[Chris] Extra pages (Suite version)
 

I must admit that even if I've coded 20+ AddOns for vB4, my knowledge on using vBulletin is average. Maybe lower than average. Years now I never succeeded to use the CMS. Latelly I had a need to build several different pages by including on them CMS widgets. That's why I build this mod which is NOT CMS !!!. It uses the widgets to build pages where can exists in any section of your site.

But is powerful. Very powerful. If you put your imagination to work, then you can make miracles. Read on and you'll understand the reason.

1.- Page Layout

I'm using a grid of 4 rows (see the screenshot). These rows ara:

1. Row 1 is full width and appears below the Breadcrumb.
2. Row 2 has 3 columns:
   1. Left (User specified width)
   2. Center
   3. Right (User specified width)
3. Row 3 has 2 columns:
   1. Left (50%)
   2. Right (50%)
4. Row 4 is full width and appears just above the footer

Each block is a container of widgets. You can add any amount of widgets into these (7 in total) containers. This doesn't means that you must show all the blocks. eg if you don't want to show the Row1 block just don't add any widget there. Do you want to have more space for the page's main content? No problem. Let Left or Right (or both) containers at Row 2 empth. The page content will takes the full width.

2.- Features in a short

• You can create an unlimited number of pages
• You can copy the page's link and use it on Navigation manager to use your own menu structure.
• You can even add the link to a page, so one page will links to another one. This is good in case that you want to have an article with chapters.
• Every page can has different layout than the other, depending on how you want to use it.
• Easy way to add a widget to container. See the screenshoots. On the right side are the available widgets while on the left are the selected ones. Double click to add, double click to remove (or click + - symbols). So easy.
• You can re-arrange the position of widgets per page.

3.- Base Layout

Because is frustating to add the same widgets on every page (for those who wante a standard interface), there is the Base Layout. Design it as you want, and every time that you'll go to add a page this layout will be predefinied. But you're not lock on that layout. As I said, this is a base layout. So you can use it as base and then add or remove some more widgets. It saves your time.

4.- Page content

The page content appears on the top of Row 2 center container. You can prepare the content using the including HTML editor. I've modified this editor to do a task that I was unable to do with other ones. I mean to add an image keeping the original size, but on the article to show a smaller one (you can assign the width per image). This thumbnail is that will appears on the article but by clicking on it you can see in a lighbox popup the full image.

5.- Installation

1. Upload all file inside the upload directory to your forum installation
2. Open the file extrapages/editor/assetmanager/settings.php and adjust the paths.
3. CMOD 777 the directories
   1. extrapages/editor/photos
   2. extrapages/editor/media
   3. extrapages/editor/files
   4. extrapages/editor/flash
4. Login to your admincp and import product-extrapages.xml
5. Set the General Settings
6. Set your Base Layout. This is optional but is highly recommented.
7. Start adding pages.
8. Copy the page link and add it anywhere you want.

6.- SEO Urls

There is an option to turn on SEO friendly urls. In this case you must add the line below in your htaccee file:

RewriteRule ^page/([^/]*)/ ./pages.php?p=$1 [L,NC]

You can use another word instead of "page" but you must enter exactly the same word in your settings.

7.- TODOs (without any ETA due to lack of free time).

1. Social media (eg Facebook like) to page
2. Page rating (Positive/Negative) using the Hand-Up/Hand-Down System
3. ....????...........

8.- Support

1. 20:00 - 22:00pm GMT+3 Mon-Fri. This is the guarantee time even if I'll try to come a bit more often here.
2. Only to those who have clicked installed
3. Only to those who are not in my ignore list, simple because I can't read their messages and offcourse I don't plan to remove them from my ignore list.
4. Only to questions that have not replied before. If you see that I've replied a newer question and bypassed yours it means that your question has replied before. Do a search to find it.

9.- Copyright

Since the time that DBTech released their Copyright Manager, I've removed my own copyrights. I found their action insulting me to maximum. Their wording "Site is powered by vBulletin AddOns and Modules by Dragonbyte Tech" (and not "Some parts of this site"), means that everything there is their own work, ignoring on the worst way the fact that there are 100's of other coders and designers who are supporting this community for years. So, I'm letting the glory to them. No copyrights from my side.


Christos Teriakis
aka ChrisTERiS

Awesome!!!

Can i add true HTML inside the Main-Area?

Yes sure. Use the HTML editor which comes with the mod to add any HTML you want.

Chris

I installed this in my xampp-testarea. Looks like there is an error, when i call the page:

Fatal error: Call to a member function getContentTypeID() on a non-object in F:\xampp\htdocs\test\packages\vbcms\widget\categor ynavall.php on line 170

What type of widget did you tried to add.? Widgets with widgettypeid = 1 (Navigatin Menu) and widgettypeid = 2 (Categories meny) are not working in non-native cms pages. But I have deactivated them from the list so they don't appear.

I've tried all other widgets coming with vb cms demo data plus some others that I found here and all of them are working well. You can see my demo page at:
http://www.christeris.net/dev42/page...xtra-page.html

But offcourse I can't check all widgets that are coming with other addons.

Chris

for me too!

I add only:

- Newest Articles
- Tags
- Calendar
- Categories (All Sections)

Nothing fancy, all is vb CMS-Suite stuff.

Edit: Maybe the error is using xampp?

The categories is the one that causes the error. I need to check my code. I'm sure that I've removed them from the list of available widgets but as there are many widgets relevant to categories seems that I forgot something. For the moment, edit the page that you created and remove it from the layout. Also remove it from the Base Layout.
I'm working to be able to have these widgets available to list.

Chris

@mitch84: What widgets do you add?

@ChrisTERiS: Thank you for the info - Would be nice, if you can find a solution...

A suggestion for further Version: The possibility to change the Grid from the base layout! (e.g. the row 2 footer, put above the page-content, under the row 1....)

There was a bug which allowed some category type widgets to appear in the list of the available widgets. Currently category widgets are not supporting. Please download version 1.1.0 and upload the file functions.php to extrapages/ directory. Finally import the product-extrapages.xml just to update the version nbr. There are no really changes on this file.

My shoutbox is inside a HTML-Widget, but it don`t appears in your Widget-List. What can i do now?

Thanks for sharing "Christeris". I like the unique concept.

A container can has as many widgets you like. So you can do this with a trick. Add the footer widgets to the top container and that's all.

As for the "Category" type widgets. I need to find out which files I need to include in pages.php file and it will works.

For shoutbox: If you're familiar on using phpMyAdmin please check the table cms_widgets and tell me what's the value of the field: widgettypeid. Otherwise, if it's a free widget, give me the link to download and test it.

Chris

At first: Thanks for the Answer...

Sorry, can you explain this a little bit more?

It is a custom work. It shows the DBTECH Shoutbox in a CMS-Widget. The widgettypeid is "3".

Hope, you can help me...

When this Mod is function, it is time for the "Mod of the month, ????hhh, year"!

Let's say that in block Row1 Full width you have the widget: Shoutbox and in the block Row4 Full width you have the windget: Users Online.

As you said you want to move the Row4 Full width to be at the top below Row 1 Full width block and above the article. Right?

Moving blocks is not possible, but use this trick:
1.- Remove the widget Users Online from Row 4 blokc. You can do it by clicking "-" symbol or double click the "Users Online" name.
2.- Now add the same widget "Users Online" to Row 1 Full width. Normally it will goes just after the Shoutbox. If you want to move it to be first, just drag and drop it above the Shoutbox.

What we did now? The footer block (Row4 full width) is empty. Has no widgets inside. So it will not appears on the page. But the top widget (Row 1 full) will has 2 widgets inside.

Don't confuse blocks (you can call the containers if you want) with the widgets. Each block can has as many widgets you want. Is not limit to 1.


Widgettypeid=3 is not in the restricted ids list as you can see in fuctions.php line 118. The restricted are:
$restrict = '1,2,10,16,20';
I'll try to check if it's really type 3 or it needs some special files to include. But (without to be sure), I don't think that a shoutbox can be static html.


For me is enought to know that is usefull to some users. I have got 4-5 MOTM before. What's changed? Nothing.

Chris

Another excellent mod Chris, great to see you playing with the CMS mate. Cant wait for you to turn your mind to calendars

Please note that from 11 Aug 2013 you can get support only in my site
http://www.teriakis.com

for update, here or only on your site? thx

I'll continue updating the files here. And if sometime the staff here decide to help coders and designers by giving them a "thread" on Bug Tracker instead of a forum one, I'll come back to continue supporting my addons. Forums are for discussion and not for monitoring bugs.

Chris

Fantastic work again Chris, manages to upload this meself, finally the penny dropped!!!

Any plans to use Forum block instead of widgets so it will works with forum only version?

Post a request at: http://www.teriakis.com/project.php?...typeid=feature