Blogging, articles and administration - General question

I can’t code nuttin but I believe the long term solution is a database driven one as opposed to "document/resource" based posts? But hey, seeing that I can’t code...:)

cheers/k

Quote from: sunwukung at Aug 24, 2009, 09:28 AM

I’ve installed both now and tinkering about - so far can’t really see how one offers the capacity to do what I’m suggesting. Could you elaborate?

Quip as a backend interface in the menu Components.

Let’s take it from the start:

• Install Wayfinder, Login, Quip and Ditto
• Create a basic template for Revolution, don’t forget to put the login snippet in it
• Create two documents as container with the Ditto call
• Under each Container create two other document, but not as container
• Fill them with Dummy data and give them self explanatory titles
• In each blog entries, put a Quip call like that [[Quip? &thread=`Comments for: [[*pagetitle]]`]]
• Go on front end, log in
• Enter some dummy comments on each pages
• Go back on Manager page and select the Quip item under the Components menu

If it’s all good you’ll see that you’ve access to a grid with 2 columns:

• Thread - "Comment for: Your page titles"
• Comments - Total of comments for each thread

Right click on it, you’ll be able to see the details of comments available for the current thread and manage them from backend.

That’s it for a visual exemple.

Now, if you want to do something similar but with resources you can easily get data for Resources that are Container and/or have Blog content set with a TV and/or with published date beween xxx and xxx.

You’ll be able to make grids looking like below:

• Menu - Blog, Archives...
• Entries - 358, 1200

Then, in the same way acces than Quip via the right click, access the list of entries, sort them like you want, with pages limit, etc...

You can then have a link on each entry to modify, create, publish, unpublish, etc...

I’m not saying that it’ll not take time to do, but it’s "relatively" easy to do.

Take a look at how Quip has been implemented, and if you want to develop such a component, you’ll probably have great help on the forum

Quote from: lossendae at Aug 24, 2009, 12:13 PM

• In each blog entries, put a Quip call like that [[Quip? &thread=`Comments for: [[*pagetitle]]`]]

Lossendae,

Thx for this mini-guide. I have not yet started out with Quip, though it is in my to do list ..can you put the Quip code directly on the website template so you don’t have to repeat the code for every blog entry?

cheers/k

You should set it via TV with Radio (Allow comment yes - no) and then choose whether you prefer to set default properties by calling a chunk with the call in it, or directly with php and the runSnippet method.

Quote from: lossendae at Aug 24, 2009, 12:54 PM

You should set it via TV with Radio (Allow comment yes - no) and then choose whether you prefer to set default properties by calling a chunk with the call in it, or directly with php and the runSnippet method.

Thx.

cheers/k

thanks for your patience lossendae. I have to say, however, that the solution is a rather convoluted workaround. Not outside of my capacity - but seems to emphasise the problem rather than remedy it. Still, worth some experimentation - but it might be a dealbreaker for a client wanting the capacity to order/view blog posts in a more straightforward fashion.

The implementation of Quip in the backend is an example.
It has been made that way just for the record.

You can put the presentation you want, or even use more Extjs function to achieve more functionality.

For a more Blog oriented look, you could simply not render the tree and use a more straight forward left menu. That’s another beast but it’s not impossible.

What’s your favorite tool for Blogging?

I’ve worked in Wordpress and Expression Engine.

WP: nice administration for the END USER - very limited from a development perspective. Don’t like it’s templating system at all.

EE: Great for templating/blogging, terrible admin system for end user.

I don’t mind either to administration system, because if you’re capable of configuring and templating a CMS, then you’re relatively at home in this environment.

I simply feel that MODx default display of resources in the administration interface (i.e: published articles within a container) seems to have an achilles heel when applied to a potentially infinite collection of articles. Which is a damn shame, because so far it seems to have one of the best templating systems and dev API’s I’ve encountered - and if I can get my head round this problem I believe it will be my tool of choice. At the moment though - I’m having some reservations about it’s use for traditional blogging purposes.

(I’m wondering if we’re talking at cross purposes here...this question is about how the site administration represents content - just to make sure)

All this said, I must thank you for taking the time to talk to me about this issue, and I must try to implement your solution, or create one of my own. I really want to, because modx seems brilliant!!!

You can create a module which will list the posts from the specific container and probably provide grid/table based interface.

For example, you can see JoCo module for comment moderation. It lists all comments site wide in one place. Not the exact stuff, but it can give u some ideas I am sure.

All the best and thanks for kind words for MODx.

Edit: THere is a module named DocSort, it should give "more ideas"

sunwukung,

The whole reason I didn’t answer you on Twitter (I am @jaygilmore) is that I knew that this is not as straigtforward as one would like. Basically what would solve this would be a simple module to display posts in a table like WP does. Seperate views might not be that hard to achieve. I bet if you wrote a spec for it someone could whip it together here pretty fast.

The fact of the matter is that using MODx and using the tree I put stuff in containers by nature so I never have 100s of individual posts in any one view.

Lets see what you can come up with.