Is this possible in CMSMS? - How to set expiration date for non-news content?

[ewmt]

I'm sorry if I'm overlooking something terribly obvious - but I can't seem to figure out if it is possible to have an expiration date on 'normal' content pages.

Let's say I want some content pages to be only available from November 1 to November 30 2007. I do not want to manually set the November pages as active on November 1 and as non-active on November 30.

I know News items can have an expiration date, including a set start date and end date. How would I go about if I wanted a section of my normal content pages ('non-news pages') to be automatically available from a certain start date until a certain end date?

Thanks in advance

Eric

[hotaru]

I don't think the normal "content" is intended to work in this way - but there's no reason you couldn't use the "News" module to create the content on your pages. All you need to do is change the styling of the "News" to match the appearance of your site.

[calguy1000]

Yes, and its easy enough to create a news summary template that could be used as a menu.

[ewmt]

Thanks Hotaru and Calguy1000, I'll be happy to try out your suggestions.

(By the way, maybe setting an expiration (or activation) date for normal content pages should be a feature request. I remember a certain CMS which I'm happily not wrestling with any more (it starts with a J) which does offer that feature.)

[streever]

Hmm, I think it's semantically more correct to expire news than pages--I don't think that pages should ever be part of the expiration system.

Pages are not necessarily periodic content, like news--a page is simply a holder for information. That information can change often or never--I think you're better off having pages that call in news content.

Do you know what I mean? I'm not trying to dissuade you from doing what you want to do, but just offering that, in terms of organization of data & semantic correctness, it's probably better to re-evaluate why you want to expire content--what content this is--and if there is not a better way to do it! I think using News and just styling it the way you like is the best way.

[ewmt]

Thanks Streever, I agree using News for now seems to be the best solution - although I won't be using it for 'real' news content. That's why I think other content pages should also have the possibility to have their availability within a certain periode of time set.

An example: the content I want to be temporariliy available is information about training courses. It's not news, it's 'product information'. But it does have an expiration date: some courses are only available in November, others only in December. Instead of the content manager having to deactivate all course information pages that are out of date, I would like to enable him to prepare all pages beforehand, and then automatically have the right information online in the right period.

So that's why I would like 'expirable' or 'temporarily available' normal content pages - but if the News module can be integrated into the site (and navigation system) and disguised as normal content pages, I guess that would do the job perfectly, too.