Difference between Blogs -News and Articles?

Hello,
Im New to modX. Ive been messing with it localy for a few days.

Ive come to the conclusion that Im confused about
News Blogs and Articles-
I think my brain needs reorganizing (I am and have been a xoopser for about 3 years, its great for portal stuff but not so much for end user clients).

Very often it seems to me that Blogs and News are being referenced as the same thing.
But thats not entirely true is it?

I mean I realize you can use blog posts as news...but what if you want News Articles(uncommented) that is still editable by a web user group...
And a Blog as well?

I was hoping someone could oint me in the right direction:
For example and to clarify:
Im going to rework a site for a non-profit theatre group.
Their shows, I figure, can be published as news Articles and archived...
But they also want a blog style thing for like Recent News...and newsletter type of updates.

Im confused because the Newsmanager manages blog posts not articles. I dunno maybe I read an outdated tutorial..
Can you make more than one blog or is there something entirely seperate in the form of an Article type of snippet?

Thanks in advance for any assistance.
Im looking forward to using modx for some clients in the future for a simple end user cms.
(though I know you can do a lot more too). I have a lot of css and xhtml experience and I look forward to getting to the point where I can contribute to the modX community.,...

Well, I can’t help you with the Newsmanager, haven’t got much experiences with it myself. But the difference between news and blogs is basically the commenting, if you leave out the comment-call for newsposts I don’t think anyone could tell the difference. The easiest way would be to use two different NewsPublisher pages, one with the comments call and one without with both creating the documents in different folders, if you want that.

Thanks,Thats what if figured too.
However, lets say you want to use newslisting or ditto.
Can you specify which blogs to use as which group via folder structure?

More specifically if anyone is interested, Im anxious to make valid xhtml/css template for this site which I volunteer on. I would like to open up some simple front end admin for some members of the company to use, in case they need to update the stories details. Quickedit and Newsmanager would seem to accomplish this.

But basically Id like to keep Productions (in their navigation link) as articles so they can add a new one everytime they have one and then provide them with a blog for misc non-show related news.

Im sure I can do this with ModX. I guees I should continue playing with it a lot of my concern is somewhat pre-emptive I admit.

Thanks...

Hi,

first of all my apologises for my bad english.

I guess that you have to understand that modx does not define specific content type by default(articles, news, events,...) except documents and weblink.
Documents and weblinks have a data structure that you can extend with TV.

For instance, you want to add a field "category" to your content.
You’ll have to create a TV.
This TV will be displayed in your editing form according the type you selected (listbox, text field, checkbox, date,...)
TVs are attached to templates.
And you can select for each document wich template to use.
MODx is highly flexible.


Hope that makes sense.

:-)

I just printed out the TV documentation...
I got some reading to do.

Thanks!

I am such a newB!

Quote from: DfX at Jan 10, 2007, 03:38 PM

Thanks,Thats what if figured too.
However, lets say you want to use newslisting or ditto.
Can you specify which blogs to use as which group via folder structure?

More specifically if anyone is interested, Im anxious to make valid xhtml/css template for this site which I volunteer on. I would like to open up some simple front end admin for some members of the company to use, in case they need to update the stories details. Quickedit and Newsmanager would seem to accomplish this.

But basically Id like to keep Productions (in their navigation link) as articles so they can add a new one everytime they have one and then provide them with a blog for misc non-show related news.

Im sure I can do this with ModX. I guees I should continue playing with it a lot of my concern is somewhat pre-emptive I admit.

Thanks...

Shorter answer; yes you can, Ditto has a &startid paramater, if you enter the value of a folder there it’ll only list files in that folder. Using a TV is also possible but in that case you might get a very big load of documents trough each other, which could be less handy in the manager.

so is it possible to have a different instance of ditto on a certain page just by changing the &startid for that particular page? (hmmm tryin to wrap head around the simplest solution...) I see more ditto documentation to review..
Thanks!

If I get the question right, yes, you can have several instances of ditto listing content from different blogs, news etc, just by changing the &startid. On my site I have a folder structure with several blogs, each with their own unique parent folder, plus a news folder (which contains a list of external news links). I’ve had no problems with this structure.

John

wow...

thats...cool.


Ok I guess Im just gonna start playing now and see what happens.
Thanks so much.
Im sure Ill be back

You can even call the Ditto snippet with different templates specified, on the same page. I have pages with Ditto showing a list of articles, and on the same page I have a Ditto call in the sidebar with fewer, differently formatted summaries of the same thing.

I’ve also used the phx addition to truncate summary/introtext material for small blocks of "latest news" on a homepage, while using the whole summary/introtext field for the list on the main "News" page.