News features and NSN News 2.0

kguske · Site Admin Joined: Jun 04, 2004 Posts: 6044

Adding WYSIWYG to NSN News 2.0 is high on the list. Some unexpected delays have prevented me from doing this already, but I hope to look into it very soon.

azakow · Posted: Mon Aug 07, 2006 11:53 pm

-Theme specific topic images, usefull.
-I like the template approach for news. This will satisfy all needs. Include one or two samples.
-Sorting hmm, by topic (AND date).
-Localization, for date, time and UI.

kguske · Site Admin Joined: Jun 04, 2004 Posts: 6044

Looking into templates for something else, but that is a good idea.

mtwo · New Member Joined: May 12, 2006 Posts: 23

Another feature we would like to see....

The ability to repost an article or the ability to bring it to the top of sorting order.

An example of its use...we posted an article a month ago about an event that has yet to occur. Since this event is about to happen, we would like to bring the posting for this event, which in our case includes an image or flyer, to the top of the page.

We simply edited the DB with phpmyadmin to duplicate the article, but I sure you can see why this is not a preferred method.

montego · Posted: Wed Aug 16, 2006 6:29 am

I kind of like this idea, but maybe there could be a "Copy From" type feature so you can find the article you like, click on "Copy From" and it brings you to the editor with that article's text already populated and then you can make any minor "tweaks" that you want before posting it.

CodyG · Posted: Wed May 23, 2007 5:00 pm

Need some news stories and/or topic categories only to be visible/read by some groups.

kguske · Site Admin Joined: Jun 04, 2004 Posts: 6044

So here's an updated list:

NSN News 2.0 offers several improvements over the standard News module:
- Supports single or dual column display
- Can notify article sumitter on approval
- Can authorize certain users to automatically post without moderation by an admin
- Can specify amount of text to appear on index / header
- Select new page or popup for read more links
- Can override user prefences for number of articles in home
- Can set home with only 1 topic
- Option to generate PDF of story
- Adds paging (eliminates the need for stories archive)
- Combines News, Topics, Submissions administration

In addition to what NSN News 2.0 currently does:
- Support old URLs so links to old articles aren't lost (NSN News changes the URL)
- Add program story options for start and / or end date / time (currently can only be done by # of hours in the future to stop story)
- Ability to specify sort order of stories (default is date descending) - this needs discussion
- Specify a single-column feature story (nice when you use dual display) or default latest story as feature
- Use theme-specific topics images + (just because Guardian2003 wants it Wink )
- Specify / upload an image and location (align left, center, right, top, bottom) to be used instead of topic image
- Align topic images on left, right or alternating
- Turn on/off bytes more, article rating, related, options, most read story, comments warning (if not available, just say nothing) without requiring theme changes +
- Enable right blocks on article page +
- alter selection of number stories on main page if dual columns and / or feature story are specified (why have 5 stories if you use dual display)
- specify default for allow comments (current default is hardcoded as yes)
- theme-specific topic icons
- maximum white space
- container / template format
- restricted topics to user levels
- ability to activate/inactivate individual topics (used on submission and filtering?)
- multiple topics per story (related topics?)
- rewrite of image tags to include the full absolute URL in RSS (nukeFEED does this)
- override HTML <title> tag (coming in nukeSEO 2.0, ability to override by module and use story title in existing dynamic titles tweaks)
- specify topics to display on / exclude from index page (may not want certain topics to display on index page)

Anything else?

CodyG · Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2008 5:36 pm

I'd love to be able to turn off the rating system. On one site, in 6 years and millions of page views, not one person has rated a story. Seems like wasted space/bandwidth to me.

And what's that about no need for a story archive? Do you mean to eliminate the page that lists the months so one can view all the stories from a particular month? I'm not so sure pagination is a replacement because there is still a need to view all the stories posted in October 2007 without have to page through everything posted since then.

Just my 2 cents ... and thanks for the contribution!

kguske · Site Admin Joined: Jun 04, 2004 Posts: 6044

Ability to disable rating = great idea!

Not needing stories archive != eliminating stories archive (it's just another option...)

Thanks for the input!

jestrella · Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2008 9:49 pm

Replace topics with tags
As someone mentioned above, there's actually no way to add multiple topics for one news article. So my suggestion in here will be to either allow to add multiple topics or completely replace topics system with tags.

Guardian2003 · Posted: Wed Oct 29, 2008 3:36 am

Theme dependant topic images is still a must for me Wink

It really is the only way to have some nice images that blend in with your theme (though of course retain a 'default' set).

Some months ago I decided to soup up my stock News module because I had a nice shiny CSS driven theme, I wanted to add some additional color to it Smile

I have since reverted to make maintenance easier but I'll share what I did and some of my findings in case it might get the juices flowing.

First off I employed a small image manipulation Class so I could replace the ReadMore, Comments etc text links with small icons that had the number of 'reads' and number of 'comments' dynamically imprinted over the top of the icons. I was quite impressed with the result but as RN caches images, the number of reads did not always update immediately (as you would expect) but that wasn't really a downer.

During the course of tinkering I noticed that there are a number of links which lead to substantially similar content.
For example
ReadMore

Code:

/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=125&mode=flat&order=1&thold=-1

Comments

Code:

/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=125&mode=flat&order=1&thold=-1

In addition, those two specific links are extremely messy.
This part

Code:

&mode=flat&order=1&thold=-1

takes into consideration whether the user has 'flat' or 'nested' view set in their nuke profile. There is absolutely no reason why that should be shown to bots and therefore indexed. Those parameters are only of benefit to registered users so it should only be shown to those. I added a simple if is_user... else.. to sort that out.
Those two links go to exactly the same page and have identical content, there only 'difference' is the anchor text, one user 'Readmore' and the other uses 'Comments' - neither of which are what you might call SEO friendly in terms of meaningful links.
As I was using images instead of text links I simply grabbed the article 'title' variable and put it in the images alt attribute but there is no real reason why you couldn't do something like article title - the full story and comments as anchor text for the link.

If I had the time to re-write it again I would probably use one link that went to the article page. The article page would contain ALL the data associated with it - comments, ratings etc.
Then I would probably use something like a jQuery/CSS combination to 'hide' the comments, rating sections of that page until their 'closed' container was clicked. If noscript is used then bots should be able to see ALL the data as the containers would not be 'closed' to them.
When the container is opened by a user I would probably use jQuery again to allow the user to add a comment, rating etc (with authentication) without the need for a page refresh.

I would definitely like to see a tagging feature like ContentPlus Smile

montego · Posted: Wed Oct 29, 2008 5:55 am

All of the above, but I don't like the idea of "supporting old URLs". I think instead, we should provide a rewrite rule or two or three or _____ to tell search engines that the links has changed (i.e., a 301). I just wouldn't want to continue having all this crapping linking that Guardian has mentioned and would want to get those cleaned out of the SE caches. It could be slightly "painful", but I think it is necessary. JMO.

Guardian2003 · Posted: Wed Oct 29, 2008 8:08 am

I would agree with M on not supporting old type links and in the manner suggested.
In the matter of .. (oops wrong hat..)
With regard to the crappy link I mentioned above, there is actually quite a lot of overhead involved so although I took the easy option by just showing two different links based on if it was a user or not, it might be better to do something like
if is(user.
function superduper() else
function slimmy jimmy

Any way, some really outstanding idea's compiled in that list kguske, this community never ceases to amaze me.

kguske · Site Admin Joined: Jun 04, 2004 Posts: 6044

M,

I understand your point re: old URLs, but not everyone has the ability to rewrite URLs. It wouldn't hurt to have both, which gives those who don't have / want rewritten URLs the ability to keep links.

G,
It is a nice list, but certainly not complete. For example, there are a couple of items that potentially conflict (dual column display / template approach). Another approach to this might be to use CSS / DHTML...

montego · Posted: Wed Oct 29, 2008 5:47 pm

Well, then I think it should be a switch to be either/or, not both. If you allow both, then we have even more substantially similar (if not exact) content from different links. JMO.

Also, another thought is that wouldn't it be possible right up front to do the rewrite in the module's index.php? We could use the header with a 301 still....

kguske · Site Admin Joined: Jun 04, 2004 Posts: 6044

If you use rewrite, the old URL will not be displayed. So that code will only be executed if you don't have URL rewriting.

But, I see what you're saying about duplicate content. Maybe we rewrite a 301 in php.