Pro_News version 3.2: Lots of Improvement

Aaaaaah! A picture's worth ... Now I see what you are getting at.

Headlines (using normal templates) doesn't have pagination as I mentioned, the idea being that you have a fixed number of Sections, and 1 Headline "block" per Section, so you control the number of blocks and thus the size of the page by selecting which Sections are included in Home.

Normal Home display (non-Headline) has pagination support, 'cos it's needed.

But what you have here is mostly Home (non-Headline) display being output via the Headline code (using the -nh template). I'd intended the -nh templates for the reverse of this - mostly Headlines, but the 1st Section displayed in full to intro the site, whatever - much as you've done with the Featured_Content module.

Not sure how I can help you here. I could add pagination to Headlines, but if I did it would be a new parameter that said "Number of Sections per Page", which won't work in your case, 'cos any value greater than 1 will cause this run-on. And there's no way to paginate that I can think of which will handle both formats sensibly/reliably.

It if wasn't that you already had Featured_Content as a Center-Up block, I'd say switch your Headlines off, use standard template, exclude first Section from Home, and instead place it in a Pro_News Headline center block. Unless Feature_Content is/could be in a Message, then the above might work....

BTW, if your Section and Category titles are always the same, you can delete either from the template to reduce the number of headings.

I'll see if I can think of any other method. FWIW I want to add the 3rd slide method - which isn't used in F_C at the moment - into Pro-News in place of the current Slideshow, sometime.

I take a look at your suggestion regarding the center blocks. I may be able to get that to work.

It would be great if some sort of F_C was added into pro_news, maybe a block or something that you could add image/articles to by making them "featured".

- fishingfan

It would be great if some sort of F_C was added into pro_news, maybe a block or something that you could add image/articles to by making them "featured".

No, I was thinking of making this a standard (alternate) display to current slideshow.

The "extra" display mode offered by the underlying code is a large image with a row of smaller images below, with currently displayed large image in around center position. Essential same as you have, but with thumbnails of the images instead of the titles. Suspect this was not added to F_C because of work to make thumbs, etc. But I already have them!

Here's a simpler example - lower right (4th) version.

So - given that the code is added into Pro_News first - it's 'just' a matter of a new template to show the gallery pictures as 1 thumb-sized picture, with a row of icon-sized pictures below. Roll mouse over icon-sized row and you can see whole album without paging forward/backward. Click on big picture, and new window opens with full sized image, and thumb-sized or icon-sized row of images below. Beautiful, and it's what the latest real estate and ebay auto sites are showing, in effect. And very little overhead.

I'm sure it's not going to quite as simple as it sounds, but ...

Back to topic ....


Are we good to go IYHO's ?

BuG - functions.php

Line 1771

		$forum_topic = $story['ctopic_id'];

s/be

 		$forum_topic = $story['topic_id'];

Or else the forum topic is never used and you never get join discussion links working correct.

Apart from that. Yes - Good to Go.

@fishingfan: Thanks!

@masino: You happy to release?

- layingback

@masino: You happy to release?

Before you release the stable version, would you like add my index2col.html template file to your package (article directory) so those who want to use this template (including me) are able to test for themselves and this will give us feedback from them.

You may also add the index2col.html in submit sub directory based on any template you have modified for the last time.

Does it make sense for you, layingback? Thanks.

Sincerely,
Masino Sinaga

Sorry for delay, but I've found a bug, and not had time to address.

If a Section is set to display in Home, but the articles created for it are set to not display in Home, the warning to Admins still appears, so need to adjust the "No Articles to Display" to shut it up if there aren't articles which are supposed to display. Looks a bit naff.

Goal of warning was to alert Admin of a Section for which there was no Category set up (although the improved Admin > Category display does that job well now) or no articles added. So maybe I suppress the message if there are any articles in the Section, whether display-able or not...

- layingback

... Goal of warning was to alert Admin of a Section for which there was no Category set up (although the improved Admin > Category display does that job well now) or no articles added. So maybe I suppress the message if there are any articles in the Section, whether display-able or not...

Thanks, layingback. I know you can improve how it should be, do you?

The problem was caused by the new Article display/no display option, combined with setting of Headlines: Yes, Display By: Categories within Sections and Number of Arts / Section: n. If the first n records are found in the first Category, and the other Categories have only non-display in Home articles you get the warning for each! There is almost no way to analyse this ahead of time, short of reading db twice - once to figure it out and again to actually display. So I've set the No records in Section/Category warning to only occur if Display By is set to Sections only.

Purpose of the error was to handle support questions along the lines of: "Why do no articles show on Home Page?", so now I'll just ask them to set Display By to Sections. And no change needed to code.

Other things: I have discovered that if Photo Album Number of Articles to show on 1st page is set to 0, then slideshow doesn't work. I've partly fixed this, but without at least 1 showing on 1st page, Pro_News doesn't know exact size to make the pop-up window. Will leave like that for now. But I have added code so that if number for 1st page is = 1 and Slideshow is enabled, then clicking on that 1 image will start slideshow in popup, instead of default action of displaying the 1 picture

I'm rather too busy to make a re4lease right now,. plus I have to investigate an error still: I'm not seeing More Pages link on gallery templates - but it may be my template ...

I've fully fixed the missing 'More Photos' button. Seems it has been that way for a while! Missing! (???) Test for More Photos for 1st page is different to test in subsequent gallery pages. But an over-zealous global edit a few months ago eradicated that diff. Grrh!

Still we are set now for the fancy in-situ slideshow (a la Featured Content)!

Will release this version to Sponsors later this week I hope.

Hi LayingBack (and Team), Whoa Great work on PNs!
Finally after trying and trying to figure out why PNS 3.1 was not able to reconize my ForumsPro custom install (A Custom One called 'Foro').. Finally i've found this:

on Pro News 3.1
modules/Pro_News/admin/admin_functions.php
line: 1336 (xD almost the 1337 line! ha! )

'T_FORUM' => ($forum_module == '1' || $forums_module == '') ? ProNewsAdm::admin_forumlist($forum_id) : ProNewsAdm::admin_forumsprolist($forumspro_name, $forum_id),

And found a "bug", the reason why PROnews was not able to list my forums from my PRO install called "Foro":

Fix:

'T_FORUM' => ($forum_module == '1' || $forum_module == '') ? ProNewsAdm::admin_forumlist($forum_id) : ProNewsAdm::admin_forumsprolist($forumspro_name, $forum_id),

The problem was "$forumS_module == ''" , since $forumS_module was not defined before that condition always return and true and then ONLY the CPG standard Forums are listed, and NOT the ones from a custom install from Fpro.

I've checked (scanned) the 7 pages of this post and have not found something related to this "issue". That's why i'm posting this ;D

Excellent Work, finallly i'll start to play with NP.
Thanks.

greenday2k please enter your server specs in your user profile!

greenday2k, Thanks for the feedback. Fix is in for the next release.

Sorry for the delay getting it out, but as you can tell, it's been 1 addition after another since 3.1! Life's much better now that people who can read php are involved, but actually getting the release out is harder!

I've checked (scanned) the 7 pages of this post

Then I guess you've seen the comment about the dynamicdrive plan above, switching slideshow to use their display, similar to but not the same one as those in Featured Content. Hope you don't mind ... That will be a subsequent release though

No problem, I've been looking for different sliders, and i'm about to choose one based on jquery. mm About the Featurent Content i'm working to make it just a Block (top block) to be easier to use it.

Also, i'll start making a template for Pro News which uses an accordion (sorry, i just fallen in love with jquery).

greenday2k please enter your server specs in your user profile!

3.2.0.4 released to Sponsors Group. Please check it out asap, and I'll then release - to registered members, and then the world!

Only a couple of minor fixes in addition to those mentioned above. Nothing dramatic in this release, so hopefully testing will go fine!