Advanced News plugin for CMSimple

Version v1.0.0 - 02/11/2005 (dd/mm/yyyy)

Contents

Introduction
Features
Requirements
Quick install & go!
Installation instructions
Configuration settings
Language settings
News topics administration
Usage of news functions in CMSimple
Credits
Other plugins & tools

Introduction

The advanced news plugin is used to publish news topics, which can be shown into any CMSimple page by means of the CMSimple scripting command.

Disclaimer :

No warranties whatsoever, use at your own risk !
.
This plugin uses the following external modules:
Some language settings have been added during latest revisions, so please complete the translation of this xx.php file...

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Features

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Requirements :

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Quick install & go!

#cmsimple $output=shownewsbox();#

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Installation instructions

                    General permissions

Root folder file permissions

 Root folder files permissions

Config folder : file permissions

Config.php file permissions

Data folder : file permissions

Language folder : file permissions

Config.php file permissions
          Remaining folder file permissions

The Advanced News plugin is installed now

Before you can use the Advanced News plugin, it's necessary to

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Configuration settings

The configuration settings of the Advanced Form plugin are integrated into the CMSimple administrative module. So, first login into this module.
Advanced News plugin selection
Select Configuration settings from the drop down list.
Configuration settings
Make the necessary changes according your needs.
Configuration parameters
General advanced news plugin settings
The settings listed below are required.
news editor string here you specify the name of the external editor (see list below) you want to be uses for editing the news full story field. Supported editors are:
  • HTMLarea 3.0 RC1 (htmlarea)
  • FCKeditor 2.1.1 (fckeditor)
  • TinyMCE 2.0RC3 (tinymce)
  • Xinha nightly (xinha)
The editor has to be installed in the root folder of your CMSimple website.
news items visible number this represents the latest x news topics visible in the newsbox function.
news archive records page number here you define the maximum number of news topics you want to appear per page in the archive news topics list (topics paging)
news archive layout string this option sets how the archived news topics are displayed:
  • table
  • advanced
news admin records page number here you define the maximum number of news topics you want to appear per page in the administrative module news topics list (topics paging)
RSS feed settings
The settings below are only needed if you want to make some selected news topics available in an RSS news feed (xml) file.
news rss encoding string this is the encoding you want to use in your news feed Some examples : ISO-8859-1, UTF-8
news rss link string this is the FQDN (fully qualified domain name) of your website
news rss logo string this is the full path to the logo you want to be displayed in your RSS news feed.
news rss copyright string this is the name of the news feed copyright holder.
news rss editor string this is the e-mail address of the news feed editor

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Language settings

Select Language settings from the drop down list.
Language settings
Make the necessary changes according your needs.
Language settings -localize
Localization settings (all required settings)
news date format string the date representation used in the archived news topics and in the advanced news administration module:
  • Date format you want to use
  • d : day (01 - 31)
  • m : month (01 - 12)
  • Y : 4 digit year 
  • Possible date formats
  • d/m/Y
  • m/d/Y
  • Y/m/d
  • Date separator : these date separators can be used :
  • . (dot)
  • / (slash)
  • – (hyphen)
For more information about this syntax, see the date() function in the php manual
news display date format string the date representation used in the newsbox
  • %A : full day name; ie. Monday
  • %B : full month name; ie. September
  • %d : day number; ie. 25
  • %Y : 4 digit year notation; ie. 2005
For more information about this syntax, see the strftime() function in the php manual
news date locale string this setting is used for the date translation in the proper language. It seems that this setting is OS Dependant:
  • On Free BSD one has to use :
    • for Danish locale language : "da_DK.ISO8859-1"
    • for Belgian/Dutch : "nl_NL.ISO8859-1"
    • for German : "de_DE.ISO8859-1"
    • for French : “fr_FR.ISO8859-1”
  • Looks like on your Linux server one has to use :
    • for Danish : "da_DK"
    • for Belgian/Dutch : “nl_NL”
    • for German : “de_DE”
    • for French : “fr_FR”
  • On MS Windows servers one has to use:
    • for Danish : "danish"
    • for German : "german"
    • for Dutch : "dutch"
    • for French : “french”
RSS feed settings
The settings below are only needed if you want to make some selected news topics available in an RSS news feed (xml) file.
RSS newsfeed language settings
news rss page string this is the FQN (fully qualified name) of the CMSimple newsbox page (the page where you included the #cmsimple $output=shownewsbox();# script)
example: CMSimple_plugins:Latest_news
please remember :
  • replace spaces with underscores in the page names.
  • CMSimple page names are CasE SenSiTiVE.
news rss enable boolean set to true if you want a RSS news feed xml file be generated automatically.

By default, the Advanced News plugin automatically selects the language file according your CMSimple selected language settings. Example: when your CMSimple default language is set to German, the Advanced News plugin language will also use the German plugin language file. If your CMSimple selected language file isn't available for the plugin, then the english language file is used. (If you want to add a new language file, please just copy then en.php language file located in the language folder of the advanced news plugin, rename the file xx.php where xx represents your desired language.
Once the new xx.php language file is available, you can start translating the plugin language settings as described in the procedure above.
I would really appreciate if you send me the news language translation file
(plugins[@]jat-at-home.be)
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News topics administration

Select News items from the drop down list.
News administration

News topics filters
By selecting one or more check boxes and applying the filter, you'll get an overview of news topics based on their current status.
Add news topic
Once selected, the news topic details screen is displayed.
News topic details
Date date this is the news topic creation date (this field is read-only). You must use the date-picker to select the date from.
Start date date this is the date from which the news topic needs to be published (this field is read-only). You must use the date-picker to select the date from.
End date date this is the date until the news topic has to be published (this field is read-only). You must use the date-picker to select the date from.
News status number A news topic can have 3 different values:
  • Ready to publish (normally on creation)
  • Published (when system date is in between the publishing start & end date)
  • Archived (when the system date has passed the end publishing date)
The news topic status is automatically updated, based on the criteria as described above.
Publish always boolean
RSS feed boolean check this field if you want to include the news topic in your site's RSS feed. This RSS news feed XML file is generated on-the-fly, without any administrator interaction.
Title string this is the heading (title) of the news topic
Short story string this is a brief description of the news topic (headline)
Full story string this is the news topic's complete story. This field is a text area where you can use the external WYSIWYG editor with all it's features.
Select the appropriate news topic you want to modify
Batch status change
Once selected, the news topic details screen is displayed, and you can start editing the news field values.
Select the appropriate news topic you want to modify
Batch status change
Once selected, the news topic details screen is displayed.
Select the news topic for which you want to change their status, then press the change status button. Batch delete
Select the new status from the drop down list

Then press the OK button to confirm the status changes.

Select the news topic for which you want to change their status, then press the change status button.

Then press the change status button.

Now, confirm the deletion of the selected news topics by pressing the Delete button.

Once the news topics are deleted, press the OK button to return to the News topics administrative panel.

Usage of  news functions in CMSimple

The Advanced news plugin contains four public functions which can be used in CMSimple:
Each function is called with the following syntax :
 name_of_the_function('option1=value,option2=value,...[optionX=value]')

shownewsbox function

This function displays the latest (x) news topics in a CMSimple page
i.e. the (x) most recent news topics

The function can be called with three parameters:
shownewsbox('option1=value,option2=value,option3=value')
The CMSimple scripting syntax  to be used :

#cmsimple $output=shownewsbox('showlatest =5,alwayspublish=true');#

shownewsbox()


shownewsarchive function

This function displays the archived news topics

The function can be called with two parameters:
shownewsarchive('option1=value,option2=value')
The CMSimple scripting syntax  to be used :

#cmsimple $output=shownewsarchive('layout=advanced,displaysearch=true');#

shownewsarchive()

advancednewslink function

This function displays the news topics in the newsbox page which is called from within the CMSimple template.

Pre-conditions :
a CMSimple page including the script #cmsimple $output.=shownewsbox();#
must be present, otherwise the news item details won't be displayed.

The function can be called with two parameters:
advancednewslink('option1=value,option2=value')
The CMSimplescripting syntax  to be used :

<?php advancednewslink('newspage=Latest_News,alwayspublish=true');?>

advancednewslink()

rss_advertise function

This function displays a graphical hyperlink to the newsfeed (XML) file.
The RSS newsfeed file generated by the advanced news plugin can be used with the RSS reader plugin (SimpleRSS) which is developped by http://www.cycronic.de/dev/cmsimple/

The function can be called with one parameters:
rss_advertise('option1=value')
The CMSimplescripting syntax  to be used :

#cmsimple $output.=rss_advertise('replace=true');#

rss_advertise()


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Credits

Beta Testing

I'd like to thank the following persons who spend some of their free evenings by testing this plugin:

Translators

Other plugins & tools


Please visit the sites listed below to download other available plugins for CMSimple:

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