Long time since I had anything positive to post, but I'm getting close now to having the ForumsPro link working. A couple more weeks should see it done, if everything goes to plan.

There will be a lot to beta test, so I'll be looking for lots of help!!!

Besides the ForumsPro bit (much of which was coded by Sarah) there is a big logic change to Admin > Sections (where most of the ForumsPro new code had to go). Also many changes to bring the Article templates HTML and CSS into compliance. Plus of course rolling in all the inline fixes listed in Forums here.

Finally, (if you you all promise to be good little testers ;-)), I have some enhanced code to handle 2 images (vs. he 1 before) so you can have 1 image in the Intro part, and a 2nd in the Story part. Plus I've decided to release to GPL the code to support displaying up to 10 Coppermine images in the main Story part of the article - with a very simple Admin interface, and neat CSS display. Allows you to create small albums in Cppermine, but only display them in Pro_News under your layout control, e.g.

Beta version will ONLY be available to existing registered members here at layingback.net. (I'm interested in quality feedback, not quantity ;-)) There will also be a small number of changes for the translators.

So if you are interested in being notified, please click DISCUSS and post that you're in, and give me some idea as to the areas you want to test.

TIA.

well, here I am

I just installed a new DF 9.1.2.1 testing-page with ForumsPro, the perfect playground


P.S.: keep up the good work

Count me in asd well

Golem please enter your server specs in your user profile!  

Thanks guys. Here's a status update.

Just last night I believe that I finally have a working interface to ForumsPro. There was so much to test, and so tricky to handle ForumPro's odd module/db file naming. Will now be able to have Forum only as for earlier versions, ForumsPro only (using default fpro name), or - the complex case - > 1 forum, which can be any of Forum, ForumsPro (as fpro), and any other ForumsPro's installed under any name.

These 3 options are selectable in Config. Idea is that for the approx. 98% (sane ;-)) users who have just 1 forum (either Forum or ForumsPro) they select once in Config and they are done. For the other 2+% crazies they can select which of their forums they want to attach too at Section creation time.

(Actually real reason for doing this very complex extra is to facilitate users changing over from Forum to ForumsPro, or vice-versa, because you can't change history for those posts already in place, obviously.)

Unfortunately, I'm not quite done, as I have this ForumsPro code, the fixes/patches listed in the Support Forum, and the extra image code handling plus XHTML fixes, in 3 separate code bases! (There was a good reason for it at the time ;-)) So I need to merge and ...

Will probably be too busy next few days, but after that, should be able to get a version out.

Interface to CPGNuCalendar will probably have to wait a bit, along with option to have DiscussThis code drop in a link back to the News Article into the start of the forum topic, rather than a duplicate of the entire article (to save space).

And please, everybody, list an area that you want to focus on to test.

Obviously everyone can report problems on everything, but I want to ensure coverage, so if you tell me what aspects of Pro_News interest you most, and you are therefore going to spend the most time on, I can get a picture of what will - and (more importantly) won't - get tested well.

TIA

Well, just tell me, what to do, because my site is for testing only, i can do nearly anything we need to *g*

Well, it is difficult to say on what part I'd like to focus: I have 2+ different sites that I am considering for NPro. Both with different needs. The community site would focus on the DiscussThis functionality for ForumsPro and the image upload functions, while on a production site is I am very interested in the other functions that where still lacking in previous versions (not sure if something has changed on this department. Please let me know if there is something in particular that needs special attention

Golem please enter your server specs in your user profile!  

Another update:

Later than I had hoped for, but I now have all 3 versions merged. Plus a few new fixes / features thrown in...

So all fixes posted on this forum are incorporated (as far as I'm aware).

2nd image feature is in, so you can upload an image for the Intro and a 2nd for the story part.

Uploaded images now have numeric filenames, better security, plus should work better for, eg, Arabic filenames, and gets rid of that annoying "Filename already exists" message.

Images are now displayed with a white border and a simulated drop shadow effect behind (shadow is hi res on CSS compatible browsers, lo res on IE; white border displays in real browsers, and perhaps IE 6&7 - to be confirmed).

Config option added to select Forum (CPG only / FPro only / any mix).

Config option added to post only a link back to the Pro_News article, rather than copying the entire article.

2 Config options to specify the truncation point in Headlines, separately for 1st and other articles.

2 new Config options to support the Administrator-only Submit Article features:

Photo Gallery link: Include up to 10 images from a selected Photo Gallery, by just selecting the Gallery, the display order (same as in Photo Gallery), and how many to include (up to 10), with option to add SlideShow button (for entire gallery). Note this feature does NOT respect Photo Gallery access privileges! So that you can set access to selected gallery to say Admin only, and permit viewing only through associated Pro_News article. Display is fully templated - of course - with thumbs and click-for-full-size, includes the picture captions, and the new image border and drop shadow effects in CSS.

Data Fields: Ability to include up to 10 custom text data fields per article. Allows simple database functionality within Pro_News articles. For now field names can be set in pro_news.php language file, along with covering title. Display is templated, with simple option to bold, etc, in pro_news.css.

Finally there is a new example template - indexalb.html - to fully support all of these new features.

Phew!

Golem, re you 3 requests:

1. Additional Sorting Order. Sorry, at moment I cannot see how to do it without a huge db overhead. Access every section to determine latest article within cat within sec is obviously too slow. Would need to add update to Section record on each update to record last article write date/time. Which is dodgey without record locking.

2. "Seperate" pn.content and pn.title classses. If you look in indexsp.html, you will see that the 1st headline is treated separately to Additional Headlines. So you can just change the div class in the html, and then define a new CSS style for it in pro_news.css. This will carry over for 2.0 as well.

3. Truncation and bbcode. Truncation is done for you, with separate values for 1st and additional hdlines. bbcode is still a problem - don't know how to efficiently code a selective bbcode strip routine, 1 that would keep track of all open bbcodes, then close those necessary for a neat result. Sorry...

Sounds great, I'm looking forward to test the new version ...

Im reporting in. I have been a away for a while now. Everythin have been working smooth so far. looking forvard to try the new release. Thansk for the hard work!!! I love pro news.

keneil01 please enter your server specs in your user profile!  

Ok, I just downloaded the new beta and will start testing ASAP ...

Starting to test and translate now, too. Sorry - have been a bit busy lately (and still am). Still not going to miss that one though

One small question right away: Given that you will stop support in the future (no implication intended !! Just asking !): Would there be a way back from Pro News to the standard news module?

Golem please enter your server specs in your user profile!  

No plans to provide a way back (remember I don't see this as a replacement for News, never have, but as an ancillary - handling Articles rather than news, ie. not time sensitive stuff. But Import was already there, and I never removed it.)

No plans to drop support. But even if I do, it'll still work except for possibly minor changes needed for DF version compliance. And as it is all GPL 2 or later, anyone can do this - much as Phoenix has done for CPGNuCalendar for example.

In fact I would LIKE someone else to get involved with the coding now. I don't WANT to 'own' it!

I would like to beta test this, I haven't been in the position to add myself as a beta tester until now but have been watching the development of the module closely as its something I have been after for a while.

Hecter please enter your server specs in your user profile!