[cinq's vbArticles v1.0 Hack] - The development process
 

BACKGROUND

Would be having some free time in about a month's time ( vacation wheee... ) so I have decided to take up the task of upgrading my previous hack for vb2 to be used in vb3.

A little background of the hack. I initially based the code off Arunan's popular link directory hack. But after a while I ended up changing most of the code to suit my needs. Several versions were pushed each time with more features added and bugs fixed, with help and suggestions from the community ( you folks know who you are :) ).
However, after a while, the hack kind of died a natural death, due to my lack of free time, an uncooperative computer, and actions of some of the members here.

I know there are already other vb3-based hacks around that has the same idea, a hack to house articles/tuts/reviews and what not, both free and paid work.

In any case, I would like to seek suggestions on what would be nice features in such a hack.

The old hack can be seen here : [vB 2.3.x] - vbArticles v0.4 -- For your repository of Articles/Tutorials/FAQs etc..

All suggestions would be seriously considered and implemented, if it is within my means. I am still a noob compared to many here ! :D
Thanks folks :D


CURRENT PROGRESS STATUS
The current status of the work completed is approximately 90% at this point of time, based on the initial features planned for this hack.
LEFT : install script, query and code optimization.


SCREENSHOTS
You can refer to the following posts for the attached screenshots of what this hack looks like. Note however that the end release may see some/many visual changes.

Post 1 : Initial screenshots
Post 2 : Updated admin interface
Post 3: Updated frontend page


CONTRIBUTING TO THIS HACK
I am sure many require such a hack for their sites, be it for articles, reviews, guides, tutorials and what not. Help me in the development of this hack and allow me to present this hack to you faster and with much better functionality and user-friendliness.

How you can help :

• Provide suggestions on new features
• Volunteer to run extensive tests on this hack, when early releases become available (PM me for this)
• Volunteer to write a comprehensive install (and uninstall) script which would handle database changes, phrases and settings addition, and if possible a page which lists nicely the file changes which are required. (PM me for this)
• Provide solutions to problems I encounter along the way (due to my limited knowledge of coding :(). Any problems or questions which are stumping me, I will post in this thread for the community to hopefully render help. These problems will be indexed in this post too, with a prefix as to whether it has been overcome or not.
• Create nifty and cool looking graphics for packaging together with this hack's final release. (PM me for this)
• ....

PROBLEMS REQUIRING ASSISTANCE
Please reference the problem number ( eg. 1 or 2 ... ) when replying to any of these listed problems.

1. [Suggestions required] Similar Articles feature - [Implemented, thanks to rake]
2. [Coding help required] Previous/Next Article feature - [Solved, thanks to rake]
3. [Coding help required] Query Optimization for Category/SubCategory Displaying

POSSIBLE FUTURE FEATURES

1. Uploading of support zip file for an article
2. Article submission / with validation
3. Custom article fields creation
4. Setting up access/add article/comment/rate by usergroup permissions
5. ModCP panel to admin articles
6. Discussion tie-in with a forum thread in a specific 'article discussion' forum

OTHER STUFF

Any other matters, please feel free to post them in this thread as well, and I will address them as soon as I have the time.
Thank you for all help rendered :D

oooo I need a good tutorial system. I'd love a good systemthat included the ability to add images both on the main category page and within the contest pages.

I rarely post, but I'd like to throw in a few suggestions/ideas.

1. Pagination. I am no PHP coder, and I hear that pagination is a pain to code, but it would be nice to have articles/reviews/whatnot have the ability to span several pages.

2. The ability to setup the Articles index page in columns and rows. Admin preference of course.

Example:
3. Article category images. It would be nice to be able to set an image for article categories without relying on/modifying other hacks made for other stuff.

4. Able to set Moderators/Columnists whatever.

5. The option for threaded article/review comments. Something like how slashdot does their user comments would be a nice option, it would be nice to have something visually different from the main forums, yet still integrated.

6. An easy way to add customfields for posting articles. It would make things easier for people submitting articles and columnists to fill out the main article info, then just fill in a few boxes of important stuff like article source, additional links etc. It would also make everything look as uniform as possible.

There is a few. Good luck with the coding, I look forward to testing it out when it becomes available.

1- pagination is a 3 lines code... already have something inside vB for that.
2- this is skin related... easy and vB have a hack for the forumhome you can add to the articles system
3- add a field in the category table to do so.. easy
4- this is a bit complicated.. or long at least...
5- can be done with the same system as vB itself
6- this is the most requested feature.
...

I already have a commercial one for my personal site integrated into an article system I have for vb3.

However I am looking for a free one that I can integrate so as to be able to release my hack here.

I require the following features most importantly :
- image upload management .... able to read the a specific directory and/or subdirectories under the main directory.

I am aware of Spaw but unfortunately, it does not have this support.

Some screenshots of what I got going now.

Note the last screenshot, the editor in place.
I need something for that.

Found a few more ...

HTMLArea
- no image upload function though

TextArearich
- no image upload function though

:(

can't you write the image upload system?

and regarding WYSIWYG can't you use the vBulletin one?

I would....if i could :p


Not enough features that would be almost indispensible in article content creation.

Yes you can use the wysiwyg of vbulletin !

Use the "construct_edit_toolbar" fonction ;)

thks HiDeo :)

Looking good. There's a dire need for a good articles system.

Well, some screenshots on my progress.

Backend :

1: options galore ( 3/4 of the list shown with more expected )
2: articles management ( featured/orphaned/draft )
3: view all articles ( plus search for article )
4: adding an article ( wysiwyg is my paid script though )
5: category manager
6: adding category ( with category icon disabled - can be toggled at vboptions )

Some front end shots :

7: Main article home page
8: article view

Thanks for the feedback, +d-cipher :)

1. Pagination is in place, with options to set the delimiting field ( for article content to break into pages ) as well as number of articles shown per category before breaking into pages too.

2. Not going to do that. Can be changed through templates though.

3. Article images and category images implemented. Category images are an option ( can be toggled on or off )

4. Plan to set access/add article/comment/rate by usergroup permissions. Not done yet but something I will add.

5. I don't plan to do this. I think linear rows is still neater. Also comments can be limited in number ( in options ) to restrict number shown in an article before a link to click to view all is shown.

6. I would like this too. But I have no idea where to begin, in order to allow for custom fields. Any tips, anyone ?

Problem Number 1

I would like a similar articles feature as part of this hack.
This means that, when viewing an article, at the bottom of the page, there should list the titles ( with links of course ) of articles which have similar content to what you are currently reading.

There are a couple of ways to implement this.
These are some of the ways I thought of :


- When adding/editting an article in the AdminCP, you manually select all related articles via a multiple dropdown list. However, this presents a problem. Going through a long list of articles just to select a couple of related ones is not easy.

- Let the system auto search for related articles.

1. use the title of the current article you are reading to provide the search keywords to search the title and contents of all other articles in the database. A problem with this is that common words in the current article ( eg. of, in etc. ) get searched too and may turn up too many irrelevant results.
2. enter keywords when adding/editting articles, and these keywords would be used as the search keywords to search the title and contents of all other articles in the database.

Are there any other suggestions as to how this feature can be implemented ? :)

Problem Number 2

I implemented a 'Previous article Next article' feature at the top of each article page which provides an easy means to quickly navigate to another article.

This is the code currently in place:
The template where it appears :
Now this code works fine, BUT it assumes that all the rows in the database for articles are present in running order. eg. articleid=1,2,3,4....,100.. It presents a problem when there is a missing articleid in between. for eg. articleid=1,2,3,5,8,10,...,100...

How can I change things to make this work ?
Also if possible combine queries ?

For mysql 3 users: Research the LIKE syntax and find a way to implement it (for example: split thread title into individual words, filter out words that consist of less than 4 characters, then loop through the remaining words and make a list of conditions: OR title LIKE '%$word%' )

For mysql 4 users: Research the MATCH ... AGAINST syntax and you're all set.

And, if you really want to take it to the next level, there was a function that could produce equally sounding words, so you could even search for miswritten words. How cool is that? You should look that up, i forgot it's name..

if($next = $DB_site->query_first("SELECT whatever FROM table WHERE articles_articleid > $artid ORDER BY artid ASC"))
{
$nextarticle = 1;
}

if($previous = $DB_site->query_first("SELECT whatever FROM table WHERE articles_articleid < $artid ORDER BY artid DESC"))
{
$prearticle = 1;
}


TADA! :D

Doesn't seem to do the job, rake :(

ooops... ORDER BY articles_articleid

I'm soooo looking forward to this!

I have this feature list to suggest;

1) List of article contributers (and auto link to their profile on the forum, if it exists)
2) List of "sources" of information borrowed from someonewhere else for purposes of the article
3) A ModCP panel to admin articles
4) An "edit log" shown on the side of the article front end; edits to the article can be optionaly given a reason for editing by the user, maybe with some predefined reasons such as "Language Error"

Problem 2 solved ! ( thanks Rake ! )

Code used :
Decided to put in
to limit to previous or next articles in the same category.

1) Yes, will be implemented. Currently, this is set up such that there is an author field, and there is a Posted by field ( as typically they can be 2 different persons or the author may not be a forum member ).

2) Already implemented, with a references/sources delimiting option in Admincp options to seperate each reference/source. Will only show at base of article if there are any. :)

3) I will stick to admincp first, but eventually may consider modcp as well.

4) Already implemented, also shows the date of the amendment. Amendment notes only appear in the backend when editting an article, no point having it when adding one. Also date of amendment is provided by time(), no need for user input. :)

This is turning into exactly what I have been looking for. :classic:

Will it be possible to place an image thumbnail in the article next to its related text? Click on it for full view.

This is incredible c1nq good job :)

I am not totally understanding this.
Currently there is an article preview icon/image, with a link to the article proper.

Here's another to ponder on .

Problem Number 3

I am trying to get the categories and then the subcategories of the parent category.
Is there anyway I can change things around to optimize what I am trying to do ?

As it is, this is probably the code portion contributing to the massive amount of queries ( testing : 32 queries at this time, with 4 parent cats, each with 5,4,1,6 subcats respectively )

Right. I was referring to a thumbnail in the article proper. Say someone was writing a 'how-To' article. In the article, they put a text paragraph and in the next paragraph, they put a thumbnail that shows what the text in that paragraph is describing. The thumb would be on the left (or right) and the text would go to the side and under the thumb.

Sorry for not being clear.

Maybe this isn't really appropriate (I'm new forgive me) but what would be nice to see in it:

1. Ability to give reputation points to an article author.

2. There is a hack here to gie award to posts, could something similar be done that if an article is well written there is an option for the admin to give an "award" with associated image that sticks to the article indicating that it won an award for "good article writing" or soemthing?

Might be some errors in there, but you get the idea of how it should work. Just 2 queries. :D

With regards to the Similar Articles issue, this is what I have got now, but it is giving me a big headache :

It works fine if the last word in the title has more number of characters than the limit, which is set by $nochars>4 in this case.
But if not, an extra AND will be appended to the query.....

so for e.g, a title like "Review of the Nvidia Nforce Chip"
That would fail, since the last word Chip consists of only 4 characters.

how could I go about this ?

So close yet so far...
My head is spinning ..... :(

Here i am again to offer the solution..

remove this if entirely:
if ($j < $countsimiliar-1)

and add the and argument after each call condition.

then, just before
$similarquery = $similarquery.$similarquery2;

add

$similarquery2 = substr($similarquery2, 0, -4);

I really appreciate your help rake , really sorry I need to impose on you.
[high]* cinq worships rake ;)
[/high]

I will try that code in post 34 soon.

No problem. I'm glad i am able to help. Just post if you need more advice. :)

Problem Number One Implemented ! - (thanks to rake)
It works ! :D:D:D:D

I just realised this: that AND should actually be OR

Hi nathan :)
I am sorry but I do not intend to make those 2 features you suggested default for this hack.

But in the future, they may come as add-ons to this hack.

As it is, I hope to wrap up the current feature set I have in mind and push it out for beta testing :)

I guess you mean adding images to the article content.
Actually, that's where I am trying to add a WYSIWYG editor to the add article page ( which should only be accessible to the admin for now because it should allow uploads of the image ).

However I have yet to find a suitable textarea replacement, as mentioned on the first few posts of this thread.
I have just found that SPAW actually accepts dynamic image libraries which can be put to use but then, I cannot seem to get it to work ( the includes ) on my localhost... :(

Sorry rake, but I don't quite get your code ... ( noob here :( )

but your solution could potentially teach me how to deal with handling queries in nested while loops ( which I keep using now ..... )

could you take the time to explain this to me, please ? :)