Blog Columns: Reflecting Column Content Changes throughout site

5 posts by 2 authors in: Forums > CMS Builder
Last Post: July 22, 2008   (RSS)

By nathaniel - July 18, 2008 - edited: July 18, 2008

Greetings! I just purchased CMSB and have had nothing but great support. These forums seem very helpful so I thought I would start with asking a question...or 2 :)

note* I use Dreamweaver and Fireworks mainly for the template and graphical style of the site.

I want to create a blog style site with 3 columns, left, center, and right. note* I AM USING Div's to create these columns in Dreamweaver.

Center column would be daily posts (primary content)
Left column would be content such as news, featured topics etc.
Right column would be recent posts and maybe some other content.

I would want the Left and Right columns to be displayed on every page of the site with the same content. But instead of having to copy that content to each html page of the site I would rather like to "link" the right and left column content to be displayed on every page (ie: contact page, faq page, guides page etc). I was also hoping to be able to use CMSB to easily update the content in the right and left columns without having to copy the content into every page whenever I wanted to upate recent posts, news, featured or whatever other content was in those left and right columns. Simply edit one page and it REFLECTS the CHANGES of column left and right in each page of the site. Center column can remain dynamic because I will add posts in the center column frequently.

I know this can be done with CMSB and PHP but not sure where to start. What is a good starting point for this?

If I made this confusing (which I am good at ) let me know so I can clarify :)

Thanks for any info in advance!!

Re: [nathaniel] Blog Columns: Reflecting Column Content Changes throughout site

By nathaniel - July 19, 2008

Well I think I figured out how to do this in the very basic form in Dreamweaver. <?php include "header.php"; ?> for example includes the content in my header.php file. I had to convert my index.html into index.php.
I just place the code into my AP DIV's.

I am playing around with it some but havent incorporated this with CMSB yet. Just shows how little I knew about php [crazy]

Re: [nathaniel] Blog Columns: Reflecting Column Content Changes throughout site

By Dave - July 21, 2008

Hi Nathaniel,

Glad you got it figured out! If you have any other questions just let us know! :)
Dave Edis - Senior Developer
interactivetools.com

Re: [Dave] Blog Columns: Reflecting Column Content Changes throughout site

By nathaniel - July 21, 2008 - edited: July 21, 2008

Hey thanks for the reply Dave!
Ok I had to edit this post because I figured out how to
link cmsb with list.php and detail.php pages. What I have is a
blog with daily posts and I wanted to easily add content with
post dates/posted by...etc. So I got this done but I have some questions about editing the php code. The Sample List Viewer - Instructions tells me I can:

1. Remove any fields you don't want displayed.

-Does this mean removing just the text (html) portion or can I remove the whole php tag...if I wanted to remove records for being shown is this possible?

-Also the link to the detail.php page looks like this link: /details.php?1 (how can I create a link to the details.php page without showing /details.php?1.

-Also If I wanted to bold the TITLE of my blog post do I simply do this in the html?

Hope you can decode my problems hehe. Thanks again for the response!

Regards, Nathaniel.

Re: [nathaniel] Blog Columns: Reflecting Column Content Changes throughout site

By Dave - July 22, 2008

Hi Nathaniel,

>Does this mean removing just the text (html) portion or
>can I remove the whole php tag...if I wanted to remove
>records for being shown is this possible?

You can remove the whole PHP tag for fields you don't want displayed. Do some experiments and just "undo" if you erase too much.

If you want to "hide" certain records you can create a checkbox with the fieldname "hidden" that will do that.

>Also the link to the detail.php page looks like this link:
>/details.php?1 (how can I create a link to the details.php
>page without showing /details.php?1.

Depends on what you're trying to do. What would you like the url to look like? Does the details.php need to show different records or always the same record? If it needs to show different records you need to have a way to tell it which record to show. One way is with the number in the url, another way is to hardcode the number in the where like this:

'where' => " num = '1' ",

>Also If I wanted to bold the TITLE of my blog post
>do I simply do this in the html?

Yes, something like this:

<b><?php echo $record['title'] ?></b>

Hope that helps!
Dave Edis - Senior Developer
interactivetools.com