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Multiple Publications - publishing dates differ

trandel
User

Aug 7, 2006, 4:16 AM

Post #1 of 13 (1450 views)
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Multiple Publications - publishing dates differ	Can't Post

Hi,

What is the best way to handle different publishing schedule dates for multiple publications. I thought of using the extra article fields but is a global option - i.e. if I used one for a drop down for date of publication it forces all publications to the same schedule. If I use text it will allow the author to make a mistake ..................

I am using the 'Selected Branch only' server setup option so if I made a sub cat of month it would separate articles of like content into the publication dates:

Pub Title

- Date of Issue

- News

- New Products

Instead of the present:

Pub Title

- News (all issues)

- New Products (all issues)

Any ideas?

Regards

Tony Randell

Donna
Staff / Moderator

Aug 8, 2006, 2:41 PM

Post #2 of 13 (1420 views)
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Re: [trandel] Multiple Publications - publishing dates differ [In reply to]	Can't Post

Hi Tony,

Thanks for your email. :)

I don't quite understand what exactly you're trying to acheive here... would you mind giving us a little more detail? Thanks, Tony -- I look forward to helping you. :)

Donna

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trandel
User

Aug 8, 2006, 11:30 PM

Post #3 of 13 (1414 views)
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Re: [Donna] Multiple Publications - publishing dates differ [In reply to]	Can't Post

Hi Donna

Yes it is a bit vague .................!!??

What I am trying to do is to be able to keep all the articles per issue together BUT also be able to view all articles for all subcategories as well ............. this is hard to describe! What I think I will need to do is to create a category and subcategories for each issue of a magazine - this is a total pain as there will be a lot of duplication!

I was hoping to be able to have just one set of subcategories per magazine and then be able to search by the date of the magazine e.g. August 2006 edition - (N.B. articles would probably be created in Apr / May / June for this and other issues so their creation date is not accurate).

In other words, it would be great to have just a global Magazine category with subcategories containing all the articles BUT also have the ability to filter the same index to contain only a selected issue's articles. I am thinking that I would need to use an extra field (or two) to define the issue no/date and that this could be used to filter the specified articles.

e.g.

Normal Index (all Issues):

Magazine Title (all Issues)

- subcat 1 (all issues)

- subcat 2 etc etc (all Issues)

OR Filter Index :

Magazine Title (selected issue only)

- subcat 1 (selected issue only)

- subcat 2 etc etc (selected issue only)

To sum up - is it possible to filter an index with a user supplied selection criteria?

Hope that is a more lucid description of my problem?

Regards

Tony Randell

ChetW
Staff

Aug 10, 2006, 12:02 PM

Post #4 of 13 (1388 views)
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Re: [trandel] Multiple Publications - publishing dates differ [In reply to]	Can't Post

Hi Tony,

Thanks for the extra details!

One thing that you could do is add an "Issue" Dropdown selection form to your site, perhaps just above your category menu. Selecting "August 2006" from the Issue
dropdown would display all articles for the the "August 2006" issue.

Does this sound like something that may work for you Tony?

If so follow the steps below:

Create an "Issue" selection for when you create or edit articles:
1. Inside of Article Manager select 'Setup Options', scroll down to the "Article Fields" section and select an empty art_field. Make note of this empty art_field because we will need to use it later.

2. Inside this empty art_field we will create your Issue selection dropdown, be sure to enable the checkbox then inside the "Field Name" text area you will type something similar to this:

Issue (,Issue1,Issue2,Issue3,Issue4,Issue5,Issue6,Issue7)

On "Field Type" select pulldown and save your changes. Whenever a user creates an article they will now see an "Issue" field, using this field they select which "Issue" the Article belongs to.

Add the "Issue" dropdown to your website:
Next we will add the "Issue" dropdown selection to your actual website, the first thing to do is download your default.html file, this file can be found inside the /templates/index/ directory on your web server.

3. Open up the default.html file that you downloaded, find the place inside you design that you would like the "Issue" selection dropdown to appear in this spot place the following code:

Code

   <form action="$url_search$" method="post"> 
   <input type="hidden" value="art_field2" name="fields"/> 
   <legend>Issue</legend> 
   <select name="keyword"> 
   <option>Issue1</option> 
   <option>Issue2</option> 
   <option>Issue3</option> 
   <option>Issue4</option> 
   <option>Issue5</option> 
   <option>Issue6</option> 
   <option>Issue7</option> 
   </select> 
   <input type=submit name="search" value="Search Issue"> 
   </form>

Notice the "value" attribute inside of the <input> tag, for demonstration purpose I am using "art_field2" you are going to want to replace this with the art_field you picked in step 1.

4. Save your changes to the default.html file and place it back on your server in the /templates/index directory. You will also need to re-publish these changes form inside the Article Manager Admin program.

Give this a try Tony and if you any other questions feel free to ask. :)
Cheers,
Chet Woodside - Product Specialist
support@interactivetools.com

trandel
User

Aug 11, 2006, 4:16 AM

Post #5 of 13 (1382 views)
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Re: [ChetW] Multiple Publications - publishing dates differ [In reply to]	Can't Post

Hi Chet,

That looks good but raises more questions:

o I would like to set up the issue such that it is split into two fields - Month and Year. That way the server options would always be self perpetuating - this would avoid the user administrator having to update the options to allow for every issue. However, looking at other posts it would seem to me that AM can only search one field at a time - so that looking for 'July' and '2006' in the above scenario is not possible - AM will only allow a lookup for either 'July' or '2006' if two fields are used?

o Not only am I trying to avoid the need for any user to access the admin functions but your solution will mean that the templates for each publication will also need to be updated? (I am assuming that an index template will be required for each magazine with this solution - see below)

o Each publication will have it's own category but the content of issue field can vary - some are monthly, some are bi-monthly, etc etc. Is there any way that the article editor can be modified to show the correct issue art field for that category - this is easily done with the templates for each publication category?

Regards

Tony Randell

MikeB
Staff / Moderator

Aug 12, 2006, 9:45 AM

Post #6 of 13 (1352 views)
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Re: [trandel] Multiple Publications - publishing dates differ [In reply to]	Can't Post

Hi Tony,

Thanks for the post and the additional details! Smile

As you mentioned, Article Manager's search is able to search for one specific keyword in your articles. This means that splitting up July and 2006 into separate fields would prevent people from being able to search for a specific year and day.

With the method that Chet described and because of the way that Article Manager works, you wouldn't really be able to view a set of categories and subcategories for one specific issue because these would be a set of search results. When someone selects a certain issue they'll essentially just be looking at a set of search results rather than a new category with it's own navigation.

Setting up a new category list for one set of search results isn't really something that Article Manager is set up to do so I think the best option would be to use something like what Chet had outlined in his post.

I hope this helps and if you have any other questions feel free to let me know! Smile

Cheers,
Mike Briggs - Product Specialist
support@interactivetools.com

trandel
User

Aug 13, 2006, 10:48 PM

Post #7 of 13 (1328 views)
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Re: [MikeB] Multiple Publications - publishing dates differ [In reply to]	Can't Post

Hi Mike,

Thanks - I think I will try and do that - however, when I set up the search argument, can I use the placeholder that was created to show the dropdown values of the extra field during article creation? This would save having to create two dropdowns for the same field?

Regards

Tony Randell

ChetW
Staff

Aug 14, 2006, 11:25 AM

Post #8 of 13 (1315 views)
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Re: [trandel] Multiple Publications - publishing dates differ [In reply to]	Can't Post

Hi Tony,

Thanks for the post!

I am a little unsure of what you are asking here. Are you hoping to use just the extra field number on your template files, and have this extra field display the dropdown for you?

If you could provide me with a few more details, once I better understand your question I will be happy to lend a hand. :)
Cheers,
Chet Woodside - Product Specialist
support@interactivetools.com

trandel
User

Aug 14, 2006, 12:01 PM

Post #9 of 13 (1312 views)
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Re: [ChetW] Multiple Publications - publishing dates differ [In reply to]	Can't Post

Hi Donna,

When you add a dropdown to the article editor, can you refer to it on a template?

So I add a field '1' to the article editor can I include it on a page template?

I have added a series of dates to an extra field (2) - that creates a dropdown in article create. Can I use the same dropdown in a template so that a user can select an item for a search?

Regards

Tony Randell

ChetW
Staff

Aug 15, 2006, 5:10 PM

Post #10 of 13 (1290 views)
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Re: [trandel] Multiple Publications - publishing dates differ [In reply to]	Can't Post

Hi Tony,

If understand correct you want to have a dropdown on your website that is similar to the one you are using for art_field2 in the "Create Article" section. Is this correct?

If so all you will have to do is create the dropdown on your template file, the dropdown could be similar to this:

Code

   <form action="$url_search$" method="post">  
   <input type="hidden" value="art_field2" name="fields"/>  
   <legend>Issue</legend>  
   <select name="keyword">  
   <option>Issue1</option>  
   <option>Issue2</option>  
   <option>Issue3</option>  
   <option>Issue4</option>  
   <option>Issue5</option>  
   <option>Issue6</option>  
   <option>Issue7</option>  
   </select>  
   <input type=submit name="search" value="Search Issue">  
   </form>

This is the same code that we spoke about before, notice that the "value" attribute tells Article Manager which field to look in.

Does this help Tony?
Cheers,
Chet Woodside - Product Specialist
support@interactivetools.com

trandel
User

Aug 16, 2006, 4:23 AM

Post #11 of 13 (1282 views)
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Re: [ChetW] Multiple Publications - publishing dates differ [In reply to]	Can't Post

Hi Chet,

I am trying to NOT code the <options> which are a duplicate of the values added when creating the extra field dropdown during setup.

So when I code the search parameter in a template (as you suggest) is it possible for me to reference the dropdown that is used when the article is created originally?

I want to avoid having to code these values twice - once in the setup options for that extra field and then again for the sort parameter to search that field.

In other words a dropdown has been created by AM for the Article Editor from the setup options - can I use that same dropdown in a template for a user to select the search argument from instead of having to recode the <option> values?

Hope this makes sense?

Regards

Tony Randell

Regards

Donna
Staff / Moderator

Aug 17, 2006, 1:44 PM

Post #12 of 13 (1253 views)
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Re: [trandel] Multiple Publications - publishing dates differ [In reply to]	Can't Post

Hi Tony,

To allow the templates to be totally customizable, the dropdown options are not a part of any particular placeholder. So, to have them show up on your search query page, you do need to hardcode the options into the template.

I hope this helps. :)

Donna

trandel
User

Aug 17, 2006, 11:01 PM

Post #13 of 13 (1247 views)
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Re: [Donna] Multiple Publications - publishing dates differ [In reply to]	Can't Post

Hi Donna

Pity - this will mean that my client will have to call on me to do a relatively simple update when they want to modify the contents of the dropdown. They simply do not have the skills to update templates or the server options.

Maybe a future version of AM??

Regards

Tony Randell

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