The site http://www.scotlandsglass.co.uk/ is being built as a historical resource and has just passed its first year and starting to gain popularity. The site is based on a mildly modified Solarflare template and uses Virtuemart in catalogue only mode for the individual pieces of glass. Additionally articles are being added and it has a Fireboard forum.
This site will grow substantially with hundreds of articles and tens of thousands of images - all contributed from various companies and the community.
Hopefully when that many articles are installed someone will have developed sophisticated categorisation for content as is found in Virtuemart!
The main need apart from help with changes and particularly upgrades is a simple database based on a few tables to emulate this static table, which with only 100 names is unmanageable http://www.scotlandsglass.co.uk/cms/ind ... &Itemid=37 note it has to be able to include links.
I have tried a database component from an Italian developer but it cannot really cope, particularly I cannot include html in the text for the links and it only has back-end update access. There does not appear to be any likelihood of it being developed further. http://www.scotlandsglass.co.uk/cms/ind ... &Itemid=52
Such a database would of course prove very popular with Joomla! users if it was fully programmable but a basic version with fixed tables and relationships will be sufficient!
Scottish interest is not vital but it would certainly be good if the developer had enthusiasm for the subject. As the site develops it will become publicly owned and managed by a team. If the developer wanted to improve the appearance that is OK too :-)
Joomla! developer with an interest in Scottish and/or glass history?
Forum rules
Re: Joomla! developer with an interest in Scottish and/or glass history?
Try using the Joomla "Bookmarks" Extension - should work great for you.
You'll find that it takes a little time to learn, but once you do, it's very straight-forward. It allows for lots of categories/sub-categories, and also will allow you to easily publish entries into more than one category / location.
G'luck!
You'll find that it takes a little time to learn, but once you do, it's very straight-forward. It allows for lots of categories/sub-categories, and also will allow you to easily publish entries into more than one category / location.
G'luck!
Re: Joomla! developer with an interest in Scottish and/or glass history?
Thank you. Looks reasonably promising on first trial, although I will have see when I have added a few hundred categories as managing how the categories display is a bit limited (Cannot see how collapse so it always opens with all categories...)
If it is that simple to do I wonder why no-one has made a version for just dealing with content. A lot of this tool is concerned with web link processes rather than on-site stuff...
If it is that simple to do I wonder why no-one has made a version for just dealing with content. A lot of this tool is concerned with web link processes rather than on-site stuff...
Re: Joomla! developer with an interest in Scottish and/or glass history?
A new extension that seems to be good for that particular function is Joomsuite Content.
http://extensions.joomla.org/component/ ... Itemid,35/
Unfortunately 1.5 only and I cannot upgrade yet, have to wait for my other extensions to be proven in 1.5
http://extensions.joomla.org/component/ ... Itemid,35/
Unfortunately 1.5 only and I cannot upgrade yet, have to wait for my other extensions to be proven in 1.5
Re: Joomla! developer with an interest in Scottish and/or glass history?
Frank, how many total bookmarks do you imagine having / per category?
Re: Joomla! developer with an interest in Scottish and/or glass history?
Difficult to say at the moment but several thousand over about 5 years, with most in multiple categories. All will link to either Joomla content or to a folder with sections of books.
Re: Joomla! developer with an interest in Scottish and/or glass history?
The core functionality (or an extended version of section-->category functionality) may be the best way to go then.
I wonder if you couldn't place the link as the intro text, and the content below the 'read more' line?
There are some extensions which allow you to do quick-adds and set up of Joomla content, in a list view, rather than adding content individually, one by one.
*If you are planning to have a high amount of community interaction in generating links/content, you could also look into wiki / forum / documentation components.
**I'm not sure what you mean by 'a folder with sections of books' - but if you are talking about files, you could get the Docman plugin for either JCE or TinyMCE, etc, which makes linking to a category or number of documents pretty painless.
I wonder if you couldn't place the link as the intro text, and the content below the 'read more' line?
There are some extensions which allow you to do quick-adds and set up of Joomla content, in a list view, rather than adding content individually, one by one.
*If you are planning to have a high amount of community interaction in generating links/content, you could also look into wiki / forum / documentation components.
**I'm not sure what you mean by 'a folder with sections of books' - but if you are talking about files, you could get the Docman plugin for either JCE or TinyMCE, etc, which makes linking to a category or number of documents pretty painless.
Re: Joomla! developer with an interest in Scottish and/or glass history?
I should have said content category instead of folder. I split most books into 20 to 50 pages sections dependant on content, keeping each chunk to around 50k of html. In this particular case few others provide content. Using the split section of read more is irrelevant as it is all research material.
I tried Docman but it cannot cope with Joomla content, only discrete files. Also tried Deep Pockets.
Bookmarks does do the job nearly perfectly but not being linked into the content creation is a limitation. Most content needs to be in 2 or more categories and some in many.
The Scotlands Glass Site will have a lot of contributors eventually and these will be generating thousands of articles in time. No great rush to resolve categorisation for that yet.
The original reason for this post, we have strayed away from that, is the need for a simple flat table database of names that is currently a static table:
http://www.scotlandsglass.co.uk/cms/ind ... &Itemid=37
An Italian made database extension is no longer being updated and could have been perfect, the user defined fields etc., if the bugs had been ironed out. Any of the names in any of the fields would need to be linkable to content elsewhere on the site or the web and those links need to be html or they are undisplayable - Some fields include more than one link. Of course it would be ideal to have separate files for names and reference sources but a flat file would be better than the html table now in use.
I tried Docman but it cannot cope with Joomla content, only discrete files. Also tried Deep Pockets.
Bookmarks does do the job nearly perfectly but not being linked into the content creation is a limitation. Most content needs to be in 2 or more categories and some in many.
The Scotlands Glass Site will have a lot of contributors eventually and these will be generating thousands of articles in time. No great rush to resolve categorisation for that yet.
The original reason for this post, we have strayed away from that, is the need for a simple flat table database of names that is currently a static table:
http://www.scotlandsglass.co.uk/cms/ind ... &Itemid=37
An Italian made database extension is no longer being updated and could have been perfect, the user defined fields etc., if the bugs had been ironed out. Any of the names in any of the fields would need to be linkable to content elsewhere on the site or the web and those links need to be html or they are undisplayable - Some fields include more than one link. Of course it would be ideal to have separate files for names and reference sources but a flat file would be better than the html table now in use.
Re: Joomla! developer with an interest in Scottish and/or glass
Bookmarks does do the job nearly perfectly but not being linked into the content creation is a limitation. Most content needs to be in 2 or more categories and some in many.
A 'bookmark' can span multiple categories and sub-categories in the component, so that part works. They key would be finding a way to tie it to Joomla! content...
If you use JCE's Advanced Link Manager (select section, select category, select article, etc.) you would have a method to generate a link to your content (itemid) when editing a 'Bookmark's description. You could then copy->paste that link into the URL field of the Bookmark.
While this isn't as easy as copying content into different categories and controlling it via a menu structure - it would work. It's probably worth nothing that the Advanced Link Manager does allow you to auto-create a bookmark from an existing menu item as well. So you could potentially link all entries to a certain menu or sub-menu..
The only other option I see it to 'make' your Blog display an effective tabular display, by providing your site with an extensive CSS page suffix.
Other Ideas off the top of my head :
*Community Builder allows for a lot of custom fields and tabular display, so maybe you could do an extensive configuration of that
*If would be potentially helpful to organize by dates, JCAL Pro does allow for categories and multiple display types.
G'luck..
Re: Joomla! developer with an interest in Scottish and/or glass
Thank you for that thoughtful feedback. Are you referring to bookmarks as a term? I was referring to the extension Bookmarks which is intended to - adding the links is straightforward as I just go to the category or article if only one 'chapter' and copy and paste the url from the address bar. Will try the Advanced Link Manager you mention to see what that does and if it works with Bookmarks extension.
The Bookmarks extension does all that. But is not as easy as selecting section category when creating the content and of course it is a one-way process so there is no way of checking that all content is included in a Bookmarks category. Copying content would be no good as over the years content will be annotated with new research trying to do that to multiple copies would be impractical.
Dates are a problem as potentially intended material could have been created since 1600 and Joomla seems to have a problem with dates, losing even 1900! Not yet worked out what date it does work back to. I have found using ordering to be the only effective way of presenting the chapters in an 'article' which could be over 1,000 pages. With the normal Joomla system I have sections as a top level menu and then articles have are in a variety of categories, that only present the right order if the user selects Ordering for the sort.
I looked into Community Builder but could not really see how it would have a value for this use. Few users register and registration only has value if people want to post in the forum or submit their writing. The site has only been running just over a year so the number of people submitting article material is currently very low, but this is going to change as more people get involved in its expansion.
No idea what a CSS page suffix is
The Bookmarks extension does all that. But is not as easy as selecting section category when creating the content and of course it is a one-way process so there is no way of checking that all content is included in a Bookmarks category. Copying content would be no good as over the years content will be annotated with new research trying to do that to multiple copies would be impractical.
Dates are a problem as potentially intended material could have been created since 1600 and Joomla seems to have a problem with dates, losing even 1900! Not yet worked out what date it does work back to. I have found using ordering to be the only effective way of presenting the chapters in an 'article' which could be over 1,000 pages. With the normal Joomla system I have sections as a top level menu and then articles have are in a variety of categories, that only present the right order if the user selects Ordering for the sort.
I looked into Community Builder but could not really see how it would have a value for this use. Few users register and registration only has value if people want to post in the forum or submit their writing. The site has only been running just over a year so the number of people submitting article material is currently very low, but this is going to change as more people get involved in its expansion.
No idea what a CSS page suffix is
Re: Joomla! developer with an interest in Scottish and/or glass
Are you referring to bookmarks as a term? I was referring to the extension Bookmarks which is intended to - adding the links is straightforward as I just go to the category or article if only one 'chapter' and copy and paste the url from the address bar.
I was referring to Bookmarks both as the extension name, and the single link with description that makes up the content presented by the extension.
No idea what a CSS page suffix is
A CSS page suffix allows you to individually style a Joomla 'page' (menu link) using CSS. By creating a CSS Page Suffix, you could for example, have your item titles (technically : contentheading) be 125% larger than normal for a certain menu item, with a different font, colour, etc.
From everything you've mentioned about the project it seems like the standard Joomla content (plus some sort of modification or hack) may be the best way to go.
I would search around the forums and web - maybe see if you can find a modification of Joomla's standard menu-table display - such that you can add more fields, or modify an existing content field (alternate title, maybe) to display other information.
Here is a link to check out, nothing perfect though..
http://tech.elharar.biz/my_publications/open_source_projects/hack_for_joomla_web_links_component_show_links_and_category_under_table_stracture.html
One last thought : have you considered using a discussion board / forum component.
You would have the benefit of arranging multiple chapters / content categories into forums, sub-forums, and threads, and the user-created-content issue would be solved.
For a tabular display, you could then find a module (I think fireboard may have one) that presents a navigation structure for the site...again, not a perfect suggestion, but something to link into I suppose..
Re: Joomla! developer with an interest in Scottish and/or glass
Hi
Your link gave: Fatal error: Out of memory (allocated 786432) (tried to allocate 6144 bytes) in D:\server\xampp\htdocs\tech.elharar.biz\includes\joomla.php on line 2484
oops!
Modifications and Hacks make me nervous, I have done a couple of minor adjustments but am very nervous about anything more. My understanding level of CSS is junior and PHP more basic, HTML expert(ish). So I try and keep to the basics.
The site does have a forum but it is not an easy way to include articles because all articles need to be thoroughly edited and peer reviewed and designed before publishing. I just tried posting a 100,000 character article but there seems to be a limit and it drops everything after 61,984 characters.
Way ahead of the articles is a catalogue of glass using Virtuemart... now a hack that let the articles appear in Virtuemart would be something. Currently it only has 280 categories at 4 levels deep. First two levels display in the menu. It includes around 3,000 items and a similar value are waiting to be added. Smooth as silk is Virtuemart.
Do you have any suggestions to resolve this particular table?:
http://www.scotlandsglass.co.uk/cms/ind ... &Itemid=37
Each item needs to link to 1 or more articles as well as Virtuemart categories, at nearly one hundred entries the manually maintained table is almost unmanageable.
Here is the result of an attempt to use the Table Manager extension for the list that seems to have stopped development and remains buggy:
http://www.scotlandsglass.co.uk/cms/ind ... &Itemid=52
Getting that working in a more manageable way would probably eliminate the need for categorisation to such an extent as being discussed. Because glassmakers that work for multiple factories (most) also need to appear under the factory as well as alphabetic listings. The numbers are still not really knowable!.
Your link gave: Fatal error: Out of memory (allocated 786432) (tried to allocate 6144 bytes) in D:\server\xampp\htdocs\tech.elharar.biz\includes\joomla.php on line 2484
oops!
Modifications and Hacks make me nervous, I have done a couple of minor adjustments but am very nervous about anything more. My understanding level of CSS is junior and PHP more basic, HTML expert(ish). So I try and keep to the basics.
The site does have a forum but it is not an easy way to include articles because all articles need to be thoroughly edited and peer reviewed and designed before publishing. I just tried posting a 100,000 character article but there seems to be a limit and it drops everything after 61,984 characters.
Way ahead of the articles is a catalogue of glass using Virtuemart... now a hack that let the articles appear in Virtuemart would be something. Currently it only has 280 categories at 4 levels deep. First two levels display in the menu. It includes around 3,000 items and a similar value are waiting to be added. Smooth as silk is Virtuemart.
Do you have any suggestions to resolve this particular table?:
http://www.scotlandsglass.co.uk/cms/ind ... &Itemid=37
Each item needs to link to 1 or more articles as well as Virtuemart categories, at nearly one hundred entries the manually maintained table is almost unmanageable.
Here is the result of an attempt to use the Table Manager extension for the list that seems to have stopped development and remains buggy:
http://www.scotlandsglass.co.uk/cms/ind ... &Itemid=52
Getting that working in a more manageable way would probably eliminate the need for categorisation to such an extent as being discussed. Because glassmakers that work for multiple factories (most) also need to appear under the factory as well as alphabetic listings. The numbers are still not really knowable!.
