by the full date except posts from the Article Manager forum which appear to be showing up based on month/day only.  I attached a photo of a 2010 Article Manager post mingled in with my current posts so you can see what I'm talking about.

I have tables of MLS real estate listing data that are fully refreshed by a nightly import.  I would like to set the default sorting to the record's entry date (newest first) and then price (highest first) on my list view page (and if possible my editor).  Unfortunately I can't use CMSB's "createdDate" field because every record is today's import date!

The downloaded data does have fields for this ("entry_date" and "listing_price") but "entry_date" is imported as a text field and the data also includes the entry time.  As a result, when I setup the sort in the editor, every record ends up having a unique date field which ruins the second sort on price.

Example of the data:

Record #1: "2012-12-22T21:51:12.363"

Record #2: "2012-12-22T20:36:52.657"

etc.

So my questions are...

In the sort tab of the section editor, is it possible to limit "entry_date DESC" so that it only looks at the first 10 characters of the field? (i.e. just the date portion of the data or "2012-12-22")

If I can't sort this way in the editor (which is fine) how would I place this limit on just the list view page?

In searching the forum the best answer I could find was to change the field to a date field, but when I tried that it generated an error message.  I'm assuming it's because the imported data isn't formatted to CMSB's idea of a date.  If this is the only solution that will work, what would that field's data need to look like prior to importing?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Sid

Pretty sure the other forums I frequent tie that to user profile.

It's official, you can now add, "spam filtering" to the top of your build list!! ;-)

(see today's posts by vina)

I think other forums will usually default new users to a moderated level until after their first post is approved.  There's also capcha implementation, IP/user blacklisting, etc.

Sid

Anyway, I do have two fields in the downloaded data for this:

"entry_date" and "listing_price"

My problem is that "entry_date" is imported as a text field and the data as it's imported looks like this.

Record #1: "2012-12-22T21:51:12.363"

Record #2: "2012-12-22T20:36:52.657"

etc

Because it's a text field, the editor's sort is looking at the whole field (not just the year, month and date) which makes every record unique (killing the ability to sub-sort the day's entry by price).

In searching the forum the best answer I could find was to change the field to a date field, but that generated an error message- apparently the data isn't formatted to CMSB's idea of a date.

So questions...

In the sort tab of the section editor, is it possible to limit "entry_date DESC" so that it only looks at the first 10 characters of the field? (i.e. "2012-12-22")

If I give up trying to sort this way in the editor (which is fine), how would I place this sort limit on the list view page (where I really need it)?

If it can't easily be done in CMSB, I am using a Perl script to clean up the data's txt file before it's imported (using simple substitution commands).  What would that field's data need to look like in order for CMSB to recognize it as a date?  It seems cleaning up the data to make it a CMSB date might be the easiest way to go.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Sid

I would also love to see you open up a Code Canyon-type storefront for third-party plugins, site templates, gateways to other scripts/CMS Systems, etc.

On the RSS idea...  That is something I would probably use.  I have the plugin page RSS'ed to one of my browser's home page so I never miss something new.  Your old Forum software also had an option where it would show you all the posts since your last login.  That's another nice way to keep up-to-date with the conversations.

Thanks

Sid

getRecords(section) errors
Can't set both 'perPage' and 'limit' or 'offset' options at the same time, choose one!

The goal is to show 10-12 records on a page (with arrows when applicable) but limit the overall search results to 100 (plus notify the user when there were more than 100 so they keep searching and/or narrow their search criteria).

I believe the goal of this rule is to make it more difficult for datascraping.  Without it someone could set a bot to search the site with wide open criteria and just have it keep clicking on the next arrow until it scraped the whole DB.

Anyway, haven't quite figured out the way around this.

Thanks again though

Sid

Most real estate sites by the arrows that jump pages will say, "Your search returned X records, only the first 100 are displayed," when it goes over 100.

Thanks in advance for the help.

Sid

It does let you edit (and delete) posts after they've been submitted should you need to make a change.  Looks like there's no time limit on that (at this time) since my post from two weeks ago can still be edited.

I've been able to find all the posts I've authored over the years by going to a thread I've commented on, finding one of my posts, then clicking on my user name.  That page will also have an Edit Profile link at the top. Admittedly that's a lot of steps to find a profile.

With that said, I just clicked on your profile name and there's only 5 messages there (all from this month).  Then I did a search for you and found a second account with all the rest of your messages.  It's here:

http://www.interactivetools.com/forum/forum-search.php?k=user:gkornbluth

Also just realized your user name is your email address (which scratches an item off of my last email). 

Hope this helps, Sid

I did what you suggested and then defined my Viewer URL as this:

"street_number, street_name, street_suffix, city, state, zip_code, matrix_unique_id"

But my list page's <?php echo $record['_link'] ?> only shows the first field (regardless of what it is) then it still shows the system's record number (i.e. detail-page.php?<field1>-<num>). When you click the link it doesn't go to the correct record either, it goes to the first record in the DB.

Mapping that all out manually with "matrix_unique_id" being the field searched on like this:

<a href="http://www.domain.com/detail-page.php?<?php echo htmlencode($record['street_number']) ?>-<?php echo htmlencode($record['street_name']) ?>-<?php echo htmlencode($record['street_suffix']) ?>-<?php echo htmlencode($record['city']) ?>-<?php echo htmlencode($record['state']) ?>-<?php echo htmlencode($record['zip_code']) ?>&matrix_unique_id=<?php echo htmlencode($record['matrix_unique_id']) ?>">LINK</a>

ALMOST works except the URL breaks because there's spaces (instead of dashes) in the URL where there's spaces in a field (in the example below, after "Austin" and "St.").

http://www.domain.com/detail-page.php?4413-Austin Pass-Drive-St. Charles-MO-63304&matrix_unique_id=31177685

Ultimately, what I want to accomplish is a clean domain like this (with my detail page being the index.php in /homes/):

http://www.domain.com/homes/4413-Austin-Pass-Drive/St.-Charles/MO/63304/31177685/

Is there anyway consulting services could make it so this one table is rewriting over "num" with my matrix_unique_id field (or substituting matrix_unique_id for num when defining records)?

I'd really like to eliminate "matrix_unique_id" from the URL since it doesn't mean anything to anybody except it's the only unique number in the database for searching/saving records (since "num" changes daily). Renaming the field to something shorter (like "id") creates a problem for my import scripts which match the schema to the first line in my txt files (which is defined by the source, not me).

Thanks, Sid

Second, here are several things I noticed about the Forum's reply emails...

1) All emails are coming from "dave@interactive..." which can be confusing to people who are both active on the forum and communicating off-line with Dave directly.  It also makes it difficult for people who use email rules to put incoming forum emails in a folder (because Dave's emails go there too).  You might want to include a display name in the emails that identify it as a Forum Reply as well as create a "forum-admin@" or "messages-noreply@" email address to send the messages.  It would probably make since to set a noreply email as a changable default before you release it.

2) Your email titles include user's email addresses.  Probably not good protocol since many users may not want their real emails exposed (for spam or security reasons).  User Names are probably more appropriate.

Example that caught my attention:

[itools CMS Forum] gkornbluth @ ----------.net replied: New Beta Forum - Help  us test!

3) It would be nice if you included the content field (or the first 100 or so characters of it) in the reply emails so users don't have to launch a browser just to read the reply.  Especially nice for mobile devices with slow connections.

4) Eventually you'll want to offer more options than just Turn Reply Emails On/Off.  It's pretty standard today to offer options for bundling reply posts (like 10 at a time), daily/weekly digest of replies, etc.  That way you're not inundating users with incoming emails on a very active topic.

Hope this helps

Sid