CMS Made Simple Forums

Does anyone know if there is any documentation for the news module? All I've found is the help included with the file, and it's not terribly helpful.
I'm not clear about what the form in the news section of the 'add content' section is supposed to do, and I can't get the summary function to work.

-and, does anyone know what the difference between 'submit' and 'apply' is?

There are two ways to add News, and to be honest I'm regretting that decision.  First way is the usual {cms_module module='news'} tag inside a Content page.  The second way is to use News as a content type itself, and therefore the entire {content} tag in your template is in use by the News module.  All of it's options are basically the same options you can put into your {cms_module} tag, but in convienent GUI form.    This works well for News archive pages (http://cmsmadesimple.org/news.shtml).

The summary is kind of silly.  It basically creates links to an archive page.  It just makes a link to another page that you setup with all of your News stories on it.  So, you make a page called archive and then set your summary='archive' on your front page (or wherever you want to place it).

Oh, and submit = "Save and Go Back", apply = "Save and Stay Here"...  like most Windows dialog boxes.

I see, sort of... I thiknk if you are going to keep the GUI interface it'd be good to

I disagree that the summary function is silly though, I think the ability to have a short tease for a news story on your home page is potentially really useful. What I'd prefer is for the news stories to each have their own page though. It'd be good to have a facility to put a picture into each story too. Having an archives page is useful, but I'd rather have that on an 'older news here' type static button.
The picture issue is obviously a bit more difficult, means either trusting the user to come up with a pic that's sized properly, or building in automatic resizing (which sounds hard to me!)

I totally agree.  The News module really needs to be rewritten.  It's definatly the first module that was written, long before the API rewrite and there is lots of old cruft in it.  It's probably something I'll take on myself after 0.10 comes out (or maybe even before if I get a few free hours).

Is it usefull to put a picture direktly into news or would it be better to make a nother field like
Images for the news entry.
This field shows tumbnails for each news so if someone want to see the picture its does not matter
what size the picture have becouse the tumbnails aren't big.
In your text you could say like you see in img03.jpg or something like that.
I am writing a module called produkts.
It s managing produkts maybe it could be taken for the ground of the new news module.

Kris

I have thought about a module for presentation of employees. It should probably be possible to add a picture and a few common parameters. Maybe a generic product (or item) module could be flexible enough to handle similar cases?

Jon

I have add an imagegalery feature to produkts it could be usefull for News rewriten.
This imagegallery will be come as an module.
maybe it fits the needs.

kris

- Kishman: I'd definitely like the pic in the news page itself, and I think from a useability point of view just sticking it in when you write the story is better than having to upload it somewhere else and then associate it with the story. Having the option of a thumbnail appear with the summary is a great idea. I think it would be best to treat the news story and both pics as a single object so they could all be automatically deleted at the end of the story's run if required (believe me, automatic deletion of old content is a godsend for site admins) Being a 'keep all you options open' type of person I'd like to be able to keep or delete any or all of the three content types though. What I'm envisaging is being able to write a news story, include a pic, have a summary + thumbnail on the front page; and then automatically archive the story to an archive page with, say, the thumbnail - deleting the picture... Sounds complicated, but could potentially be really useful.


-jon: sounds like what you are thinking of could be handled by a news type module (just set them to run forever, and manually delete them as they get fired ) - as far as 'common parameters' I think I'd just be looking at mapping the fields to HTML elements and styling those elements to suit. If you wanted form based input that's a different kettle of fish... Wishy?

the ability to upload documents into the news section would also be a good feature - then if the website content managers had a .pdf for example which needed to be distributed to the readership of the site it could be done through that!

just a thought

Geo.

pbol: I thought at the first to alow user only to insert images what are in one folder related to the news so if the user starts a new entry it would create an folder like (news/newsname/image.jpg).
At a Editor in he only could taken the  images what are inside that folder.
When he insert an image it will automaticly show as an thumbnail.
Then its does not matter what kind of size it have and the load time will not be avected.
if there are images inside that folder the reader could see it in the imagegalery if he wants.
there is an automatikly resize funktion implemented in produkts wich could resize the image.
it would work with urldecode so it is posible to set stanard with an size of the images.

Geo: The ability to upload documents must be restrikted to mimetypes and size so your server couldn't be
changed to a fileserver for anybody.(the admin must know the filetypes set the right paramslike jpg,gif,pdf,png)
i think these are the only filetypes a user should have permission to upload.

kris

The ability to set more than one category to an article and as a parameter within the module call would also be terribly useful (like you can with Calendar). I basically treat 'category' as a keyword and in so doing can deliver content-specific 'events' to the right-hand column of my site.

I'd love to see a revision of this module! :0

Hi there,

man, I still haven't figured out how to use the News module. On my news page I have the following code:

{cms_module module="news"}

And in the news module administration I have this code in the "show template" field:

{cms_module module="news" dateformat="d. F" swaptitledate="true" category="Aktuell"}

How do I get the news entries onto my news page? I just don't get it. Please help.

And also: how do I use the "RSS template" field?

Hi Alex,

I don't know what "show template" field you are referring to. I don't have one and I certainly don't enter any module code in the admin screen. Either of the code snippets you have below should work just fine when inserted into a site template or page. You might want to try an UPPERCASE N for News though.

Steps to success.

1. Click News module link from CMS and Add News Item. Don't bothr to set a start and end date (this may also be your problem). Just set/leave an expiry of 6 months.
2. In your site template or dedicated 'news' page, simply add {cms_module module="News"}. Play with paramaters later.

The news should now appear in your page. You can style it using the classes applied by the module. A sample CSS would be a handy thing here. [hint hint, wishy]

Good luck.