[an error occurred while processing this directive] Introduction

This package for Aborior's Simplex Database allows you to manage news articles across your entire site. The package supports multiple news pages with unique or shared articles, accompanying images and support for multiple users posting news.

Using a news script is an excellent way to maintain up to date information on your site and grab the attention of users as soon as they access your site. It can be used to post any sort of news, whether it be on the subject matter of your site or the latest updates to your site.


SimplexLite Users

SimplexLite users will notice some missing functionality in the News application. SimplexLite does not support registered user logins or file uploads and downloads. As such, while you will be able to add, edit and delete users from your news system, they will only sit dormant and will not be able to log in to post articles. Only you, the administrator, will be able to post articles. If wishing to include an image with any of your articles, you will only be able to do so by specifying a URL to an image on your site, not by uploading an image.

By upgrading to the full version, you will receive the complete functionality of the news application and the tools to manipulate the system to your own needs.

In the Lite version, you must display the "Powered by" message and link at the bottom of all pages. If you remove this link through the application's templates, SimplexLite will insert it at the bottom of each page for you. Upgrading to the full version will allow you to remove these links if you choose.


Essentials

The news system consists of three major parts - news pages, users and articles. News pages is the name given to pages of your web site that you would like to display news on. You may only want one, that being your home page for example, or you may want several pages on slightly different topics across your site. You can use existing pages or create new ones, whichever you would prefer. For each article of news, you can choose which news pages it will be displayed on. Users are those people who can log in and post news articles. In many cases you may prefer to be the only user who can post articles, and that is fine. In some situations, you may like to add additional users - if your site has several webmasters or you are creating a community news page for example.

Each news page displays links to the latest articles marked for display on that page. On these pages, a brief preview text is given for each article, but a reader must click on a link to see the entire article on its own separate page. A central news archive page displays all articles that have ever been posted, from latest to oldest.

Users that you add to the system will be able to post their own articles, as well as edit and delete those that they have already posted. Only you, the administrator, can edit and delete all articles - other users are restricted to those that they have posted themselves. Users can be managed through the Manage Users file interface page. When you add a user, their password will be randomly generated and displayed to you. The username and password of the user are not automatically forwarded to them, so it is your responsibility to pass the details on. All users should log in at ?file=&report=ManageArticles.


Setting Up

The first thing to consider is how many news pages you would like on your site. You can make new web sites for your news pages, or use existing ones. Each page should be a HTML page that is parsed for SSI. Often, this means that they will need to have an extension of .shtml rather than .html.

Once you have created your news pages, add them to the News application through the manage news pages area of this file interface. When adding a news page, make sure that you give it a brief but descriptive Code Name to make things easier later on. By default, there is one news page called main, but you can delete it if you wish.

Once all you news pages are added to the News application, you just need to insert a snippet of SSI code into each of them, wherever you would like the list of news articles on that page to appear:

<!--#include virtual="/database.?file=&report=PageArticles&pagename=XXX&firstrecord=0&finalrecord=2"-->

If that does not seem to work, try this alternative:

<!--#exec cgi="/database.?file=&report=PageArticles&pagename=XXX&firstrecord=0&finalrecord=2"-->

For each page, replace XXX with the code name of that particular news page. You can adjust the firstrecord and finalrecord values to change the number of articles displayed on a page, the default being three.

Finally, you will want to modify any or all of the templates to change the colours and layout of the news pages as you see fit. The main templates to change are reports/html/TemplateHeader.html and reports/html/TemplateFooter.html, which hold the header and footer HTML for the single article and news archive pages. Several other templates exist that you can modify, in particular PageTemplate.html and PageLayout.html for previews of articles on news pages, AllTemplate.html and AllLayout.html for articles on the archive page and SingleTemplate.html and SingleLayout.html for full article pages.

To change the colours and fonts of the file interface and the default templates, simply edit the SystemCustomise table datasheet. You may find the colour chart of assistance for getting the hexidecimal code corresponding to each colour that you wish to enter into this datasheet.

Once you have done all that, you are ready to go! You can begin adding users and articles using the manage users and manage articles pages of this file interface.


Further Information

Simplex is all about allowing you to manipulate and customise applications to suit your own needs. If planning to make some changes, the following information may help:

  1. If you're planning on posting a lot of news, the page displaying all articles may become unwieldy with the number of articles. You may like to split them up over several pages by adding &firstrecord=0&finalrecord=19 to the end of all URLs linking to this page, and adding this code to the reports/html/AllTemplate.html template that will insert navigation buttons for traversing the pages:

    <a href="<!--PREVURL-->">&lt;&lt;</a>
    <!--QUICKLINKS-->
    <a href="<!--NEXTURL-->">&gt;&gt;</a>

  2. To display the author of an article, use the <!--Article.Author--> comment tag in any of the templates in the reports/html directory that end in "Layout". These are the templates used to display articles in the news, archive and individual article pages.

  3. If your news articles are very brief, you may like to have entire articles displayed on the news pages rather than just article previews and links. If so, you can use the PreviewText field for the full text of the article. Alternatively, you can rework the templates or even the tables in the system if you feel confident in doing so.


Support

This application was written by Aborior and is covered by Aborior's usual support services. If you have any troubles, encounter bugs or want any help on implementing some of the suggestions made above, you can visit the Simplex Database Community Forum to talk it over with fellow users and developers, or if you would prefer you can contact Aborior's responsive support service at support@aborior.com.


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