Geek Article System 3 - RC1
 

HowdA All.

The GAS3 system is a comprehensive article system that completely integrates into vB3.

History

Originally, I looked into other article systems to integrate with my forums but just got irritated over and over again as I found the other offering out there very limiting for my needs. I wanted to use my members usergroup permissions, the search facility (so when someone did a search for bob both articles AND threads appeared on one page), I also wanted wysiwyg editing and vBs attachment system. Well, I accomplished 99% of my needs with the Geek Article System 2.0
Why 3.0? While the 2.0 was fine for my needs, many users began asking for a far more complex system that took the beauty of 2.0 and added popular features in the other article systems.

Here are the features in a nutshell:

• Integrates 100% into vB. No importing forums or creating special groups. Simply mark forum as an 'Article' forum and instantly all threads become articles. Dont like it anymore? Simply remove the ID and the therads and forums go back to normal.
• Whatever you can do in a thread or post, you can do with the GAS3 system (uploading attachments, smiles, BBcode, various editors, yadayadayada)
• Create multiple pages in your post by simply putting [BREAK] anywhere in your post.
• The first thumbnail in an article substitutes the posters avatar (switchable via admincp)
• Integrated article byline.
• Article sidebar that shows the article rating, your rating, the rating form, article tools, and article attachments (all toggable via admincp)

Special thanks goes to rlamego and to peterska2 for private Beta testing this for me. Couldnt of happened without them!

Planned work:

• I have integrated an attachment description modification, but so far I dont have an interface for the newattachment.php yet. I will do this as an add on (though the backend work is already in place)

Known issues:

• none that I am currently aware of.

Demos: (note that I have a custom skin, so your results will be ever so slightly different)
http://www.thenailgeek.com/showthread.php?t=11287
http://www.thenailgeek.com/showthread.php?t=8801 - pages of comments


Difficulty - Medium
Time - about 15 minutes
File modifications? a few

Instructions

Click install. Especially as a beta, the package could get important updates that you need to be aware of. Also, as soon as it goes live, I may do the gold release outside of this thread as I dont want to bog down the gold release thread with any beta issues (if there are any). You will need to be aware of when that happens (so click install darnit!)
Download the package and unzip.
Follow the GAS3_README file to the letter!
There is an install script that does most of the work for you. There are several file edits that you will have to do yourself though.
When done, go into your admncp, open vBulletin settings, open Geek Articles 3 settings (in the big list where you turn your VB on and off).

Troubleshooting:

• No phrases after install? This happens a lot with many installers for some bizzare reason. All you have to do is do a phrase search for GAS_ , edit the phrase (dont change it), then save it. Bingo - all your phrases appear.
• Settings not taking? Your settings need to be saved in your adminco in order to take effect.

Also:

For the love of Pete - this is a BETA hack. I would therefore backup your DB, your styles, and any of the files the README asks you to change.

nJoy

I would appreciate feedback on the installation process ASAP I am sure it is fine, but I have only been able to test on my system.

Thanks

Sweeeeeeeeeeet. I'll give this a run ASAP. I am *still* waiting to try out your Gallery plugin because I'm going through a serious work overload recovery...but my dev team will love to try out this little RC thingy.

Cool! I still have yet to find the magic mozilla pastehtml command for it though!

Anyway - let me know how you get on with the install.


Note:

I have just updated the readme as instruction 5.18 said Below, add and it needed to be Replace with. Package is updated.

wooooow thankyou for released it fast i was waiting for this MOD iwill install it right away :)

Just updated the package to 2-02 to address the following:


1- the instruction in 5.18 (as was mentioned in eariler post)
2- Incorrect addition in phrasegroup in instruction 4.2 (included the geek_popup phrasegroup which is for another mod of mine!) - so I removed that from the readme
3- updated teh functions_geekarticles.php as the threadrate select statement was missing some table prefixes which was causing an error with prefixed boards.

Thanks again goed to rlamego for spotting those!

your bug regarding the phrases not showing in some situation is related to your phrases included...

in function insert_phrase, you add the phrases in the languageid #0 ... put them in -1 if you want them to work, because #0 is a unknown language... -1 is the default . and your build_language(-1) tells it... ;)

...always add your phrases in the languageid #-1 ... to make them defaults.. like the templates...

from just looking at the links, it looks like it works on Mac OS X Safari, and Firefox 1.0 for OS X.

this is in response to your post that you made in the other thread that you closed ^^

more coders need to get Mac people to look at things before they release them -_- it annoys me to no end when a site looks like crap on my computer

hum... i myself usually comment when a script look bad on a Mac, i'm a Mac coder... but it's rare to see that kind of script look odd...!!

appears you're missing a table start in the GAS_forumdisplay template which shows up on my site with a sidebar since the table is malformed.

my fix was to;

FIND

$announcebits

ABOVE, ADD

<table class="tborder" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="1" border="0" width="100%" align="center">

Sweet guys.

I fixed the announcebit error pointed out by Kesomir as well as the phrasegroup bug pointed out by nexialys which is a freaking godsend as I have been bashing my head about with that one with ALL of my install scripts. Now Ill have to go by and update them. Thanks man ;)

Package updated to 2-03.

Changes:
GAS_forumdisplay template
insert_phrase change. If you can see your phrases than this change means diddly squat to you ;)

Thanks eva.

I could really use a safari emulator to help with some of these projects.

just use FireFox... ;) that will do the trick!

Well.. I have been keeping the mac thing under control although I haven't dig deep into the template thing.

Or buy a pc... Just Kidding!!! :nervous:

(Trackpads ducks under desk and awaits verbal abuse :) )

Seriously though, is there a way to import the V3 Articles Hack into this one? This is VERY nice and I would like to use it instead.

Thanks!

-Jason

heck if you want you can just send me a PM or IM when you need help with mac things

and nexialys the firefox for Mac is compilied differently than the firefox for windows, i know of a site that doesn't work on firefox for Mac but does for windows

coming along really nicely

too bad i am intergrating my reviews and everything to my main site.

Kind offer. I may take you up on it.

What does the above quote mean? If anything I thought this was about the single best approach to integration?!?

Im with you all the way ;)

Macs are pretty - and beat the pants off PC's in audio and image packages... but man - what apain otherwise ;) (Im hiding with track)

Anyhooo...

No way to import from vB articles other than a happy cut and paste job. Remember, this simply transforms your pre selected forums into articles. If they are not already threads in a forum... you wont get them there without a poop load of more work!

Sorry :(

still... thanks for the compliment (thats how I will take it anyway!)

my main site that we are working on is not a portal, we are not intergrating it into vB. it is on a different database

sorry for the confusion, shouldn't have used the word intergration

Anyone tried to install 03 on a brand new vB installation?
Tell me that I'm not crazy because I'm getting always the same error installing phrases (duplicate entry) and I have gone through 3 brand spanking new vB installs.

Thanks =)

Ok, last report of the evening before I'm off to the couch for some serious Battlestar Galactica new series marathon =)

My apologies if I'm posting something you already said it's broken but I kinda lost track of the bugs status.
1 - BREAK tag is case sensitive.;
2 - "Edit Article" from the Article Tools pull-down menu "doesn't work" (because no changes were made to the postings.php page)
3 - "Show the article sidebar" setting is ignored by the other options, so if it's set to NO and any of the others is set to YES, sidebar appears on the article pages.

And finally, one for the "things to do before releasing" list, remove or hide the break tag from the printthread.php version of the article.

I get that when I try to install the phrases...

/forum/admincp/gas3_install.php

Line 74 there is a duplicate entry in the phrases array (entry number 18 is a duplicate of 2).
I removed the #18 line and decremented the array numbers.

If you have already gone through the process and got stopped by the error then do an uninstall and install again after you have made that correction in the file. ;)

Installed Successfully....

http://www.runaked.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5061

Only problems were fixed with help from others.

Updated package to 2-04

• Fixed case sensitive pagebreak
• Fixed a couple of layout problems in mozilla sidebars
• Found a rogue phrase and fixed it
• Fixed duplicate phrase in install

I will sort printthread later (fingers crossed - today)
Im not sure what is wrong with the edit article function - can anyone else elaborate?

To upgrade from previous packages:
Replace your functions_geekarticles file with the new one.
Run the install and uninstall the phrases and the templates
Run the install and install the phrases and templates.
Edit your show thread and find:
Replace with

nJoy (And thanks for everyones help!)

Can everyone who has installed click INSTALL please? Otherwise you wont get notified of the updates.

Thanks

update to 2.06

This version is to support printthread.
In the readme, there are printthread changes and there is a new template added 'GAS_printthreadbit'

To upgrade from 2-05:
Uninstall the templates, then re-install them
Do the canges in step 8 of the readme.

Only known issue to me at this stage is:

If comment count>0 but comment count<the preview count, the post number is a negative. This came up in private beta testing and I thought I had fixed it. Ill see if I can sort it this afternoon or tonight (its a pretty insignificant bug in the scheme of things)

Thanks

Here's another issue with last package (which I believe is 6 but seems wrongly dubbed as 5).
In the vB options, setting "Show comments on last page?" to no, doesn't change a thing.
From what I can understand from the description (Do you want a 'preview' of comments on the last page of the articles?) this should remove all comments from the article's last page and put them in the comments page if set to "no", or show x number of comments in the last page of the article.

As for the Edit Article bug, forget it. It was a template issue not related to GA.

Hi,

First off I'd like to tip my hat off to such a great hack :) Second, I found a typo

Step 8.6:
The bold part should be $template :)

Nice one! Thanks for that.

I updated the package to 2-06 with this typo fixed.

rlamego -> Forgot that option is not wired up all the way yet. I really only put it in for hockeyfan. I'll wire it up most likely tomorrow. What it should do is toggle x amount of comments on all pages OR just the last page (if you remember everyone wanted them on last page only and he wanted the option).

Thanks again.

Oh, ok. That's what I recall from the early dev stages but wasn't sure you changed it.

Ahh, you didn't have to do all that just for me! I do appreciate it though. :D

I'm not a very talented coder, so I'm just waiting until this is donewith the beta testing to install. A big thank you to all those who aredoing such a great job with that as well! Can't wait to install this,muchthanks! :up:


h

Another bug. The article byline is not grabbed for editpost.

Fix:

Find in editpost.php:
Add BELOW:

Another problem, this time with templates. In the GAS_article_pb template, the message/title section of the article is not vertical aligned to the top, so if the article is smaller than the sidebar, it is centered, which is not very article-like. To fix, open up GAS_article_pb and find:

Replace with:

Bug on installation step 8.7/8.8. Find should either include the "}" in the end, or step 8.8 should get rid of the "}" in the end so it should look like this:

:) I think the latter is a better choice.

Yea, just noticed the valign problem.

Odd about the editpost. Thought I did that. Ill fold in your changes tomorrow into a new release.

Thanks a lot! (Keep em coming!)

xmitchx : Can you verify the editpost problem again? Mines is working fine here. Anyone else? I may have missed something in the install... Ill go back over it.

I already verified it by posting a few articles and reading over the editpost.php section of the install. I believe you may have forgotten it there :)

The directions for the printhread edits are off a bit -

It should be -