News Manager (updated)

[Carlos]

about the new NM searchbar, please delete that space between input "text" and "submit" because it leaves a unsightly gap between the window text and the button that can't be fixed with CSS solutions.
...

Ok, fixed in development version.

If you want to test it, replace the file news_manager/inc/sidebar.php in 2.5 beta 10 by this one:
https://raw.github.com/cnb/News_Manager-...idebar.php

PS also fixed in News Manager Addons (0.8.1)

[Connie]

Dear Carlos,

here I come again with a suggestion, I think that is more polite than a whish ;=))

On a friends's site (http://www.kunstundnatur-steinfurth.de/) I print the news by tag in the sidebar

Code:

<span style="text-transform:capitalize;"><?php get_component('nm_tags'); ?></span>

the component is

PHP Code:

<?php nm_list_tags(); ?>

The situation:
we have to use 2 tags (natur, kunst)
but the users do not see these 2 standard tags, when adding a new post.
I have to tell them (and they forget, for sure) to use the tags "natur" or "kunst"
but they do not care about capitalization and so I often get more than 2 tags shown in the sidebar (Natur, natur, NATUR .. whatever)

that's why I need either the chance to UpperCaseT-Translate the output of the Tags-Names

or (what would be absolutely perfect):

a select-box with pre-defined tags...

what do you think?

By the way: I include a modified german language file, as the text for "add New Post" was misleading (my clients do not alwasy differ between "news-post" and "page", so I modified the text to

Code:

"NEW_POST"            =>  "Neuen News-Eintrag erstellen",

I think it is more intuitive now ;=)

adeu,

Connie

[maciek257@gmail.com]

Hi everyone,

Is it possible to have two news managers in the page?

For examlpe i want to have news from culture and from sport - two sidebars in home page.

Is it possible?

P.S. Sorry for my English

[Carlos]

Is it possible to have two news managers in the page?

For examlpe i want to have news from culture and from sport - two sidebars in home page.

Multisite support in News Manager is planned for the future.

Right now you could use tags for this:
- Add tags culture or sport to your posts
- Insert links to the tag pages (YOURSITE/tag?=culture, ot YOURSITE/tag/culture if you use fancy urls) somewhere in your theme or component(s).
- List the latest posts for each tag by installing and using the News Manager Addons plugin (like this)
The bad thing about this is that News Manager doesn't currently support pagination for tag pages ("older posts" ... "newer posts" links).

Alternative solutions for having some kind of multiblog/news support in GS, without News Manager, could be I18N Search and/or I18N Special Pages. Not the easiest ones, but very powerful and flexible.

Another possibility could be using a different plugin for each blog/news site: News Manager and/or GS Blog and/or Pages&Blog and/or Matrix Blog and/or etc.

[maciek257@gmail.com]

Thank You very much for your reply.

I think the best solutions for my is apply tags.
I don't need pagination so that is no problem.

In my opinion News Menager is the best plugin to GS so keep it up.

Thank you again for help!

[Carlos]

The situation:
we have to use 2 tags (natur, kunst)
but the users do not see these 2 standard tags, when adding a new post.
I have to tell them (and they forget, for sure) to use the tags "natur" or "kunst"
but they do not care about capitalization and so I often get more than 2 tags shown in the sidebar (Natur, natur, NATUR .. whatever)

I'll probably add a setting to force lowercase tags.

By the way: I include a modified german language file, as the text for "add New Post" was misleading (my clients do not alwasy differ between "news-post" and "page", so I modified the text to

Code:

"NEW_POST"            =>  "Neuen News-Eintrag erstellen",

I think it is more intuitive now ;=)

You did News Manager's German translation, so I'll make any changes you tell me. But, are you sure about this? I don't understand German, but I can see that the word Beitrag is used all over the language file as a translation for post. If you change it to Eintrag (or News-Eintrag), shouldn't it be changed in other strings too?

[D.O.]

Bro, sorry, nothing to do: I tested your fix and it didn't work...
so I fixed it in this way... there were some mistakes... check it again.

PHP Code:

<form id="search" action="<?php echo $url; ?>" method="post">
<input type="text" class="text" name="keywords" value="<?php echo $placeholder; ?>" onfocus="if (this.value=='<?php echo $placeholder; ?>') {this.value=''}" onblur="if (this.value=='') {this.value='<?php echo $placeholder; ?>'}" /><!--[if IE]><input type="text" style="display:none;" disabled="disabled" size="20" value="Ignore field. IE bug fix" /><![endif]--><input type="submit" class="submit" name="search" value="<?php i18n('news_manager/SEARCH'); ?>" />
</form> 


[Carlos]

Bro, sorry, nothing to do: I tested your fix and it didn't work...
so I fixed it in this way... there were some mistakes... check it again.

Yep, bad tag, a stupid mistake.
Fixed in News Manager Addons 0.8.2, thanks.

[D.O.]

No problema, hermano.

[cork]

Where can I see a demo of this plugin?

Thank you.

[TeeJay]

Where can I see a demo of this plugin?

Thank you.

I can't show you the administration part, but I can show you the front end of my website where the News Manager is used - Tomáš Janeček - Články

In the left sidebar you can see the last news.

However, the News Manager now supports images for the posts excerpts and also "Read more" button. Thanks for reminding me, I'll sit and update to the latest News Manager beta

[cork]

Thank you, TeeJay. Can you set expiration dates to the news events so that they are automatically removed from the website when the event expires?

[TeeJay]

Thank you, TeeJay. Can you set expiration dates to the news events so that they are automatically removed from the website when the event expires?

Sorry to say that but you can't.

You can only set the date and time of publishing, so you can write it and let it publish itself a day after or anytime you want it to.

[D.O.]

Hi Carlos,
I got a question:
is it possible to display a maximum number of posts in a tag page (e.g. index.php?id=my_news_page&tag=category) just like the NewsManager main page?

[Carlos]

is it possible to display a maximum number of posts in a tag page (e.g. index.php?id=my_news_page&tag=category) just like the NewsManager main page?

Added to the to-do list.

In the meantime you may want to patch the plugin:

Edit news_manager/inc/site.php, find this:

Code:

$posts = $tags[$tag];

Just after that, insert this:

Code:

$posts = array_slice($posts, 0, 10); // patch: max number of posts

(example for 10 posts)

or if you prefer to use the number selected for the main news page, insert this instead:

Code:

    global $NMPOSTSPERPAGE;
    $posts = array_slice($posts, 0, $NMPOSTSPERPAGE); // patch: max number of posts

[D.O.]

WOW ultra FAST!
Gracias!

[Timbow]

Thank you, TeeJay. Can you set expiration dates to the news events so that they are automatically removed from the website when the event expires?

NM isn't an events plugin. It is more or less a blog, displaying and archiving articles as they are written with the assumption that most recent is displayed first.

I might have caused confusion by using it to display articles which are notices of future events, but it would be very useful to have a plugin to do that properly including the automatic removal of past events.

[Carlos]

Here's a (not-very-easy) way to use News Manager as a rudimentary events plugin:
http://get-simple.info/forums/showthread...6#pid38636
(requires the News Manager Addons companion plugin)

But surely it would be better to use an events-specific plugin. I don't know if there's any that currently works...

[D.O.]

Hi Carlos,
sadly it gave me these errors:

Warning: array_slice() expects parameter 1 to be array, null given in D:\Inetpub\webs\my_site\plugins\news_manager\inc\site.php on line 61

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in
D:\Inetpub\webs\my_site\plugins\news_manager\inc\site.php on line 62

[Timbow]

Here's a (not-very-easy) way to use News Manager as a rudimentary events plugin:
http://get-simple.info/forums/showthread...6#pid38636
(requires the News Manager Addons companion plugin)

Yes, thanks for that.

But surely it would be better to use an events-specific plugin. I don't know if there's any that currently works...

I don't know. And I don't know what sort of features an Events plugin would need.

For my purposes if I had NM with an extra date field, display in ascending and descending date order, and the option to hide posts older/newer than a date/today's date that would be enough.

Just my thoughts.

[Carlos]

sadly it gave me these errors:

Does it happen in all tag pages? Or just on those that only have one (or no) posts?

Anyway, try with:

if (is_array($posts)) $posts = array_slice(...

[D.O.]

Sorry Carlos, my fault!!!

Code:

global $NMPOSTSPERPAGE;
$posts = array_slice($posts, 0, $NMPOSTSPERPAGE); // patch: max number of posts

These lines works perfectly, THANKS, but there is no "precedent news" button for now...

You should add this patch to the next official version of NM plugin with the $NMGOBACKLINK function.

[D.O.]

Hi mates!
This is just a simple tip: if you want to call a tag page (e.g. named 'name_tag')
from the main menu of your website, create a empty page (e.g. named 'name_page'),
then add this line in your template.

PHP Code:

if (return_page_slug() == 'name_page') nm_show_tag('name_tag'); 


[TeeJay]

Hi guys,
I have finally found time to get my knowledge onto the current NM version's level as I'm doing a GetSimple website for our local Zoo... I installed 2.5. beta 10 and I have to say - it's awesome, I'm very happy about the pictures and also the "Read more" button. Thank you for that, it's a huge step forward

However, there's one thing that surprised me - why isn't a post's picture also on the full post page? I don't think it would be hard to implement that feature. It's a pity that it isn't so

And I also wanted to mention, as I did two complete Joomla 2.5 websites in the past month, I like the way how K2 component excerpts work (K2 is a Joomla content manager component).
It doesn't strip any tags, you (as a user) just write an article and where you want to end the intro text / excerpt, you just put a <hr /> with a specific class.
And the full post itself consists of two parts - intro text and full text. The intro text is work as our excerpts in a post's list, so the full text is hidden on the list of posts.

I hope you understand what I mean, if not, just ask, it's just another suggestion how to make News Manager better.

Thanks for your hard work, Carlos, and also thanks the others who test, try and give tips. I appreciate your hard work.

[D.O.]

Thanks for your words TeeJay. Yes, Carlos is doing a great job with this Plugin and your suggestions inspired by the plugin K2 are to be taken into account, specially that about the tags.