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Community News   (News)

Calendars! Calendars! Calendars!
A long time we all lived with PostCalendar - a complex and powerful modules that included Smarty before it was included as templating engine into the core. But the complexity was also the reason why the original maintainers gave up their work and nobody really picked it up again. Robert Gasch attempted to dissolve the code jungle and turned to other projects. Other modules like Zerocal, cal-zone or the pgCalendar addon for Pagesetter never really took off in the shadow of the huge PostCalendar. For a long time nothing much happened until recently several new calendar modules started to grow:

1. Daniele Conca's crpCalendar started off as a simple list of events but it is slowly turning into a full fletched Calendar with day-, week- and month-views. Moreover it supports hCalendar microformats and Content via plugin so you can integrate calendar events into your Content articles.
Download: http://noc.postnuke.com/projects/crpcalendar/

2. TimeIt is attempt to clone PostCalendar with .8 technology. In the meantime version 1.1 RC1 is released which not only offers all the features postCalendar has but also event registration and user events.
Download: http://www.assembla.com/spaces/files/cxTPX-9PKr3lxaabIlDkbG

3. Eventliner is a new Calendar which also imports PostCalendar data and offers day-, week- and month-views.
Download: http://noc.postnuke.com/projects/eventliner/

Good News for Communities
Florian Schliessl released a new, cool community module called ContacList which handles lists of friends. Your user will be able to ask other others for friendship and see their friends birthdays. The module can also be used in other modules to make user profiles aso only visible for friends. TimeIt already supports ContactList so your users can add their events or register and make this information visible to their friends.
Download: http://noc.postnuke.com/projects/contactlist/

Totally Web 2.0
Mark West released a little plugin that allows you to include these little buttons for all kinds of link services like del.icio.us, mr. wong aso. into your modules.
Download: http://noc.postnuke.com/projects/pnwebservices/

Pagesetter Successor
Marco Kundert is still working on his Pagesetter clone. The module will have all the features that Pagesetter has but replace all the stuff that Jørn first implemented in Pagesetter which now has been included into the core by the core features. Guppy will be repleaced by pnForm, the workflows will be replaces by the core workflows aso. Moreover he aims at making Pagemaster easier to use for beginners. Gabriel Freinbichler is already running a test version on one of his sites and he seems to be quite satisfied with it.

Shops
There are at least 3 forks of pnCommerce out there, maintained by Rüdiger Hahn, Jim Hatfield and others the problem now is that they all are very busy with their system and that they need to integrate all forks again to have a common code base again. There were several attempts to reunite the code but AFAIK the project lacks somebody who is really willing and able to put some time into it - who works self-motivated and needs the shop for his own sites.

Robert Gasch is working on a commercial shop. I had the priviliedge to take a look at it and it seems to offer a lot of very advanced features. If you need a shop and you are willing to invest some money into it, you should contact Robert.

Media
Axel Guckelsberger seems to have 50 hour days. His latest project is MediaAttach - finally a real solution for a central media repository. It still has some legacy from it's predecessor pnUpper but it already offers a lot of great features for the handling of media and it is included in Scribite and Content.
Download: http://noc.postnuke.com/projects/mediaattach/

Certainly there is a lot more going on - so if you are working on a project, please leave a comment.

Generated on April 21, 2008.

MediaAttach RC 1 released   (News)

Functional features

With the display and delete hooks file uploads become possible in all hook-capable modules.
Many different file types are supported (images, music, videos, archives, documents, ...)
The most formats can be displayed embedded.
Enhanced file information like for example ID3 tags are read and cached with pnRender.
Also emedding external videos (e.g. YouTube, Google or Dailymotion) is possible.
Users can send files to themselves in mails.


Security

Files can be stored outside the web root, which is advisable absolutely.
If this is not possible, a .htaccess file can be created automatically for protecting direct access.
Therefore all access is handled by module functions and permissions.
A quota support cares for bounded storage limits.


Integration

Users can manage their own files in the profile.
With a Scribite plugin for Xinha media can be inserted in the editor easily.
A support for needles in the MultiHook also provides possibilities to include files in other content.
A Guppy plugin for Pagesetter is enclosed as well to be able to define MediaAttach fields.
Also the Content module is being supported by a flexible plugin.
More profound integration possibilities for special modules exist with create and update hooks.


Migration

An import from the file system is possible.
Moreover import options for Downloads 2, Mediashare, PhotoGallery and pnUpper are ready.


Comfort

Direct support for Categories.
Images can be scaled down.
Space-saving multi uploader if JavaScript is available.
Thumbnails can be cut out individually if desired.
The new search functionality is being supported.
The creation of bit torrents for files is possible.
Comprehensive PDF manual.


MediaAttach can be used as easy as every other display hook module (for example EZComments). But if one engages in it, he quickly perceives that the strengths of this module are it's flexibility and it's adaptability. It not only unifies file management and media integration, but can also be used as a gallery for example. Different annexed template sets illustrate several possible applications.
Also interesting is that one can activate MediaAttach also for MediaAttach itself which leads amongst others to the possibility to attach media to other media items.
The module offers concluding dozens possibilities which can all be used, but may not. For this reason it is excellently suited for being employed in project-specific areas and is furthermore in line with our framework idea why it is going to constitute an enrichment certainly.

Links

Download
Bugtracker
Patches
Feature Requests


Have fun with testing and giving feedback :)

Generated on March 7, 2008.

A Warm Welcome to Our Newest Member, Mateo Tibaquirá Palacios   (News)

Welcome Mateo, tell us a little about yourself. Who are you,
where are you from, and what do you do?
My complete name is Néstor Mateo Tibaquirá Palacios, but I prefer to be called Mateo. I'm from Colombia, a very beautiful country with some horrible problems; balanced, eh? I live in Popayán, where I'm finishing Electronic & Telecommunications Engineer Studies with an emphasis in Telematics (Information and Communications Technology). I chose Telematics because I like to program. Growing up, I did not have a computer, and from the distance I hated the idea of using a command line console. Now, it's different; I love my Ubuntu with the Yakuake console; and Eclipse PDT rocks!
At the University, I discovered that I had sufficient skills to write software. I began programming in C++ and Java some time ag

Generated on January 26, 2008.

PostNuke Project Update   (News)

Bug Fixing for RC3 / Bug Fix Weekend #2
Many new bugs have been submitted since the release of RC2, but as always, to improve the quality of 0.8 final we are looking for more. Please submit any bugs you find to the NOC. Meanwhile, RC2 bugfixing is in full swing, and the number of bugs in the bug tracker is steadily reducing. In preparation for RC3 early in the new year, we've scheduled a new bug fix weekend for the first weekend of January (plans are still to be finalised). For this weekend a Skype chat will be set up. If you feel you could offer assistance over the weekend, either through testing or coding then we invite you to join us. More details to follow shortly.

International Communities Request
In preparation for the publication of the project's new name we're looking to get in contact with those running local community support sites. To ensure active local communities are able to get international domain names the project is accepting applications for those currently running established communities. If you are interested in applying for a local domain name, please use the contact form to contact the Steering Committee.

Teams and Call for Volunteers
A separate article will shortly be posted asking for volunteers for a number of new sub teams within the projects. We're looking for people with some time to donate to the project in one of a number of different roles in an exciting time for the project. If you could be one of those people, please watch this space.

Module Developer's List - A Reminder
A list is available for module developers to ask questions and share expertise. Currently being discussed is the future of pnCommerce. We invite all those with an interest in PostNuke development to subscribe to the list - to do so, please PM Steffen (comment #1).

New on 0.9, Language System Redevelopments
Part of the list of features for 0.9 is a new languages system. Bernd Plagge is focused on this new system and is about to start working on the PostNuke-devel branch in SVN. We'll post more news on this system in a future article, but if you're subscribed to the commits list then look out for his work as it rolls in.

Web Links Module Needs a New Home
Unfortunately, Klaus Petzka has given the Web Links module up for adoption as he lacks the necessary time to maintain the module.

Generated on December 24, 2007.

Jørn Wildt Proposes New Content Module   (News)

For the discussion see: http://community.postnuke.com/module-Forum-viewtopic-topic-53152-start-0.htm

Here is what Jørn has in mind:

[quote=Jørn Wildt]Dear PostNuke community

One of the things that always comes up when comparing PostNuke to other Content Management Systems is its lack of real content management. All we have is some old News, Pages and FAQ (and some more) management modules - nothing really fancy. You can add fancy modules like PagEd, Pagesetter, pnWiki and others but somehow they all lack, well, something - something which I find rather difficult to pinpoint. They are either too complex, too simple, impossible to extend and do not integrate well with each other.

I have been doing some thinking about this issue and would like to present some ideas for a new Content system in PostNuke. A framework that newbies can work with right out of the box, an extensible framework, and a framework with well integrated components that are aware of each other. My ideas are by no means rocket science and most, if not all, have been implemented else where - just not in PostNuke.

If you ask me then PostNuke is going to dwindle away unless something serious is done to add a good content framework. Here is my suggestion.

[b]Content Types[/b]
The core component is the "Content Type". For those of you that knows Pagesetter this is exactly the same as Pagesetter's Publication Type. This will be a separate module that takes care of defining content types, editing and displaying content items - but without user navigation! Think of an Article, with it's title, lead-in text, main text and image, as a content item of the type "Article". The type specifies the fields that are available for a single instance of the type - a single content item - a single Article.

Content Types are management by the site administrator (but can also be created by other modules). The admin can choose from an extensible (through plugins) list of field types. Here are some examples (mostly copied from Pagesetter):

- String (one line text), Text (non-HTML), HTML (using Scribite!)
- Number, checkbox, date
- Media files (using Mediashare)
- File uploads
- URL, email
- Computer code (text displayed with line numbers in mono spaced font)
- Category (using PN .8 categories), both single and multiple select.

Now you can create an article as a title (string), lead-in (text), main text (html) - and many other types of content. But there is still no navigation - neither on the admin side nor the user side. All you have is a Content module that allows you to create content types, content items and then display these - assuming you now the URLs. Navigation is delegated to other modules - more on that later on.

The core framework does also handle input form generation: it will auto-generate input forms (using pnForms in PN .8). These can then be copied to another location and re-designed using the standard Smarty templating system.

The core content module handles a few other things: for instance revision history (who changed what and when).

[b]Content Management[/b]
So far there's nothing new compared to Pagesetter. So lets take a look at the admin side of navigation - how to store and locate your content items. I suggest that all content items are stored in a folder structure identically to your standard disk drive. On the harddisk you manage folders and store files in them. In the CMS you also manage folders - but now you store content items in them - indifferently of the content type.

The first challenge is how to handle user contributed content since normal users don't have access to the administrative folder system. Now remember that the core Content system allows anyone (with the right permissions) to add content, but where should it be stored? I suggest a standard "incoming" folder is created for this purpose (much like your mail system). The editors can then keep an eye on this folder and move new content to the right folders.

Actually there should be one "incoming" folder for each content type and it should be possible to specify which it is. In addition to this the system should have a flexible workflow system a'la Pagesetter (now already in the .8 core). So that different editors and authors and admins can be notified when new submissions arrive.

[b]Content Structure[/b]
But there's still not much difference from Pagesetter. So what's the point? Well, enter CoType - this little module, which I'm rather proud of, has some nice layout features that I would like to copy. First of all you have Boxes - elements that can be floated left/right/top/bottom relative to the current content. In CoType you have boxes for media items, program examples, and general text. I would like to extend this so that you can put any content item inside a box. So you can display and Article and put one or more Media type items in boxes as illustrations.

Another thing to copy from CoType is the use of nested content - sections in sections. This concept should be extended, just like the boxes, with the ability nest any content item inside another item. The only problem here is how nested content should be displayed? In CoType you always have sections in sections (in a document) - and there's a well defined standard way to display this. But what happens if you sudden nest a Music album inside a FAQ inside a Media item ... and then box it? Well, that will have to be solved as we go.

I suggest the Content Type configuration lets the admin specify which types of content you can nest inside another.

The system could also enable boxing of other modules contents - assuming some kind of API/interface the external modules have to implement (just like PostNuke's search API).

[b]Content Layout[/b]
The proposed layout scheme is so far rather fixed - something like this:

- Top content item title is displayed inside ... tags.
- Nested content title is displayed in ... (and so on for further nesting).
- All nested content is displayed on one page.
- A small table-of-content is displayed at the top (linking to sub-content anchors).
- Each (nested) content item is displayed with a standard auto-generated template.
- Boxes floated to the left/right are displayed in 50% width (like CoType)
- Top/bottom boxes are displayed in 100% width (like CoType)

This will allow newbies to quick and easy created new content without having to also design their own templates. Assuming of course that the system comes with a suitable default set of content items.

Experienced users can edit and change the auto-generated templates. But these will be recreated everytime the administrator changes the Content Type configuration. So experienced users must copy the templates to another location and then edit them to fit their own needs.

[b]Navigation[/b]
So far I have ignored the concept of navigation between different content items completely. This is because it can be done in so many different ways - and this is mostly where the different types of PostNuke modules distinguish themselves. A media gallery has a completely different navigation paradigme than a News list, a Wiki and a Weblink collection.

So I propose to delegate navigation to other modules. This has already been done with success with a calendar (pgcalendar) and a news archive (pgarchive) for Pagesetter. These two modules takes a specific Content Type and displays it's items a calendar view and a monthly listing view. This combination is extremely strong - you can add all the fields you want on a Calendar item - and still display it using the standard calendar view. Throw in the nested content and the boxing ability and you get an extremely flexible and yet simple Content Management System.

[b]List Navigation[/b]
The basic navigation is simple a pageable list of items ordered by some criteria. You create different lists and then refer these in the URL. For each list you configure which content type(s) to include, the default sorting order, the display template to use for each item - probably more. Including more than one content type gives some problem with respect to sorting.

This implements the typical News list on the frontpage.

[b]Catalog Navigation (collections)[/b]
This is the typical Weblink and File Up/Download navigation through a collection. The hierarchy is mirrored directly from the content folders.

[b]Calendar Navigation[/b]
Displays content items by date in a calendar (see for instance [url=http://www.fgc.dk/index.php?module=pgcalendar&tid=40]http://www.fgc.dk/index.php?module=pgcalendar&tid=40[/url]). You need to specify which date fields to use as start/end date of the entries.

[b]Archive Navigation[/b]
Displays content in lists organized by month (see for instance [url=http://www.fjeldgruppen.dk/arkiv.html]http://www.fjeldgruppen.dk/arkiv.html[/url]).

[b]Menu Navigation[/b]
On thing that frustrates me with PostNuke is the horrible way you edit menus through the Block interface. No - lets allocate a complete module for menu editing and then just select which menu to display in which box (I believe Content Express does this). With the integrated content framework you can now let the editor select content items from dropdown lists or similar - and avoid having to copy/paste raw URLs into the menu editor (this has always been a intellectual bottleneck for the people I have created websites for).

I would also like to see editing of the menu directly in the front-end. The editor should always have an "add current page to menu" icon in the menu. He should also be able to drag and drop menu items without having to jump to the admin interface.

[b]Frontpage Setup[/b]
This is just another idea of what you can do - not necessarily something to actually implement. But the frontpage need not necessarily be a list of latest items as on most portal websites. It might also be a fixed setup based on a grid where you can assign different content items to different locations. For instance Articles to the left, Banners to the right, and a few images at the bottom.


[b]Where to go now?[/b]
Now who's going to implement all this? Good question considering the speed of the core development. I would love to be on the team (and will be) but my time is restricted (especially now that I got my first kid) so I work rather slowly.

Any volunteers?

There's also the question of organizing the code - we cannot have much more than one or maybe two developers on the core Content module. But as soon as that is ready we can take more people in - one for each kind of navigational scheme. Other people can then work on the default content types.

We also need to consider how a system like this fits into the PostNuke distribution. Does it have it's own release cycle? Is it integrated with the core?

Enjoy 8-)

/Jørn[/quote]

Generated on September 4, 2007.

New Shop, New Calendar - Postnuke Community gains speed again   (News)

New Community Modules
Have you seen Florian Schliessl's modules? The central module is pnProfile - an alternative profile module similar to the new core module or AdvProfile (which actually has become the new core profile module ;-) ). pnProfile offers dropdowns, textfields aso.
Demo: technobilder.de.

Another nice community module is Florian's UserPictures. It allows users to keep their own personal gallery.
Demo: technobilder.de

I personally very much like Florian's ClickedMe which displays all the people who checked out you profile. Every user can choose for himself if he wants to be seen or not.
Download: ClickedMe.

To cut a long story short: Florian has released a bunch other modules. A list can be found in his NOC profile.

PostBuddy is a module that copies a very popular function of mySpace aso - you can make people your friend and display a list of your friends in your profile. Cool, eh?

Has anybody tried pnConnections? It sounds like a cool module.

Shops!
Did you see that Bernd Plagge adopted pnCommerce and released a working version? Contact him, if you are interested in cooperating with him! pnCommerce could use some cool new templates.

And pnCommerce has a young competitor! The development team has released a first beta of ShoppingKart. They are very active and keen on making ShoppingKart a cool module. IMHO their templates also lack beauty - but it's a first beta. ;-)

New Calendar
Robert Gasch and a user named "bones" announced to start working on a successor for PostCalendar - I'm really looking forward for that one.

But the grandmother of all calendar modules also has a competitor: crpCalendar. A neat little modules that's made to display a list of event dates - if you don't have too many of them it could fit your needs.

What else?
Did you see that Treverj is working on a cool Postnuke based Web 2.0 community site? Read: Project Updates.

The Spanish community released a Karma Addon for pnForum. You only need dpGraph for it.

Mark West released a new version of EZComments and added Akismet support. Akismet is the spam detection API of Wordpress. So EZComments sends all comments and trackbacks through Akismet to find out if it's spam or not. If you are working on any module that's been spammed - check out the Akismet module API and integrate its features into you module.

InvalidResponse released a first final version of his ElementBB forum. It's a nice and slim forum with great templates. Check it out at his homepage.

Jørn Wildt released a new content module that keeps content in a book like way and is made for team work. It's called CoType and should also serve as an example for a .8 implementation.

Hilope's Scribite is not only a module that adds the WYSIWYG editor of your choice to Postnuke modules. If you look deeper into the possibilities of for examples Xinha you will certainly never work on any site without this module. BTW: The initial development of Scribite was sponsored by the German Postnuke foundation. ;-)

Forgive me if I forgot your cool new module - this article wasn't meant to be complete. I wanted to give a little overview o

Generated on June 7, 2007.

DIY: Including Video in Your PN Site   (News)

complicated things there are. Netscape introduced the embed-tag with theit Navigator 2.0 but it never became part of the html standard.

Moreover a patent exists that forced Microsoft to implement embed even more complicatedly.. But there is an existing JavaScript-solution that functions as a nice work-around.

There are several reasons that make Flash Video the best choice for the video encoding: The quality is good enough for most purposes and the flash plugin is the most common. Every other method is limited to an operating system (wmv -> Windows) or to rarer plugins (Real, Quicktime aso.) Jeroen Wijering wrote a nice article about Flash Video.

I used Riva FLV Encoder 2 for the encoding. It is free and supports the codecs I needed.

Jeroen Wijering not only wrote an article about FLV he also wrote the Flash Video Player which can be used to embed the videos into your site.

I use Pagesetter to store the metadata. My publication type has three fields: title, description and filename. Filename is im my case also a string because the videos are too big to upload them via HTML forms. We upload them into a predefined directory and only enter the filename into the form field.

The flashplayer is stored inside the themes folder:
themes/myTheme/flash/flash_flv_player

And you have to add a javascript call to the site's header:
[code][/code]

The -list.html-template of the publication type looks something like this:
[code]

Generated on April 3, 2007.

Did you know: Implement your own Admin-Theme   (News)

I don't need any blocks there at all. And I don't even need a header or and other of this fancy corporate design stuff. I want space for my work. Thus the admin.htm is very short:
[code]









[ Home | Administration | Statistics ]



[/code]
That's it.


Save this as admin.htm to /themes/yourTheme/templates/modules
Add a new Theme Template: Administration/Xanthia/Edit Theme/Theme Template/New Module Template
Name: admin.htm
You have to enter something to the text area. Just one letter is suffcient. It only can't be empty.
Save that.
Add a new Theme Zone: Administration/Xanthia/Edit Theme/Theme Zone/Add New Zone
Name: Admin
Zone Label: *admin
Save that.

Now configure the new zone and choose admin.htm from the drop-down
Activate the new zone.

Done - Your new lean backend layout will always appear when functions are called via admin.php (old-style) or with type=admin within the URL.

We will have a small problem with pagesetter. As it doesn't have a clearly defined backend there's no type=admin in the URL. I always use a small "Pagesetter fix" in my master.htm:
[code]




[ Frontpage | Administration |Statistics ]



normal body
[/code]

I hope this article helps you implement a better backend with much space

Generated on March 15, 2007.

Defacements through Postguestbook   (News)

replaced with Islamistic propaganda and that his deactivated and forgotten Postguestbook sent some 25.000 mails with similar content.

Postguestbook has not been updated since 2002 and there is currently no maintainer for the project. The pnTeam suggests to uninstall Postguestbook and to remove it from the webspace. It's not sufficient to only deactive the module. It must be removed from the webspace

Alternatives
pnBook is an up-to-date guestbook module which can completely be customized via pnRender templates. And Philipp Niethammer is

Generated on March 9, 2007.

Microformats in PostNuke   (News)

pair of span-tags and give it the class "given-name". The same you do with the last name - the class-name would be "family-name".

You can mark all parts of an address in this manner. The result is a program that knows which class is what, can split up the address and work with that. For example you can move an address to your Outlook Address Book with a single click (see Live Clipboard).

There are several of these Microformats. Only few a are fully specified by now (hCard, hReview and some formats for the description of links.) But there are about 50 in discussion.

As an example for the technique and the way you can implement it into your own modules or templates I designed 3 publication types for Pagesetter: hCard, hCalendar and hReview. You can import them into your Pagesetter installation and look at the templates. You can also build your own address books, calendars or reviews with it. I would love to see them working on the one or the other site.

Links:
microformats.or

Generated on February 3, 2007.

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