New articles module

[wientanz]

Hi!

I'm looking for a module to have the ...say... last 5 added articles shoen on the startpage. Do we have something like this? And if not, how to do it? I can try to do a new module, but will need some suggestions on the how.

Thanks in advance, als always.

[cyberman]

Ähmmm, don't know I've understood you right, are you meaning this  :

Code: Select all

{cms_module module="news" number="5"}

[wientanz]

No, I don't want the dedicated NEWS articles, but, well, let's give an example...

Over the time new articles (content, not News) gets added like, say, an article about "10 ways to emberass your dancing partner". Over the time a lot of new articles get addes. And I want to have my visitors see these improvements at a glance on the startpage.

Like:
New articles:
10 ways to emberass your dancing partner
10 way to emberass yourself
Viennese Waltz - Do's and Don't's

optional with some arguments like
10 way to emberass your dancing partner (added on CreationDate by EnterNameHere)

and if that's not possible (in general) than the last 5 changed articles or something like that.

Clear now?

P.S.: These articles are strictly fictionous, but hey, I actually got some funny ideas... *grin*

[calguy1000]

Many people are using the News module just for this purpose.  Because news articles can be sorted into categories, you can use one category for "Articles", and another category for "News" and display them differently.

There are optional parameters to the news module to control the display of the articles, as well as optional start and expiry dates for each article.

In short, I think that you could use the news module for what you want.

[wientanz]

Hmm... I don't think so because the news items aren't in the menu, are they?

[calguy1000]

ah, I see your iidea..... and I kinda like it.
No, news can't do that (at the moment).

but with some minor changes to menumanager I think it may be possible..... or another menumanager template, hmmm, I'll discuss this with Ted, as I think this could be a powerful feature as well.

Writing a new module wouldn't help you much as there still would need to be some core modifications or modifications to menumanager to build the menus.

[wientanz]

well, I would go another way. I would try to make a DB query looking for the latest 5 articles (content, not news) and put them in a array and echo them. And this way I can have a "written by Author" and "added on CreationDate" as well.

Because I want to use this with PERMANENT articles, I strongly doubt that the news module is the right tool for that.

And this way you don't have to change the MenuMaker. Even though I use 12.1 I work with CSSMenu. Adding that feature to Menumaker would therefore not work for everybody.

[calguy1000]

A plugin or module for that would be cool as well.... but I'd look at the heirarchy manager it may have tools to do this easily.

[wientanz]

mhm... if somebody could do that it would be great. If nobody does, I will try to do it. But I doubt that I can finish this job because of lack of time, CMSMS internal knowledge and lack of in-depth knowledge of PHP. But I can try.

What is the hierachy manager?

[calguy1000]

The problem with writing these modules is that everybody would like to do it, and nobody has the time

I'm already maintaining 12 myself.

Anyways, the Heirarchy manager is an object designed to aide in navigating and managing the content heirarchy.  You'll find it in lib/classes of your installation directory.

I've talked to Ted, and it looks like adding News articles to the content may be added to the 1.0 roadmap.  News author, and date published are already available for the news templates so they would be available on your pages. 

It still would be cool to have a "resent changes" plugin or module that told us of updated pages, new news articles, maybe new uploads, etc, etc.

[wientanz]

exactly my opinion