Complex front-end layout - will this work?

[t_lund]

Hello!

I've used CMS Made Simple for my rather simple personal site for a while now, and I love it to bits. Congrats to the developers for creating sucha wonderful end product!

I'm now setting up a new site that I would like to manage with this CMS.
Although the CMS handles all sections of data corectly (news, articles, upcoming events calendar...), I don't know what the best way is to get this to show in my design for the site.

The front page consists of four columns (News | Events | What's On | Articles)
These are shown on one page, aligned horizontally. When viewing What's On calendar events I want them to be browsed within the What's On column, and not disrupt the other content. However, when an Article is accessed, I would like it to go to a new page with a dedicated tamplate.

Is this possible?
I am really not keen on using iframes as this would make things extremely complicated.

Perhaps I am asking the wrong questions, but I hope I made my problem clear.
I'd appreciate any help or advice. Thank you.

[t_lund]

*bump*

Surely this must be an issue that is at the very heart of content management?
I'd really appreciate some help!

[kishman155]

This could be done if you are using cookies in the site to say CMSMS witch layout the site
had bevor the the user hits a button.

You could write a modul to make 4 type of colums.

the modul should read the cookies to know in wich colum he schould show wich site.
The function to do this is implemented at the /lib/class.content.inc.php
i think its this one

Code: Select all

LoadContentFromAlias($alias, $only_active = false)

the

Code: Select all

$alias

could be id or alias of the content

now you want to to load articels in a new window with an definite template.

you create a site with the template you wish and insert this module and define if get stopcolum to
only show articels

this could be done with javascript and smarty in this modul to open a new window

Code: Select all

window.open("http://yourdomain.com/index.php?page=articels&stopcolum={$articels}", "Fenster1", "width=310,height=400,left=0,top=0");

It's not so simple as to make standard layouts,
but i think it could be done without using frames
and don't change any corefiles.

For this kind of layout you should play around with the modulesapi and contentapi
to make these things done.

i hope this could help a little bit

mfg
kishman155

[t_lund]

thanks for your response, kishman155!

unfortunately that looks to be a bit too advanced for my skills.
at this time i wouldn't be able to write such a module