Using columnar or grid layout with chronological-sequence channels
Thu, 09/04/2009 - 12:42
I would like to use a flexible-grid layout to publish content in (reverse) chronological sequence rather than in discrete editions, the way the online IT news websites the Register and the Inquirer work. Is there a way to set this behaviour up in Prosepoint? Where should I look in the code to hack this? Or should I post this in the Wish List forum instead?
Thu, 09/04/2009 - 17:07
#2
Thanks for your
Thanks for your reply.
Changing any channel to 'story listing' mode forces it into either 'No composite layout' or 'Single column' composite layout (these appear to be equivalent).
I want to use either the 'Three columns 33/33/33' or 'Three columns flexible grid' layout for the front-page News channel, which aggregates several subordinate channels, all of which also have several third-level channels, and all subordinate second and third level channels are set in 'story listing' chronological mode.
However, when I set the front-page News channel to (reverse) chronological 'story listing' channel mode, the composite layout selection isn't honored, and the website front page displays in a single column of stories.
What I'd like to have happen instead is that the composite layout is used such that the latest story displays in the top-left corner with the next most recent in the middle column, the next previous one in the right column, and so on down throughout the page.
Is there any way of doing this in Prosepoint, or am I required to create a fresh edition for each day's stories, promote earlier stories into it, and schedule the edition in order to get it published on the site's front page?
I'll appreciate learning how to do what I've described, if possible.
-- Robert
PS -- This website is refusing to accept my password every time I try to log in. I always have to get another password emailed to me and click on the link in the email to get logged-in, but it never saves my password.
Sat, 11/04/2009 - 10:53
#3
Do you understand what I want to do?
Not to reiterate what I said in my earlier posts, but perhaps I can be clearer about what I want to do and why.
I want the ProsePoint CMS to populate my website front-page with all stories that are published in all channels that are subordinate to the News channel, in (reverse) chronological sequence and using a composite layout, without having to create a new Edition every day.
The reason why I want to do this is that the Editions publishing model is too labor-intensive to use for an a fast-paced online news website. Though it may be appropriate for traditional print newspapers and useful for online magazines, using ProsePoint's Editions model for such a high-volume online news website requires repetitive compositing work by an editor to keep the front-page up to date. That's just not feasible on a daily basis.
Although I don't have experience with coding PHP and I'm not knowledgable about ProsePoint's internal structure, I'm willing to help design and code such an extension to ProsePoint, if you give me some hints.
Robert
Tue, 14/04/2009 - 09:39
#4
Hi,
If a channel is operating
Hi,
If a channel is operating in story listing mode, viewing that channel shows a single listing of stories of that channel (in reverse chronological order, but that's not important for this argument).
If a channel is operating in scheduled editions mode, viewing that channel shows the latest edition of that channel. Furthermore, an edition has the ability to use Composite Layout because it is a standalone node.
Story listing channels don't use Composite Layout because there's no mechanism to do so.
One way to get around this, is to set your front page channel to operate in scheduled editions mode, and then use editions so you can configure your layout. Now, you've said it's a hassle to recreate a new edition every time. That I can understand.
My first response is ... did you know you can clone editions? Instead of creating an edition from scratch every time, you can locate a recent edition, clone that, save it, and then edit just your required changes.
My second response is ... maybe there is something I can add to ProsePoint to help your use case? Your idea of having layout for story listing channels is interesting (though implementation will be interesting as well ie. non-straightforward). It's definitely a prospective feature request.
Tue, 14/04/2009 - 10:27
#5
Okay, it's a Wish List feature...
Okay, I see that what I'm looking for is apparently a feature for the Wish List, and admittedly a non-trivial one.
Let me explain my use-case a bit further. Active news websites must be updated multiple times during the 'day' (where the publishing 'day' is defined as all hours that writers and editors are working, in any and all timezones). Whenever a new story is submitted, edited and published, the website needs to be updated so readers get the latest news, review, analysis, opinion and feature articles. A busy news website publishing original content that's generated by a half-dozen or more writers might publish up to 30 or more articles each and every working day. Working with ProsePoint's Editions model, that would require up to 30 Editions daily.
So, perhaps you can appreciate why I'm looking for a more automated CMS functionality for such a news site.
Robert
Thu, 30/04/2009 - 09:45
#6
If you're only interested in
If you're only interested in showing the titles as links for each channel then this is already possible with the current configuration of prosepoint. you can just create a view as a block that will list the stories of each channel in reverse chronological order. Then activate them as being available in edition layout, and then you can place them. They will be blocks that show the latest stories of each channel and will be automatically updated.
I was thinking of doing this but I wanted some teaser text too, and that seems to be even more difficult. So I haven't implemented it yet. But you can see a Real-time News block on my site (www.koreaittimes.com) along the right side which lists stories in the real-time news channel in reverse chronological order every time they are published.
Hi,
Have you tried setting your channels to 'story listing' mode? Visit .../admin/content/channels on your site, click on a channel's edit link, and then on the resulting page, have a look for the option Channel mode.
Once that's done, that channel's block will show stories in reverse chronological order.