Ted,
Great idea! I've not been an active forum poster, but I'd be willing to put together some articles. What's been posted so far is really good.
I agree that a better channel is needed to highlight tips and tricks. As a user, right now there are too many different places to find information. I'd like to see one major repository for tutorials and tips/tricks, with a standardized hierarchy or categories (by module or function). I'd like to be able to find all the relevant information and tips for a given module or feature in one place. A good master knowledge base would really help people get more out of CMS Made Simple.
- There are some really great information in the wiki, though it can be hard to find. For example, there are two different (though essentially similar) pages for templates and stylesheets. Some great tags and tips are hidden away in the FAQ area. As a user, it's easy to miss good information. As a wiki contributor, it's hard to know where to add new items, so either I don't contribute, or I add to the problem by posting my information wherever I think makes sense at the time or wherever the last person added something.
- The Themes site has a few good tutorials that I hadn't seen; here again, there are two essentially similar areas -- a Tutorials section and a Tips and Articles section.
- There are some great tips and enhancements in the forum, but they're usually tied to a specific problem or question, and it's easy to miss a good tip in a response because of the title of the thread. Sometimes a great thread topic ends with "nevermind, I fixed it" from the original poster instead of "and here's how I did it." Lastly, if today I'm not using the Calendar module (for example) and next month decide to add it, finding tips on how to get the most out of the module isn't easy.
In short, I think the blog will be a great way to call attention to tips and tricks, especially if it's linked to a broader goal of capturing and sharing practical information. Articles could be cross-posted to/from the blog, or the blog could be a brief summary with a link to the full article. If more categories are added to the blog, it might be fine as the repository.
For everyone here, for myself and any other potential contributors, can we build a list of the top article/tips to be written up? Users, please chime in here with article topics you'd want to see. Long-time gurus, list the topics that keep coming up and you've answered time and time again and wish were covered somewhere. I'd love to see some "how-to" articles written by/with module developers to show off what their modules can do.
Here's a few I'd like to see:
- An Insider's Guide to the Menu Manager
Tutorials on implementing template tweaks and CSS styling for popular menu styles. Since this is such a core module, a whole series could be developed. Horizontal menus, vertical menus, CSS-only, Javascript pop-ups, etc.
- Page-Specific Images
How to display a specific image based on the current page, whether based on page alias, parent menu level, date, random or other common variable to enable different page headers, sidebar images and similar effects based on the current page.
- Multi-Language Support
Techniques to implement support for multiple-language websites. Options can include use of Katon's CMS Made Simple variant, separate page hierarchies for each language, back-end/admin language options, etc. Techniques to track/implement language-switching though variables, cookies, etc.
