Article system coming soon! [Archive]

krohnathlonman

04-10-2004, 04:03 AM

I've been working on porting my custom article system over to Vbulletin!

can be seen in action:
http://iamnotageek.com/articles.php

It's working great with style changing capabilities.;)

Basically just use something like VBindex for your news and use the system I'm making for articles....

The only other real article system I've found for Vbulletin I really don't like and its here: http://www.vbportal.com/
There's another at v3arcade, but again it just doesn't work for people like me.

after a couple months without updating you guys:

6-26
[PAGEBREAK] now working for the add process which makes only 1 text box on submission process. I'll be integrating the HTMLArea editor into this box next. I'll get this working for the edit process at a later date. I'm considering the performance affects of using $textarray=split('\[PAGEBREAK]',$text); in the article display. This would eliminate the page limitation, BUT at a cost to performance. I'm not sure yet if I'm willing to do this for my site. Currently the system is limited to 10 pages. I'm thinking about increasing this limit to 20 if there's actually demand for it. I don't have anything over 9 pages on my site.

HTMLArea editor now in place as the image attatchment suggests. That means both of the lbig features I said I'd like to have are now in place.... Obviously I plan on tweaking the editor quite a bit to customize it towards the needs of this system. Currently it's the base example put into place and working.

Also considering security aspects of a delete process. Maybe something like only allowing certain userids access? I want to make sure that the delete process is secure. Currently I'm using phpmyadmin for deletions which is very protected on my system.

Also Considering Titles in the Page dropdown list. Not sure of the best way of doing this YET I may include them in the [Pagebreak] but I'll have to change the DB structure a bit. I'll wait on this till I decide about page support.

Vivi Ornitier

04-10-2004, 04:38 AM

I like very much, can't wait ;)

SVTBlackLight01

04-10-2004, 06:02 AM

Basically just use something like VBindex for your news and use the system I'm making for articles....

That is exactly what I need and have been trying to piece together. Do you have an expected time frame.

By "style changing capabilities" do you mean that it will be able to use it's own style separate from the forums. Will users be able to write articles?

krohnathlonman

04-10-2004, 06:18 AM

Take a look here (http://iamnotageek.com/articles3.php?aid=5&page=1&topic=Can/Beer_Cooler_mod) for the article system working integrated with VB

Look Here (http://iamnotageek.com/index.php?) for the normal template

I decided to keep the header and footer related information seperate from the standard forum ones. I'm also going to make a custom sidebar for it.

There's currently 6 new templates. The add and edit processes are under the /admincp for password protection that way.

I have a seperate config.php file right this second because my admin tools and reports aren't integrated with Vbulletin. What I've done is on only page 1 I log the referring URL. Then you can see who your top referring URLs were ;)

The first release is going to just be my article system completely compatible with the way VBulletin works and using Vbulletins templates. Later additions will be things like the printer friendly articles ONLY being available to logged in users OR subscribers.

So far I've managed to get away without having to modify additional files! you'll be able to upload the files, add the new DB sections and add the templates. This'll be a release with basically no hacking :) Later versions will , but not this one.

I'll let you know how it handles a decent load by posting some content on Monday to see how it handles ~60k pageviews in a day. I may need some help with optimizations. This first release will be a "working beta"

White Knight

04-10-2004, 11:31 AM

Im looking forward to checking this out.. Nice work!

BTW: I agree with the vbportal software... it was great for 2.0.. but when down hill it looks like for 3.0

krohnathlonman

04-10-2004, 03:45 PM

yeah, VBportal worked great in the 2.0 days but they took things in a direction that really doesn't work for me or my site.

erikajune

04-10-2004, 05:46 PM

Ohhhh, this is EXACTLY what I need! I absolutely love it! Can't wait!

krohnathlonman

04-10-2004, 05:59 PM

bob46802

04-11-2004, 07:01 AM

im really interested in this

I sent you a PM

White Knight

04-11-2004, 01:29 PM

Currently I'm fighting with making the categories display properly. Trying to avoid making you guys modify much.

If somebody could give me a hand and help me make all of the templates compatible with the multi style system it would speed things up quite a bit! I've got that as the last thing on my list to do ;)

BTW I'm getting some killer google placement with this system... Do searches on things relevant to any of my articles.....

I just started to bite into PHP coding.. heck had to for some of the modules I was running with vbportal..

Modifications dont scare me :).. not having a backup when i did it does.. lol

Google placement is always great to hear. Specially when web crawlers just love to skip over websites with php

But if you want me to take a peak at it I am sure I could do it.. but like I said I probebly wont be that good of use untill I learn this a bit more.

limey

04-11-2004, 04:10 PM

can't wait

krohnathlonman

04-11-2004, 07:18 PM

It's more the Vbulletin templates themselves that I need a hand with right now... modifying all the templates themselves to ensure VBulletin multi style compatibility maybe even some if conditionals.

I will need a hand when it comes time to making configuration changes based off of Vbulletin settings.

spence2

04-11-2004, 11:41 PM

Just to make sure I understand your proposed hack, will this:

Allow users to post articles?
Allow admin to grant permissions for users to post articles?
List articles by categories?
List articles by author?
Allow comments?
Allow admin to grant permissions for users to post comments?
Could this work like a community blog...where each user has a personal journal for articles?

Sorry if my questions seem dense, but I've learned it's better to ask. And thank you for your willingness to share your work with the rest of us!

And, you might try posting your template questions at the vb template mod site.

krohnathlonman

04-12-2004, 05:18 AM

It's for admins to post articles currently. I'll have to dig deeper into the user permissions system to figure out how to grant them to specific users.

Take a look at the link to the working version of it. It currently doesn't list articles by author but that's very possible.

Comments I'm currently just having done in a VB thread. It would be pretty easy to add comments, but I want them handled in VB threads.

Community blog won't happen from me. I'm not a fan of blogs. This is a multi page article system which is also good for things like item reviews.

Everybody take a good look at the demo.... I have to finish my standalone version and release it before I can release the Vbulletin build. You guys will be able to install the standalone to start getting some articles in it while you wait for the VB version. Expect that standalone's first release to be Wednesday or Thursday with the VB version following hopefully over the weekend.

spence2

04-12-2004, 06:17 AM

Thank you for your response.

Is there a limit to the number of articles that may be written or displayed?

bob46802

04-13-2004, 12:20 AM

Is there a limit to the number of articles that may be written or displayed?

im pretty sure there isnt

Ive been talking with martin (krohnathlonman) for doing an article program for my site and judgeing from how it works so far I doubt there is a limit

its kinda like how vb works, you can post as much as you want

spence2

04-13-2004, 01:15 AM

Sounds great. Thanks for the info. Any idea how long a process we might anticipate before something is placed in beta?

Reeve of shinra

04-13-2004, 01:24 AM

Looks great. Cant wait to try it out.

krohnathlonman

04-13-2004, 01:46 AM

I'm having a late night programming session tonight trying to bring the full VB integrated version into testing on my site tonight.... (The current one is actually a standalone version) With a beta release coming after I've been testing it on my production site for at least a few days.

I can release the standalone with the DB structure and everything in a day or two if anybody would want to start adding articles to the DB preparing for it. It'll also let you see the admin side of things and give me some feedback on variouses processes as I refine them.

It'll be great when something like VBindex is used with this and links :) then you'll be able to have a true portal!

limey

04-13-2004, 05:23 AM

sweet :)

White Knight

04-13-2004, 01:41 PM

Thanks man! Keep us posted!

AlexanderT

04-13-2004, 01:51 PM

really sweet :)

krohnathlonman

04-13-2004, 10:26 PM

The vbulletin integrated version is now being tested on my production site and performance is the same as the previous version.

I've gotta take care of some conditionals and begin testing the multi style aspect of things. Currently there's ZERO editing being done to any files or templates. This will have it's own templates Since I wanted to have a different nav bar for my articles than what is on the forum.

I also need to put the code in for latest threads. I'm not sure if I'll make a who's online box or not. After I release this I'll need some people to help me optimize everything.

spence2

04-14-2004, 06:54 AM

Thank you for the updates on your progress.

krohnathlonman

04-14-2004, 04:44 PM

http://www.iamnotageek.com/articles.php?styleid=8
I haven't really started this one yet:
http://www.iamnotageek.com/articles.php?styleid=10

I appear to be closing in on multi style compatibility :)

White Knight

04-14-2004, 04:48 PM

Looks great!

krohnathlonman

04-14-2004, 05:02 PM

I think I might just release what I have so far as a BETA :)

I just need to figure out the easiest way for you guys to add all these new templates....

Vivi Ornitier

04-14-2004, 05:52 PM

sounds good

teksigns

04-15-2004, 12:35 AM

cant wait !

Pro

04-15-2004, 02:39 AM

cant wait !
WOOT WOOT! lol...

VERY interested in this! I'm currently using vBadvanced - would this be able to run with that prog??? It's a stand-alone - so i would think so - but just making sure?

Nice little hack you got yourself there ;)

krohnathlonman

04-15-2004, 04:37 AM

This will be able to run alongside ANYTHING :) it doesn't depend on any external files.

This only uses basic Vbulletin functions and it's own built in ones. I'm willing to work with any of the portal developers on integration. Anything to make things easier on everybody ;)

I'll try to get a beta release together for you guys sometime this weekend. I'm trying to get caught up on things. I've been getting killer placement in google so I'm working hard on covering some FAQ type things. I'll have to figure something out for dynamically making categories.

Currently the system is limited to 10 pages and holds each page in it's own column. This seems to be the most efficient way of doing things. It IS a limitation though.

spence2

04-15-2004, 09:04 AM

It appears that you have categories of articles.
How many categories can your system accomodate?

If there are a large number of categories and a large number of articles contained in them...is there a way to limit the number of articles displayed as links? With perhaps a "more" to display all?

My concern is that the number of categories and the number of articles within each category will grow too large to display in a tidy manner.

krohnathlonman

04-15-2004, 01:45 PM

Currently I have to put a query in for each category. It would be pretty easy to make several pages of categories, but what I'm optioning to do is have 1 setup for "articles" 1 set up for "reviews" and probably another seperate one setup for tips. That is the route I'm planning on taking instead. It just means duplicating templates.

The category setup by default will be set for 5, but if you duplicate the queries and add templates you can do as many as you could ever want. Currently I don't know what route I'm taking for handling many categories.

Pro

04-15-2004, 06:59 PM

so 10 pages per category or 10 pages total?

cant wait either way! :)

krohnathlonman

04-15-2004, 07:06 PM

10 pages per article

AND unlimited number of articles per category.

krohnathlonman

04-15-2004, 08:45 PM

Also started putting a Recent Topics section together for forum promotion... I'm thinking about putting it ABOVE the articles by default, but this is of course something you guys can modify through templates.

Currently for my purposes I don't grab the who posted last and that kind of thing that alot of the other Recent topics hacks have. I'm trying to trim data wherever possible to optimize everything for high capacity sites and not KILL my server when I do above 100k pageviews in a day.

Pro

04-16-2004, 01:28 AM

krohnathlonman

04-16-2004, 01:55 AM

I'm hoping that one of the 3 things I'm posting tonight will draw in enough traffic to put the system to a major test.

obiwan8472

05-15-2004, 02:37 PM

any sign of this on the horizon? sounds great in my opinion

Kwak

05-16-2004, 03:30 AM

Good work mate. Hope to see a final soon or later.

LoOnEyToOnZ

05-16-2004, 05:45 AM

*Drools*

You deserve a big pat on the back for this ;)

krohnathlonman

05-17-2004, 01:27 PM

actually I did my public beta already.... I'm polishing things up as I have the time and I've also been working on the news part of the system to make it a fully integrated portal to handle everything we need!

SmasherMaster

05-17-2004, 06:13 PM

How about it's functionality with vbadvanced? If you release this then will I be able to put the latest reviews thing in one of the custom boxes?

krohnathlonman

05-18-2004, 07:35 PM

I won't be writing the code to integrate with anything like vbadvanced. I'll be writing the code to REPLACE Vbadvanced.....

tgillespie

05-20-2004, 04:53 PM

I remember emailing you about your article hack. Good work so far. I would really love to use this on www.modtheater.com. Need someway to post tutorials, articles, and reviews. Seems like your software would work the best.

krohnathlonman

05-21-2004, 06:00 PM

I'm slowly adding more features as I find the time.

The last thing I added was the alternating colors ;) http://iamnotageek.com/articles.php

Just keep an eye on my site to watch the progress of things. That's where all changes are visible.

Zephanor

05-22-2004, 06:57 AM

Looking forward to it though I hope it will work with vbAdvanced and not as a replacement. Good job so far!

joeychgo

05-23-2004, 07:22 PM

I won't be writing the code to integrate with anything like vbadvanced. I'll be writing the code to REPLACE Vbadvanced.....

Why would this replace vbadvanced? VBA is a front page portal, why would you want this kind of page to be your front page?

I am a little confused about another thing. Is this a vb page or is it a vb shell page with a regular web page as part of it?

tgillespie

05-23-2004, 09:33 PM

Any updates or things for us to get excited about?

Hialls

05-26-2004, 11:06 AM

Why would this replace vbadvanced? VBA is a front page portal, why would you want this kind of page to be your front page?

I am a little confused about another thing. Is this a vb page or is it a vb shell page with a regular web page as part of it?

He is creating a portal system not just article system. The article system was just phase one of his project.

tgillespie

05-26-2004, 07:07 PM

He is creating a portal system not just article system. The article system was just phase one of his project.Grrr. Is there anyway he is going to release a stand alone article system? I've already spent hours customizing vBIndex to just the way I want it.

krohnathlonman

05-26-2004, 08:43 PM

basically what you could do is install my system and just not use anything other than the article part....

Kwak

05-27-2004, 05:29 AM

Cool, another article script. Love vB and what it is capable of. :cool:

SmasherMaster

05-27-2004, 05:00 PM

Cool, another article script. Love vB and what it is capable of. :cool:
Another? There's already one out?

krohnathlonman

05-27-2004, 05:08 PM

there's a couple others in development, but they're not really true article systems.

SmasherMaster

05-27-2004, 07:11 PM

Will yours allow a style drop down at the bottom like the forums?

krohnathlonman

05-27-2004, 07:16 PM

of course.... In the testing I've done it works perfectly. I'm just trying to polish things up as much as possible before the release. I deleted teh download for the beta to avoid upgrade problems since I will not be supporting any form of upgrading from the previous beta.

Quite a bit has changed since the beta.... I'm still thinking about adding some more major features, but they'll just delay the release.

colicab-d

05-27-2004, 07:40 PM

Pl release it as is :) its exactly what I need for my site without being to complicated. I take it it can use uploaded images? as in attachments? if so then plz of ph plz let me have it :)

Its gonna power my new tutorial section :)

krohnathlonman

05-27-2004, 07:48 PM

SmasherMaster

06-02-2004, 01:11 AM

Updates?

ranger2kxlt

06-09-2004, 02:38 PM

Release date?

MissKalunji

06-22-2004, 09:52 PM

The article system uses HTML for article formatting so anything you can do in HTML such as img src you can do in this system.

I will not release as is due to complications in upgrade routes. I simply do not want to spend time building upgrade paths for several different versions.

I've been looking for an article hack like that...will it work on vb2 or only vb3?? and when will it be available for download?? :squareeyed:

krohnathlonman

06-25-2004, 07:25 PM

I really don't think I'm going to release this. I have too many paying jobs right now to work on. the additional things that would need to be done to release this aren't worth my time. I have been adding more and more to this system over time. I even threw in a little search engine archive http://www.iamnotageek.com/b/

As anybody who's written hacks can tell you it's one thing to make things functional on 1 site... It's quite a bit more work to simplify things enough for other people to use. This system was written very specifically for my needs.

chet

06-25-2004, 07:41 PM

I thought you may say that, good job I purchased one just in case

Works for me (http://www.chetnet.co.uk/articles/)

Chet

MissKalunji

06-25-2004, 07:42 PM

krohnathlonman

06-25-2004, 07:50 PM

There's actually people interested in paying for the development of this system?

MissKalunji

06-25-2004, 07:51 PM

There's actually people interested in paying for the development of this system?

Dunno for the other ppl but me yes :nervous:

Jon Ward

06-26-2004, 08:45 AM

S'pose I could be counted with all the "others" who had originally looked at the "article system" and then decided this was for them. And have hung in there hoping ... and hoping ... that 'today' it would be released! (Iwould have switched out all the other feature things I really do not need.)

Like all those "others" I am now bitterly disappointed this project seems not at present to be going any further.

Why go the portal route? Why oh why? (There are arguably better supported and better developed solutions anyway!) This route was always going to be testing, and would constantly push things further back as yet more (unwanted) bells 'n whistles were added.

K - your 'article system' looked to be the mutt's nuts .... why not get back on the rails and concentrate on just this aspect of the hack for the time being?

If I must pay for it, so be it - but that implicitly demands of YOU further time in development (bug-freeing) and SUPPORT - the very thing you are perhaps least able to provide right now.

Disappointed strung-along Jon

krohnathlonman

06-26-2004, 04:50 PM

I've been quietly doing quite a bit of work on various aspects of the system while you guys have been waiting. As soon as I get the  code working properly I'll be bringing the WYSIWYG editor in. Basically in its current form it's not the friendliest/easiest system to use, but it does exactly what I need it to do. I have two seperate types of articles now:

http://iamnotageek.com/articles.php
http://iamnotageek.com/tips.php

I've brought the polls in along with tons of bug fixes and optimizations. The portal aspects I haven't spent much time on. I've got news, but haven't finished collecting all the stats I want for a seperate stats page. for a look at the stats go to the bottom of this page: http://iamnotageek.com/index.php

Most of my time has been spent working on search engine positioning and testing quite a few things shooting for more #1 spots. Probably my most recent addition was a spider display of the articles. I just posted them for inclusion to google a few days ago so they should hopefully be indexed by Monday. http://iamnotageek.com/b/

I have some time opening up fairly soon so I might be doing some more work on the article system. If you've been watching my site at all you'll notice that I've been posting a LOT of articles and that's been eating up alot of time, but the traffic has been paying off. The server logs show me I'll be finishing the month with 1.5 million pageviews! roughly 19% of those are in my /archive which is a big improvement since I tweaked that system.... If the search engine stuff picks up even more with the tweaks I've done recently I'll be able to get away with working on my site less and still maintain traffic growth.

krohnathlonman

06-26-2004, 06:11 PM

post 1 was updated.....

Most of the people that really wanted the article system got in on the BETA that was posted for a while

TheComputerGuy

06-28-2004, 10:05 AM

This looks great. I wouldn't mind helping out if you need more beta testing.

krohnathlonman

06-28-2004, 03:04 PM

It's not beta testing help that I need. It's basically just some development help that could be used. Bringing things towards a release is very low priority on my list. I've got a few more features to add and I've hard coded alot of things since it was originally intended to just be used by me ;) The edit process needs work and a secure deletion needs to be written.

TheComputerGuy

06-29-2004, 12:35 PM

well contact me and see what we can come up with sir

krohnathlonman

07-02-2004, 09:00 PM

I just added the editor and PAGEBREAK parts to the edit process. With that being done quite possibly the last big feature to be finished off is the way categories are currently handled. After that then the actual features will be completed then just leaving the cleanup and rewriting quite a few things for user customizations/portability. Which is the actual crappy part about releasing the system.

Jolten

07-06-2004, 08:51 PM

Hi krohnathlonman,
I installed the beta version you had posted here a while back. I've since misplaced that package. I'd like to get things working with vb3.0.3 again. Any chance you could send me that beta package? I don't need all th bells and whistles the beta was working fine.

MissKalunji

07-06-2004, 08:54 PM

post 1 was updated.....

Most of the people that really wanted the article system got in on the BETA that was posted for a while

Where can i get the beta? im lost :surprised:

Jolten

07-06-2004, 09:13 PM

The beta was removed from the first post a while ago. Which is why I'm asking for it again.

Kwak

07-07-2004, 12:17 AM

Maybe the final version will be released. ;)

krohnathlonman

07-07-2004, 04:54 PM

I post updates when there is something to update..... I've been busy working on a WINDOWS app lately... http://www.iamnotageek.com/articles.php?aid=116&page=1&topic=Security All development of the article system has stopped until my security app is completed. I don't even have that old beta package around anymore. I did add a couple of big features to the system and I posted an update that development is still in some form of progress.

The release of this article system is a very low priority for me. It's a rather major project that requires quite a bit of documenting and setting something up for you guys to install it is really a PITA there's alot of New templates to install which are ALL hardoded to stuff that's specific to my site.

I will continue working on this... If I release it as is, I won't be offering any truly simple upgrade paths to future versions. I plan on re-writing the way the categories are handled and adding quite a bit of query caching. Also support will be really limited. Hopefully somebody else will be able to step in and handle alot of the support.

Jolten

07-07-2004, 10:49 PM

I wasn't askign for anything new. I was asking for the beta version you posted months ago. I dont' need any mroe development of it.. just what you already had done.

krohnathlonman

07-08-2004, 12:46 AM

read the post, I said that I don't have the old package anymore.... You're just gonna have to wait like everybody else.

Jolten

07-08-2004, 02:06 AM

Okay. thanks anyway.

krohnathlonman

07-24-2004, 11:16 PM

For anybody looking for an update I've decided to build something that basically builds completely static pages and updates itself twice a day for all of my articles.

On a site like mine it will greatly decrease the load and make my system capable of serving a LOT more pages. This affectively broke the current Vbulletin integration since I'm no longer using session handling in any form for the articles. I'm currently looking at simple ways of tapping into the sessions while using as few resources as possible!

I also plan on building a news and article list "caching" system. I might release addons to some of the portal systems out there currently to help your news pages load alot faster.

If there's a developer here that wants the build of my article system right before my static file version I can give you the DB structure and the .php file, but it's FAR from anything normal users can use. I will have absolutely zero support, you'll have to know a LOT of PHP and have released at least 2 hacks for me to send it to you. Hopefully somebody will be able to pickup where I left off with the system and create something releasable to you guys. I believe that my system is the best thing out there for articles. It even holds up to massive amounts of traffic!

Jolten

07-25-2004, 06:00 AM

Too bad. I haven't released 2 hack. but I did hack yoru beta version quite a bit to a decent tutorial system. I was hoping to get some additional features you'd worked out since I haven't had all the time to put into that one module.

krohnathlonman

07-25-2004, 04:47 PM

I did get the WYSIWYG and [PAGEBREAK] tags working just right ;) basically if somebody will polish it up it could be a great hack, I just haven't been able to find the time to do the polishing that it needs. Also for my personal projects I'm starting to drift away from the complete VB integration. My current method for finding where they are is through a little iframe'd in page that does the most basic VB access possible. The static pages load incredibly fast! In this build I'm using right now my templates are still in VB, but I'm going to take it out pretty soon. There's some issues with VB's cron system not letting the file access VB templates!

infiniterb

12-30-2004, 09:05 PM

Any hopes on this article system ever seeing the light of day? :)

Jolten

12-31-2004, 01:07 AM

Read the thread infiniterb.. it was abandoned unfortunately.

krohnathlonman

12-31-2004, 04:08 PM

The Vbulletin integrated route was far too server intensive for my needs so I switched to developing a static page articles system and its a good thing I did because even my worst days I'm serving well above 200k pages a day now. the classic DB driven site takes a ton of power to serve properly so by putting various static pagefile systems in place I can cache any section I want and only do the queries every so often.

Currently I'm using a dual Xeon 2.8 with 2Gb RAM and the loads are so nice and low that it might be months before I have to upgrade again.