A GOOD and versatile news manager needed

[andyash]

I have seen News Manager and Dominion Blog, and they both fall short of being really good news managers. News Manager sorely lacks categories. Dominion Blog is a little better but doesn't allow the user to browse the file manager to insert images. Nor does it allow the user to customise the image folder location other than Uploads (for the thumbnail, large picture selections). It's a pity since Dominion could really have been good. Another confusing feature is that it always loads the last blog post in the admin and one can mistakenly overwrite on it instead of creating a new blog post. It just happened yesterday with my client. Also I have seen over ten posts get deleted when I unchecked on the "Show graphical dates" button in the Settings. Additionally it doesn't support tags.

What I would really love to see in Getsimple is Featured Image on the lines of wordpress. Multiple categories, tags, custom excerpts, nested comments etc.

I just saw the News and Comments plugin but it required the exec_php plugin to be inserted inside pages and doesn't have a Getsimple shortcode to do so. Exec_php plugin itself is quite old and warns that it might interfere with other plugins so definitely News and Comments plugin is out of the question.

Anyone out there willing to help?

[mvlcek]

I have seen News Manager and Dominion Blog, and they both fall short of being really good news managers. News Manager sorely lacks categories.

...

Anyone out there willing to help?

I'm currently in the process of writing a plugin I18N Special Pages:

• similar to Items Manager, but all items are pages
  
• based on I18N Custom Fields, but multiple sets of custom fields can be defined, e.g. a set "product" and a set "news"
  
• easy, but fully customizable way to display the special pages with all custom fields
  
• easy customizable way to display the special pages in search results of I18N Search
  
• together with I18N Search you can get a news or blog behaviour
  
• multiple "categories" by the use of keywords, thus I18N Search allows you to filter the results, e.g. showing all news or just the "technology" news or "software" news.
  
• as everything is a page, you can include it in the navigation, search it, all plugins working with pages will work with these "special" pages, etc.
  

Disadvantages:

• everything is in the page list, but with the I18N plugin's pages view you can easily filter the pages by keyword or title
  

Donations welcome ;-)

[Oleg06]

I18N Search very good plugin for creating news with categories, sorry that he can not display images in a short news

[mvlcek]

I18N Search very good plugin for creating news with categories, sorry that he can not display images in a short news

It is already possible with the advanced features:

• Install I18N Custom Fields
  
• add a custom image field, e.g. named picture
  
• when editing the news item page, add an image link in this field
  
• create a component like decribed here, modify it, if necessary, and add an img tag to it (whereever you want the image):
  

Code:

<img src="<?php echo htmlspecialchars($item->picture); ?>" />

• call the I18N Search plugin like described here with a component parameter pointing to the created component.
  

There is also a simple alternative:

• include the image in the first paragraph of the page
  
• call the search results with parameter numWords=1p (1 paragraph), which should output the HTML of the first paragraph including the picture.
  

[andyash]

All of the above sounds good but too techie, kind of tough for the clients (end users) to use comfortably. Can i18 add a separate tab (like it does with i18 Gallery) and add all the news pages there. Have an excerpt section where the user can browse/insert a thumbnail and in the main blog post area he can insert the bigger pic. Using keywords as category creates another issue since most users would treat and use keywords for SEO purposes and with this approach there might be another issue.

If I want one page to show all blog posts in the category News and another page to show all blog posts in category Blog and yet a third page to show posts from another category, how do I achieve that?

My main problem right now is a beautiful site I have done in GetSimple and due to the limitations in News Manager I might need to port the entire site to Wordpress, since suddenly the client has decided that he wants the Blog/News sections to be much more active than he had initially wanted them to be.

[mvlcek]

All of the above sounds good but too techie, kind of tough for the clients (end users) to use comfortably. Can i18 add a separate tab (like it does with i18 Gallery) and add all the news pages there.

I already have identified this as an additional functionality.

Have an excerpt section where the user can browse/insert a thumbnail and in the main blog post area he can insert the bigger pic.

If you want an explicit excerpt that would be an addional WYSIWYG editor field with standard image browing like the main content.

Using keywords as category creates another issue since most users would treat and use keywords for SEO purposes and with this approach there might be another issue.

I don't think that these keywords present an issue, as the page really is a "product" or "news" item. Additionally get_i18n_header() removes "technical" keywords starting with "_"

If I want one page to show all blog posts in the category News and another page to show all blog posts in category Blog and yet a third page to show posts from another category, how do I achieve that?

With I18N Search you would tag all blog posts with "posts" and then the different posts with "news", "blog", ... Searching with tags="posts" would show all posts, searching with tags="posts news" would show news, etc.

[n00dles101]

I'm doing up a tutorial for my site which has blogging/news setup just using mclvek's Customfields plugin and some php functions handle everything else (paging, categories, tagcloud, search etc... )

check it out here: http://www.digimute.com

The basic setup is;

o - setup customfields
- publishdate - date its was published
- author - author of post
- comments - whether comments are enabled on post or not
- shortdescription - for excerpts
o - setup a blank page called "news", a second one for "blog" if needed
o - all news items are normal pages created with "news" or whatever as the parent.
o - Tags & keywords are used for categories.
o - as all news items are normal pages plugins etc can use as normal.

On my site I use the external comments plugin for handling comments.

So no messing about with plugins or extra tabs for the client. They just create pages as normal.

The only problem at this stage is that it runs on 3.1 which is still in beta.

I'll have the tutorial done by the weekend and post it up.


Mike....

[Oleg06]

There is also a simple alternative:

• include the image in the first paragraph of the page
  
• call the search results with parameter numWords=1p (1 paragraph), which should output the HTML of the first paragraph including the picture.
  

if I write

Code:

<?php get_i18n_search_results(array('tags'=>'blog', 'DATE_FORMAT'=>'%d.%m.%Y  - %H:%M', 'max'=>2,'showLanguage'=>0, 'lang'=>'ru', 'numWords'=>1p,'HEADER'=>null)); ?>

I get

Code:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_STRING, expecting ')' in D:\home\0getsimple.ru\www\plugins\exec-php.php(33) : eval()'d code on line 2

[mvlcek]

'numWords'=>1p

should be

Code:

'numWords'=>'1p'

[Oleg06]

oh yes, finally

[andyash]

'numWords'=>1p

should be

Code:

'numWords'=>'1p'

But if I want an image to show as thumbnail in the excerpt but full sized in the full post how will I achieve this? This is why I thought having a separate excerpt system is good. Dominion Blog/News already gives this but it has other shortcomings and doesn't seem to be moving forward from its Beta state.

[andyash]

I'm doing up a tutorial for my site which has blogging/news setup just using mclvek's Customfields plugin and some php functions handle everything else (paging, categories, tagcloud, search etc... )

check it out here: http://www.digimute.com

The basic setup is;

o - setup customfields
- publishdate - date its was published
- author - author of post
- comments - whether comments are enabled on post or not
- shortdescription - for excerpts
o - setup a blank page called "news", a second one for "blog" if needed
o - all news items are normal pages created with "news" or whatever as the parent.
o - Tags & keywords are used for categories.
o - as all news items are normal pages plugins etc can use as normal.

On my site I use the external comments plugin for handling comments.

So no messing about with plugins or extra tabs for the client. They just create pages as normal.

The only problem at this stage is that it runs on 3.1 which is still in beta.

I'll have the tutorial done by the weekend and post it up.


Mike....

My idea was to have a full featured News Manager so that hacking the plugins is not required. But I love what you have done. Will definitely wait for your tutorial. Meanwhile I18N Special Pages seems most promising, specially when it gets its own Tab to separate it from other pages.

[mikeh]

Here is a modified version of the news manager plugin with rss feed, categories, and an automatic RSS feed importer (to automatically import content from external rss feeds).. I am not currently offering any support on it do to time. Sorry everyone, i've been holding on to this for like 6 months ..

Edit: The automatic RSS importer attempts to setup the cron job automatically if you choose to use it.. If it does not setup (due to your server), you will have to manually set the cron job up.. instructions on how to do this are displayed if it fails.

Edit 2: I would unzip this into your root directory. I recommend looking at the stripped down template file in the theme folder of the zip to see the functions.

[mvlcek]

But if I want an image to show as thumbnail in the excerpt but full sized in the full post how will I achieve this? This is why I thought having a separate excerpt system is good.

Then instead of an image field add an WYSIWYG field with I18N Custom Fields, where you enter the excerpt including a thumbnail image. Then follow above instructions (with the component) but do not use htmlspecialchars(...).

[andyash]

Here is a modified version of the news manager plugin with rss feed, categories, and an automatic RSS feed importer (to automatically import content from external rss feeds).. I am not currently offering any support on it do to time. Sorry everyone, i've been holding on to this for like 6 months ..

Edit: The automatic RSS importer attempts to setup the cron job automatically if you choose to use it.. If it does not setup (due to your server), you will have to manually set the cron job up.. instructions on how to do this are displayed if it fails.

Just tried it. Looks good. But if I have an image in the first paragraph it doesn't show in the excerpt.

Edit: Just tried the News and Comments Plugin as well. Quite like the way an image can be attached to show in the excerpts. But his translation to English is pretty poor in the forum and couldn't make out how to activate comments. Would have preferred a simple radio button inside the settings to switch comments on/off. Though his demo at http://cumbe.no-ip.biz/gs_30/list_news/?pag=2&grp=Arroz is quite amazing. Also, when on a blog post it doesn't have a backlink to the main news page.

At times I wish there was a flatfile/xml version of Wordpress with all its features intact. Am I wishing for too much from GetSimple? Out of the 100 odd CMSs that I have tested in the past couple of years, I find GetSimple the most promising, having seen it from its early days but never deploying it since those days GetSimple didn't have a decent gallery nor a good news system. Now I want to port my earlier sites to GetSimple, but the things I have mentioned are a must.

Please Guys, help me out. We are Nearly there.

[mikeh]

Here is a modified version of the news manager plugin with rss feed, categories, and an automatic RSS feed importer (to automatically import content from external rss feeds).. I am not currently offering any support on it do to time. Sorry everyone, i've been holding on to this for like 6 months ..

Edit: The automatic RSS importer attempts to setup the cron job automatically if you choose to use it.. If it does not setup (due to your server), you will have to manually set the cron job up.. instructions on how to do this are displayed if it fails.

Just tried it. Looks good. But if I have an image in the first paragraph it doesn't show in the excerpt.

Yea this plugin is made for my clients, which in their websites cases, do not need images in excerpts. I mostly posted it for the rss feed, rss importer, and categories.

Edit: You can assign a post to a category you created in the "Page Options" on the post.

[andyash]

In your modified News Manager that I just downloaded and tried out, The categories from the sidebar aren't working. When I click on a category a message says "Oops! Page not found! We are sorry, but the page you are looking for does not exist."

Why is it there? I know for sure I created two categories and put one post in each. The main blog page shows me both post excerpts and clicking on them takes me to the post. The Recent Posts, Blog Archive links are all working fine. Only the Category one doesn't.

[mikeh]

In your modified News Manager that I just downloaded and tried out, The categories from the sidebar aren't working. When I click on a category a message says "Oops! Page not found! We are sorry, but the page you are looking for does not exist."

Why is it there? I know for sure I created two categories and put one post in each. The main blog page shows me both post excerpts and clicking on them takes me to the post. The Recent Posts, Blog Archive links are all working fine. Only the Category one doesn't.

As I mentioned, I cannot provide support for this modifed plugin. I made it for my clients and it works perfect for them. Ex: http://tinyurl.com/naplesyok

However, I will take a look at it if you provide me with a url to your blog page. Or if you are doing it offline, a couple screenshots or examples of the exact errors.

[andyash]

Found the issue. With Fancy URLs on the categories weren't working. Without Fancy URLs they were working fine. Then I saw the issue was in the .htaccess file. There was no rule for categories. I just added this line to the rewrite rules area

RewriteRule ^photo-blog/category/([^/.]+)/?$ index.php?id=photo-blog&category=$1 [L]

now it all works fine.

Great Job. Just trying to add an image through custom_fields plugin. But it seems custom fields is visible only for pages and not for this news manager plugin since I can't see it there.
EDIT: In any case once I put the image through custom_fields for pages what code do I use to show it on the page?

[Oleg06]

But if I want an image to show as thumbnail in the excerpt but full sized in the full post how will I achieve this? This is why I thought having a separate excerpt system is good. Dominion Blog/News already gives this but it has other shortcomings and doesn't seem to be moving forward from its Beta state.

You can write a rule in CSS http://u-la-la.ru/

[mikeh]

Found the issue. With Fancy URLs on the categories weren't working. Without Fancy URLs they were working fine. Then I saw the issue was in the .htaccess file. There was no rule for categories. I just added this line to the rewrite rules area

RewriteRule ^photo-blog/category/([^/.]+)/?$ index.php?id=photo-blog&category=$1 [L]

now it all works fine.

Great Job. Just trying to add an image through custom_fields plugin. But it seems custom fields is visible only for pages and not for this news manager plugin since I can't see it there.

Thanks, glad you figured it out.
If you are using an already modified News Manager plugin, you should be able to grab the necessary functions with ease. I tried to follow the same file and function structure. I hope the RSS importer will be of use for some people.. It helps my clients a lot.

[andyash]

You can write a rule in CSS http://u-la-la.ru/

That's exactly what I'm looking for but do not know how to do it.

[mikeh]

You can write a rule in CSS http://u-la-la.ru/

That's exactly what I'm looking for but do not know how to do it.

#class-or-div-of-element-excerpt-is-in img {width:25%;height:auto} or {width:100px; height:auto} or {max-width:100px;height:auto}

Is the above something that would work for you?

[andyash]

#class-or-div-of-element-excerpt-is-in img {width:25%;height:auto} or {width:100px; height:auto} or {max-width:100px;height:auto}

Is the above something that would work for you?

Will try out the same and let you know if it works.

[Oleg06]

I created a special template for short news appropriated body tag class compilation

Code:

.compilation article p img {
    margin : 5px 10px 0px 0px;
    width : 160px;
    padding : 4px;
    border : 1px solid #d3d0bc;
    background-color : #e9e6d3;
    float : left;
    height:auto;
}