TIDEngine News/Blog Manager

[bogyvet]

Thank you for response. I will try to solve your doubts.

After adding a new page and setting it as a "Master News Page" I've added

<?php tide_show_news(return_page_slug()); ?>

below

<?php get_page_content(); ?>

You add directly to page content over Admin Page, not directly in template. I did not make it that way.

<?php tide_show_news(return_page_slug()); ?>

1.
The news refuse to work when they are displayed on page named "news" with fancy urls enabled .
Next thing is that the url structure looked terribly.
Example news "first entry" on page "announcements" had an URI like:
domain/page-announcements-news-first-entry

This should not be problem. I add user to choose SEPARATOR. This was SEO solution all news in document root.

Mine solution fixes also displaying news on page named "news".
And - what I wanted to point next - fixed problems with dates, as they were not being shown.

There are no problem with dates as far as I know. All looks as version 1.2 ????

btw. after I renamed the page, to which I already added couple news, they disappeared in news management panel. I had to manually change the name of the directory in which files were saved, and - I don't remember if I had to - but open resave the news again.

Mate This should include changing GetSimple core, and I'm not Core Dev. I could find other solution.

I also wanted to grab a list of news from their proper page and show in a box on homepage.
Calling <?php tide_news_menu('news'); ?> works perfect, but it offers only basic behaviour of listing news from all or certain page. Is it already possible to invoke the function with parameters to format outputted data in the way I like ?
For example showing in a box last 3 entries, formatted in the way: header, date, excerpt, read more, and a link to the page with all newses at the bottom ?

That is not problem.

And as it goes about excerpt it could offer couple formatting options like: amount of chars and/or paragraphs or be cut by a "page break" button available in ckeditor. But it might not be that simple, as there's already a news summary, for news list on proper page.
Maybe using twice the page break would be possible ?

Yes it is possible, default is 100 chars.

3. templates

I've noticed there's a templates directory with .tpl files.
I assume those are views of all components used in tidenews.
Would it be possible to implement an option to create (manually) additional views, and assign them for specific page ?

It is possible but that would be over complicated for common user. I will write Page Menus Plugin for that. Have on my mind, but that is not related to News but to Pages.

I'd also appreciate an option to create categories and assign them to slugs, as it could simplify the workflow.
It goes like: add news -> choose category -> save
This way if a slug name/url changes, news related to it could be easily maintained (look at point 1).

For now Category == Page. When you choose New Page that is News Page that will hold News as News Category.

4. hooks to other plugins
I've noticed that non of most popular plugins doesn't work with tidengine.
It would be great if news plugin allowed to use i18n gallery, and search (this one has an api).

I will do that must check a little. I try for now to make Stable Plugin.

Considering most of above points, this would be a base to allow multilingual, dynamic articles.
It surely needs some tweaks for a custom url structure along with rewriting links.

Url structure is not problem (to implement your idea). My concept was different, but I will add your ideas.

5.
the design part
Since news summary isn't stripped from html tags, it allows adding thumbnails.

Wht that sould be a problem you have CKEditor. Or you means fixed News thumbnails???

But the default look of news list is horrible. Like the link structure

You have news.tpl and tide_news.css. You can create design as you like. I will build Plugin editor.

Default tpl should be as transparent as possible. Thus all the content should be shown almost as plain text.
No backgrounds, no rounded corners, no custom fonts and so on.
This way the plugin should inherit styles from currently used GS theme.
The more, allowing to enable/disable things like date/ read more, make the header clickable or not.
But those are fluff and aren't that important.

You have news.tpl and tide_news.css. You can create design as you like. I will build Plugin editor.

Automatically created URI's lack transliteration of special chars, thus an URI contains a weird "words".
This shouldn't be a big problem to implement, as GS handles this thing nicely.

I remove all special chars from News Slug. I will change that.

And about creating categories. Binding them to pages, and then choosing categories from dropdown list during news creation, would be fantastic. If a website has >30 pages, choosing the right one from dropdown might be challenging

Means multiple Categories on one page. That shouldn't be a problem.

Thanks for your Response. I will try to improve most things. More response are welcome. If I know users needs I will write better code.

Thank you again.