Dynamic Lunch Menu

[steveoc]

Does anyone have a dynamic lunch menu worked out for their site? The best I have come up with is using publishing begin/end dates for content delivered through the Display News Module, but that doesn't really do what I want and it is rather awkward. It's about the last of what I want to work into my site!

http://wellscsd.com

Thanks,

Steve

[koltz]

We use extcalenar (security fixed) on our site.  Have four categories setup (lunch, breakfast, sports, events).  Then we just enter the lunch and breakfast as All Day.  You can choose start/ending times if you want, but is more of a pain than anything.  If you want to see our implementation, my  districts URL is http://www.rrsd.k12.wi.us

Thanks,

Corey

[steveoc]

I've mucked around with a calandar and breakfast/lunch menus will appear there. What I really want are the breakfast/lunch items of the day to appear right up on the front page. Closest I have come is to have the breakfast and luch events come up in the latest events module with the eventCal Component.

Perhaps I will try some other calendars out to see what I can work out!

Thanks,

Steve

[koltz]

Same thing with extcalendar latest events.  It lists them in order, but does display them.  If you put in the times, they will be listed first using the extcalendar component and latest events mod.

Corey

[steveoc]

Wells--here's a workaround that I found to get it right up there: List the items in the menu in the title--that way the items display right on the latest events with having to click a couple of times to see what is on the menu.

eg: Breakfast: Cereal, Toast, Muffins, Orange Juice, Apples

Does the job!

Steve

[steveoc]

I have found a solution, but I will need to install two calendars. One for Menus and the other for events. With the menu calendar, I will rename the latest events module to Menu. Then in eventsCal I will customize the formating of the latest events module to:

${eventDate(D, M, jS)}
${title}
${content}

That gives me the date without the time, the title, and the contents (the menu items). By allowing it to display 4 events, it can list the breakfast and lunch for today and the next. Titles will be Monday Lunch, Tuesday Breakfast, etc.

Steve

[steveoc]

Ha--

It's much easier with extCAL! Unlike Events. it allows you to configure each Latest News Module individually. Events configures the module(s) through the component. extCAL has an easier interface as well for front end contributors as well!

I made a copy of the Latest News Module and renamed it Cafeteria Menu. I configured it to only display the categories Breakfast and Lunch. Tweak a few more settings to taste and there's the Dynamic Menu!

Steve

[hud]

There is a lunch menu component at the mamboSchools site. It hasn't been released as a standalone component, but might give you some ideas.

[steveoc]

Yeah--I saw that. I even poked around the source. It's driven by com_lunchmenu--the only clue there.

I really like the look and the layout--very nice presentation!

Here's the results of my implementation. It's not as slick, but I like the fact that it is on the front page! Parents can log on, check the school menu, get a weather report, see if there are any pertinent events or news for the day.

I have inserted a few dummy meals for examples.

http://wellscsd.com

Site's not quite done--but you can get the idea.

Steve

[TerryKing]

Dear Steve,  I see you have the two things exemplary students have:

- Does Homework!
- Persistent when something is not understood!

Your Lunch menu is something I NEED badly!  After several meetings and review of the last school survey the #1 problem is knowing the Lunch Menu in an easy and timely manner.  Then there's the rest of the site.

I'm a volunteer (mostly) supporting an International School in Tunisia, North Africa.  I am just learning Joomla and CMS after regular web-design and Dreamweaver stuff.. 

Would you be willing to communicate a bit on school web design issues?  I like many of the attributes of your site.  Maybe we can collaborate a bit. But I know how busy you might be! 

[email protected]

Thanks...

[steveoc]

Dear Steve,  I see you have the two things exemplary students have:

- Does Homework!
- Persistent when something is not understood!

Your Lunch menu is something I NEED badly!   After several meetings and review of the last school survey the #1 problem is knowing the Lunch Menu in an easy and timely manner.  Then there's the rest of the site.

I'm a volunteer (mostly) supporting an International School in Tunisia, North Africa.  I am just learning Joomla and CMS after regular web-design and Dreamweaver stuff.. 

Would you be willing to communicate a bit on school web design issues?  I like many of the attributes of your site.  Maybe we can collaborate a bit. But I know how busy you might be! 

[email protected]

Thanks...

Terry--

Thanks for your kind words! I would be more than willing to collaborate--here, via email, or whatever!

Steve

[jthorstad]

Steve,

You have a beautiful site. It's something to aspire to! Congrats!

Is that a roll-your-own theme? Or is it a regular theme that you customized? It has the layout I really would like to see for our site.

Also, how did you implement the "popular tags"-style block on the left of the page? (Not sure the real name for that; but where keywords that are most searched for appear in the list in larger type...)

Again, beautiful.

Jesse

[steveoc]

Steve,

You have a beautiful site. It's something to aspire to! Congrats!

Is that a roll-your-own theme? Or is it a regular theme that you customized? It has the layout I really would like to see for our site.

Also, how did you implement the "popular tags"-style block on the left of the page? (Not sure the real name for that; but where keywords that are most searched for appear in the list in larger type...)

Again, beautiful.

Jesse

Thanks! I put my heart and soul into that site. It is based upon Rockettheme's Fire Template--the firefrog variant. I used Colorzilla and the Web Developer extension on Firefox to duplicate the color scheme in the non-Joomla parts (Coppermine Gallery and Moodle with the Chameleon theme).

The metatag cloud may be found on http://extensions.joomla.org/component/ ... Itemid,35/

Thanks again!

Steve

[mcsmom]

It's a paid item, but I use the Thyme menu. This lets me have an RSS feed of the lunches and a module that I have prominently displayed with "lunch today" and another module with "This week's menu." People can also sign up to get them delivered daily or weekly.

Lunch menus are the #1 thing bringing parents to our site.

[steveoc]

Detailed directions for configuring extCal for a dynamic lunch menu and other uses may be found:

http://www.openedweb.com/moodle/mod/wik ... xtCalendar

Steve

[hud]

With your encouragement, mamboSchools has released their School Lunch Menu Component to the Joomla/mambo Communities.  It is released under the GNU/GPL license. Basic information may be found here:

mamboSchools Lunch Menu Component

[JN From Paducah]

David,
Thanks so much to you and to MamboSchools for releasing this component. I have admired MamboSchools for quite awhile. Our district, for several reasons, decided to roll our own rather than use MamboSchools, but you guys have a great product.

Thanks again, and as you consider upgrades/modifications to the School Lunch Menu component, think about a way to allow specific users to add/edit the lunch menus from Joomla's Frontend. Sure be a lot easier than trying to train my cafeteria managers how to work in the Backend.

Jeff Nelson
Paducah Public Schools
Paducah, KY USA

[hud]

Jeff, you are welcome.  Our company is long overdue in returning something back to the community.  We are planning future releases some GNU/GPL and others licensed.

Your point of building in editing features from the front end is one the team has struggled with for a while.  We have not established a development standard on this yet.  We are currently making major modifications to the original Active6 help desk component and really like the way all functions can be accomplished on the front end.  But, we are seeing the need for backend functions even in this component.

My biggest issue with frontend functions is a cluttered User Menu.  Although these menu items could be assigned to a special user group, I see too many items that may be best served on the administrative side.

I would be open for a discussion from others on this topic.  It would probably be best to create a new topic.

[steveoc]

Jeff, you are welcome.  Our company is long overdue in returning something back to the community.  We are planning future releases some GNU/GPL and others licensed.

Your point of building in editing features from the front end is one the team has struggled with for a while.  We have not established a development standard on this yet.  We are currently making major modifications to the original Active6 help desk component and really like the way all functions can be accomplished on the front end.  But, we are seeing the need for backend functions even in this component.

My biggest issue with frontend functions is a cluttered User Menu.  Although these menu items could be assigned to a special user group, I see too many items that may be best served on the administrative side.

I would be open for a discussion from others on this topic.  It would probably be best to create a new topic.

Thanks for the component.

The frontend/backend issue is a tough one. We rely increasingly upon student contributions to our site. That being said, I need to be able to allow students to submit material that is only published after it gets administrative approval. 

As the admin of our site, I am trying to move the work increasingly to others--especially routine tasks such as calendar and menu information entry.

One solution is to make the user menu only visible once individuals have logged in. Once logged in, however, it is rather cluttered--especially since there needs to be a button for submitting content to each individual section. I'd really like to see a general submit content button that allows selection of section within the text editing page as is seen in the admin backend.

Thanks again!

Steve

[Slixter]

One solution is to make the user menu only visible once individuals have logged in. Once logged in, however, it is rather cluttered--especially since there needs to be a button for submitting content to each individual section. I'd really like to see a general submit content button that allows selection of section within the text editing page as is seen in the admin backend.

You can do this with the MyContent component.

http://extensions.joomla.org/component/ ... Itemid,35/

[TerryKing]

You can do this with the MyContent component.
http://extensions.joomla.org/component/ ... Itemid,35/

MyContent works well for me for this.  I have a menu item under "Staff" that is hidden unless a Staff member (author = special) logs in. Then they see a menu item "Add Content to Site".

Lunch Menu: ExtCal2 works great for me (Thanks for showing me how, Steveoc!)

I also have specialized modules that show 5 days of lunch on PARENTS menu, SPORTS EVENT on SPORTS menu SENIOR CHECKLIST under SENIORS and a hidden-except-to-staff STAFF CALENDAR that includes operational items that are not released to the public. 

You can see this stuff at http://acst.net/newsite 

[jthorstad]

As a follow-up...

I also ended up purchasing Thyme, for dynamic lunch menus, but also for some other benefits.

I was able to create a nice scrolling weekly lunch menu and place it in a Module on the home page. People really seem to like that!

http://www.fergusfalls.k12.mn.us

I also decided on Thyme because of it's ability to receive data from iCal, which our school uses estensively. I am able to have a number of people across our district managing calendars in iCal, which are then auto-published to Thyme, which integrates nicely into Joomla.

So, I am happy. And yes, menus are a big draw to the website for parents!

Jesse