diary of a noob, part 3

okay, so I go to my "SHOP" container and create resource here, making it "Beard" for my beard Guitar ditto call, apply my category template

now what?

oh yeah, the ditto call.

Must quit lusting after one of these fiddles. I don’t play but I want to really bad.

Code chunk for the &tpl:

for some reason my image browser for TVs is not working. At all. It works in the RTE but not in the TV? I had turned on the "show preview in TV" plugin, just turned it off but it is still not working? turned off the image widget too for the TV.

never mind, it was me. PEBKAC error.

Quote from: redtoad at Mar 07, 2010, 06:43 PM

hm. If I make the categories tags then making -new- categories becomes -my job-

Yeah, that’s kind of why I’d suggest a @SELECT. You kind of have two options:
1) You let your client add whatever tags they want, and do a tag cloud for navigation instead of Wayfinder. OR you hardcode some documents in the site tree (for wayfinder) that call Ditto to filter by certain tags.

2) You use a checkbox TV and populate it (using @SELECT) _from_ your site tree. Doing this allows your client to create additional categories/tags and have it tied into the nav automatically.

Honestly, approach #1 may make more sense. Just depends on what you’re after. And yes, the @SELECT stuff is kind of magical. I was using MODx for a few years before I realized how much fun it @SELECT could be. If you need help with it just let me know.

Quote from: The at Mar 08, 2010, 01:59 AM

1) You let your client add whatever tags they want, and do a tag cloud for navigation instead of Wayfinder. OR you hardcode some documents in the site tree (for wayfinder) that call Ditto to filter by certain tags.

(adding a few lines about tags. might help)

You can use another solution for tags. Tut here. Probably you will have to build a module to edit the tags or use DbEdit module.

The prob is that if you have lots of tags you will have lots of checkboxes. In this case you might consider a multiselect dropdown
If I remember correctly, ditto can filter based on TV values.

Thank you cipa. I’m definitely going to look at that.

Right now I’m still fuzzy on the whole tag/category thing but I have to sort it out completely tonight/tomorrow.

I ended up removing the tag widget completely. It threw a weird error, we spent days trying to fix it, couldn’t figure it out, and scrapped it.

So then I went to tagging with a checkbox TV, I made the checkboxes output horizontally in the manager. I made the input option values into a chunk. Now that I’m into this I understand the SELECT binding a bit more and may end up switching to that. But I sort of have a hybrid on the sidebar menus, for now. I have two option, two chunks... one is "Submenu" which is created from wayfinder and the other is "Tagmenu" which is created from Ditto. He can check both of them or neither, and they’ll show up as lists in the left side. I’m not done yet so not sure how this will work but working on it.

I’m planning to use TV tagcloud for the tagmenu and output it in the same way I output the submenu list.

This way if we have a landing page that is just populated by a ditto call it still has a submenu.

I have added in the cool photo effects on the shop items that I wanted... tip? using Foxycart? their cut/paste code includes jquery and if you use jquery? it kills it. So take it out.

but you can see here:
http://www.smokymtguitars.com/build/index.php?id=65

there are up to three thumbnails that appear down the right side (checkbox in the manager to choose them) and then you click and they load. Right now this one loads in the same photo but you get the idea. And if you click on the bigger photo it loads a pretty lightbox. Which I am going to make black.Apologies if I am repeating myself, just trying to document all of this someplace for my future reference. I used Colorbox (jquery) to do this.


I used a nifty snippet call "ChunkIf" that I ran across to make an option in the Manager to either manually add in the New Arrivals on the home page or to have it fed automatically from the cart via ditto call.


Right now i’m playing with outputting tags on the items page, you can see I did that here:
http://www.smokymtguitars.com/build/index.php?id=118

and I mod’d the tagslinks snippet a bit to go to one landing page from those links so I don’t have to build 90 of them. I just hardcoded in the id I wanted.



Not sure I like this or want to keep it, I’m circling my ultimate solution and hav to try things to get there.

I also redid all the stinkin templates so my css is more proper and stretchy. Like it is supposed to be. Got rid of (most) of my absolute positioning. :-P And I removed the sifr and made all of the headers @font-face imports. which is BEAUTIFUL and if you have never been to fontsquirrel.com, highly recommended. I will center the screens but it generally the last thing I do.

I made ajaxsearch work. I love that snippet, it is amazing.


Sparky the Owner is getting a new window with just the photo and not the pretty lightbox using maxigallery in IE8 on Vista. (Gallery Page) I’m mystified. Cannot duplicate the problem. have to fix.

Have to build the "Email a friend" block

Have to finish the ManagerManager rules for Sparky.

Programmer is ready to kill me over the fact that the prices have commas put in and so we’re figuring out how to strip that, he is making something that does math. He is also integrating FoxyCart with MyEmma to subscribe customers right from the cart. The FoxyCart guys and MyEmma people have both been really helpful. I adore MyEmma.

and have to resolve my category/tagging dilemmas, finish plugging in content and then we’re done.

Have also discovered, if anyone cares? that if you find someone having the same error as you but they’re typing in Russian on this forum? you can google the error + modx and then hit "Translate this page" and read what they are saying. Personal Babel fish. Happy.

okay.... the flash isnt going up till they get me proper photography... but herei s where we are now.

http://www.smokymtguitars.com/build/

and I don’t have a ton of the items actually categorized now, though they are mostly loaded... because of my tagging issues.

Inventory is a whole other thing I’m sort of having fits about. I have looked at the snippet from Da Man. I’m finishing this stuff first and then tackling that. It isn’t HUGE because we are launching with mostly instruments and they want to keep those as "sold" and plan to manually do this? however what would make me happy is if the xml feed/callback toggled a "sold" TV on/off. Manual input is a pain. but more on that later.

I’m making corned beef.

All right, tackling my category issue.

Cipa, the article you referred me to is excellent. I don’t think I’ll be able to use it without a db module either and unfortunately am out of time as far as development goes. That would have to be tabled for the future. But it did give me some insights about using the @SELECT binding (an example of use) and developing snippets that I find really helpful. So thank you. Invaluable. So that said, am going to look a little more at the ideas "the Man" gave me and will then make my final decisions.

okay, time to think through Brett’s suggestions:

Yeah, that’s kind of why I’d suggest a @SELECT. You kind of have two options:
1) You let your client add whatever tags they want, and do a tag cloud for navigation instead of Wayfinder. OR you hardcode some documents in the site tree (for wayfinder) that call Ditto to filter by certain tags.

2) You use a checkbox TV and populate it (using @SELECT) _from_ your site tree. Doing this allows your client to create additional categories/tags and have it tied into the nav automatically.

Honestly, approach #1 may make more sense. Just depends on what you’re after. And yes, the @SELECT stuff is kind of magical. I was using MODx for a few years before I realized how much fun it @SELECT could be. If you need help with it just let me know.

My biggest issue with tag-cloud-instead-of-Wayfinder (option 1 here) is that it means headaches with my navigation bar. Hardcoding the docs that call Ditto is kind of where I have landed presently. But I do not want to hardcode in a new page for each tag, that’s a pain and confusing. Not to mention cumbersome. Hence my hybrid mashup. checkbox TV with @SELECT From site tree is intriguing and now that I understand that a bit more I’m going to look at it... but I still think I might end up with the hybrid.

going to work with TV tagcloud now. See if I can use it for what I want.

Quote from: redtoad at Mar 18, 2010, 08:52 AM

All right, tackling my category issue.

Cipa, the article you referred me to is excellent. I don’t think I’ll be able to use it without a db module either and unfortunately am out of time as far as development goes. That would have to be tabled for the future. But it did give me some insights about using the @SELECT binding (an example of use) and developing snippets that I find really helpful. So thank you. Invaluable. So that said, am going to look a little more at the ideas "the Man" gave me and will then make my final decisions.

For future reference you can use dbEdit module to do it. It’s easy customizable and I think it will take less then 30 min to set up

http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,32720.0.html

There are some updated versions at the end of the post