Hooboy. As you can probably tell from the subject line, this is a unique little corner I’ve painted myself into.
I have a client (a trade association) that wanted to offer a number of services in their "Members Only" section, including a member-contributed resource library (for PDFs, Word and Excel files, pictures, etc.) and a forum. Instead of creating a number of different services and forcing the user to go several different places for the same info, I built what’s essentially an all-in-one resource library/forum hybrid using a variety of off-the-shelf snippets and custom MODx tools:
1. On the main "start" page, Ditto grabs all sub-documents (these are the individual library items, each its own page in MODx). There’s also a button here that says "Add to Resource Library."
2. Clicking the button takes you to a page with NewsPublisher running, which allows the front-end users to create a page with a Pagetitle, Description and Content.
3. After the item is created, it take them back to the start page, where the item they just added is the first in the list Ditto is grabbing. They, or anyone else with access to this section of the site, can click the title of the item to go to the newly created page.
4. On this new page, there are three tabs, which I’ll call A, B and C:
- Tab A is using Jot to allow users to comment on the page, and to subscribe to new comments (this is the beginning of my problem).
- Tab B is using FileUpload and FileDownload to tie files to this resource item (FileUpload is set up to create a new folder that corresponds with the document’s ID, and FileDownload retrieves them using the same method).
- Tab C is using eForm and eForm2DB to create a list of links.
All of this happens on the front end, and considering my beginner-level PHP/MySQL skills, I think it works very well. I’d love to show it off to this community, but unfortunately, it’s all members-only (if you want a tutorial, I’d be glad to provide one).
However, here’s my concern: a user can subscribe to new comments that are left on Tab A, but if a new file is uploaded via Tab B, it isn’t tied into Jot’s Subscribe system, so they won’t get any notification. Any suggestions on how I could tie it in? I’m fine with hacking FileUpload or using something completely different if someone has a better idea. My other concern is setting up notification on the custom eForm/eForm2DB stuff on Tab C, but I’m already considering redoing this anyway.
Suggestions would be appreciated!
☆ A M B ☆