News Module Browsecat Help Needed

[applejack]

Hi

I am trying to use the News modules browsecat function so that it displays in 2 different ways.

The structure of the News Categories is:-

Marketing
    January 2008
    February 2008
    etc

Programs
    January 2008
    February 2008
    etc

I need 2 displays one with the list of children regardless of the parent and showing the total count for that child category

January 2008 (5)
February 2008 (2)

And the second display showing just the parent also showing the total count

Marketing (7)
Programs (4)

For both displays each will link to a page showing all the articles for that type of category.

A more complex News category structure would be to have 3 levels and in this case to also have the display for the years

Marketing
    2008
        January 2008
        February 2008
        etc
    2007
        January 2007
        February 2007
        etc

Programs
    2008
        January 2008
        February 2008
        etc
    2007
        January 2007
        February 2007
        etc

[Pierre M.]

Hello,

I don't understand why you divide with time. Aren't start date and end date builin news ? Couldn't you just have "Marketing" and "Programs" categories and use the category and the time as parameters of the {news ...} call ? Or is it impossible to mix parameters this way ?

Pierre M.

[applejack]

Hi Pierrre

It makes sense to be able to categorise News in multiple ways for a user to be able to navigate i.e. by type and by date. This is I am told pretty standard way of doing it for Blogs.

[Pierre M.]

Yes, of course, I understand it "makes sense to be able to categorise News in multiple ways for a user to be able to navigate i.e. by type and by date". My point was to try to use categories for the type and then use parameters of the {news ...} tag call (have you seen the help about it ?) to get the wished result (category xyz from start date to end date).

Pierre M.

[applejack]

If one were able to pass the start and end dates to the browsecat function then yes it would be possible to do it the way you suggested but as the standard install you can't. I am sure that with some Smarty code in the browsecat template or the underlying code then this could be achieved.