CMS Made Simple Forums

I recently downloaded and installed v 1.8.2 "without content & templates".   I
then added a couple basic content pages and then added another news category, in addition to the default example that is initially included, and then added a single additional news content (assigned to 2nd news category).  When viewing the site, the news module displays fine but the links to the news categories are broken. (I did not try to discern what was in error in the url strings).

Upon seeing nothing amiss in the News Admin area, I then deleted the database
tables entirely and reinstalled CMS (This time choosing to install all sample
content and templates).  I then added the same 2nd News Category and 2nd News
Content item ..and viewed the result.  All was fine and worked as expected.  However, as soon as i try and delete one of the sample content pages from the default installation, the links to the News categories break!

Thinking I'd made some sort of mistake, I then deleted all tables and reinstalled again
(again choosing "without content and templates").  However, upon plugging in some
initial data, the result was, once again, - broken News Category Links.  
Note that, in both cases, the News Module does link correctly to individual news
items ....just not to the overall News Category; links to these result in 404
errors.

 Am I overlooking something - or is there a bug here that has a fix?
Has anyone else encountered this issue?

Can you please explain exactly what happens with the broken links and can you provide us a link?

I am going to move this to the Product Support board, you'll probably get better response there and this isn't necessarily an installation issue.

tyman00 wrote: Can you please explain exactly what happens with the broken links and can you provide us a link?

Not sure what else to say, exactly.  The URLs, when clicked, just deliver 404 responses.  This happens on either the newly added category links as well as when clicking on the default installation example's "General" news category link.  But it seems only when one either deletes some of the default installation's test pages (as in preparation of adding ones' own) ...or also when installing CMSMS using the "do not include default pages and templates" option.


I'll have to install a local copy again, under the above parameters, and post the actual urls generated for you.  Back in a bit....

Okay, i just installed a fresh copy.  
I unchecked the "Install sample content and templates" option during the install.  
All pre-install checks produced green checkmark results ...and at no point did the system display any issues or unusual behavior.

From the default install's homepage, with absolutely nothing added other than what v 1.8.2's  generates during its' own install, the news link to the "General" category is broken.
The broken link is pointing to:
http://cmsdemo.dev/index.php?mact=News, ... urnid=news

I checked this in comparison to my other installation (whose News Category Links ARE working) , and the LINK Path is exactly the same.

Since the bare-bones install has a problem regarding News Category LINKS while the complete Install does not (not until you try and remove the sample pages), i decided to reinstall a complete install version ...and delete the sample pages, one at a time, to see which page deletion caused the problem.  Here's what I found:

Starting at the bottom of the expanded sample pages list, deleting them one at a time, as soon as you remove the News page:  4.1.1 , the Category links break.

Armed with this info, I went back and looked at a default "bare-bones" installation of CMSMS and
sure enough, as one would suspect, the News page "4.1.1" of course, never is installed.

So the question now is:  Why does the removal of the demo/sample 4.1.1 page result in no more Category displays ....or more to the point, what must one add to a "bare-bones" install of CMSMS to allow a Category view of News items?

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Just an FYI -  I also noticed that, during the many comparative re-installs, that the "install all sample content and templates" does not fully overwrite existing table content as one would expect. In my case, I manually deleted all table content beforehand to be sure since reinstalling using this option appended the default News Category "General" to whatever was already in that table - creating multiple "General" category titles.

What must one add to a "bare-bones" install of CMSMS to allow the links to work for Category views of News items?

Sorry, I didn't get a chance to review this till today.

npd1164 wrote: What must one add to a "bare-bones" install of CMSMS to allow the links to work for Category views of News items?

Honestly.... nothing.

I ran a few tests on a default install and it worked fine for me. You may want to try resetting the templates to Factory Default by clicking on the buttons for it in the "Default Templates" tab in the News admin. Then create new templates for Browse Categories, Summary, Detail etc and set them as default.

Finally, Can you please post an actual link to the site that you are having issues with?

npd1164 wrote: What must one add to a "bare-bones" install of CMSMS to allow the links to work for Category views of News items?

Thanks Tyman00 for the reply and suggestions - but here's what i found:

Okay- here's the issue and a partial explanation of what did not seem clearly explained elsewhere :

The news module is installed with either the "bare-bones" (no content and templates) version, or full.  However, with the bare-bones install, no "base" news page is included even though sample news items are.  Thus, in order to allow the category links to work, one needs to create a page (call it anything you like), but just be sure to give it an alias of "news".  It need not be viewable in the front-end menu system.   Doing so immediately restores the News Category display and gives the links a page to which to point.

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Okay, so this is a perfectly workable solution and for those familiar with the inner workings of CMSMS, this may be a no-brainer ...but for those who do not work with it every day or who are not overly familiar with the News Module, it is a stumbling block.  I'd like the devs to consider adding a provision for including a default page (alias=news) to the bare-bones installation - so that full News module functionality exists for that install.

Also, as mentioned earlier in this thread, reinstalling CMSMS using the "Install sample content and templates" option appends the sample News content and categories to whatever was already in that tables - this should be corrected to drop these tables before recreating - so that a full install does what one would expect - which is wipe the initial content first.

Your last explanation gives a better idea of what is/was happening...

When installing default content it creates a page called news and thew home page has a news tag of {news detailpage='news'} so it goes to it when hitting the news title, or hitting the new news category link, when you choose to not install default content it doesn't create this page so the links are actually broken as far as where it should go...

Guess the install needs to be adjusted so it doesn't include the detailpage='news' part of the tag when not installing default content...

Nice catch DrCSS.

This can also be marked as solved. DrCSS already worked with calguy1000 to fix the default install to not include detailpage='news' in future versions

I'm glad at least i was successful in conveying my issue - and that i wasn't crazy.  LOL

Dr.CSS wrote: Guess the install needs to be adjusted so it doesn't include the detailpage='news' part of the tag when not installing default content...

Okay, but keep in mind that the current default install "without content and templates" still installs a single category and a single sample news item.  Although this, technically, IS still "content" I think that it should be retained as a single page (home) and a single news item ("News Module Installed") is a great base to illustrate a starting point for a "bare-bones" version of CMSMS.

Anyway, to all that looked at the issue and helped, much thanks!

The change to the installer won't affect that. It just removes the "detailpage='news'" from the {News} tag in the default template so it doesn't try to load the category links into a non existent page. It will use the same page the existing tag is located on.

Ah, okay ...i see.  Thanks.