Geeklog 2 Article Plugin: Call for Ideas

In addition to portal blocks it would be nice to simply have the ability to place standard blocks anywhere. For instance, say I write an article and would like to throw in a block anywhere in the story. Examples of this are all over the web (primarily for ads but also inserts).

Use CNN for example, the story in the link below actually has several blocks right in the article itself. Other stories on the site vary from no blocks to many. Some are specfic to the story and others are not, the rest would be up to creative authors to dream up some fancy blocks to insert into stories based on context etc.

CNN example

One of the main reasons, actually the only reason at the time, that Geeklog does not have an HTML editor is that the ones you'll see around the web and on other CMS systems is very limited in who can use it. Specifically you need to run IE on a PC. Period. Mac and Linux users are SOL.

There are better solutions to dhtml editors like Flash (see sample link below) but to incorporate a Flash editor that allowed you to preview your text and images in real-time would mean convincing the GL2 authors it's a viable alternative that runs well on Mac, Windows and Linux (Flash player 7 is avail for Linux).

It would run circles around any existing dhtml editors hands down (when complete, I have the source to a basic model and have been waiting for free time and help to integrate it into GL).

I would also suggest making a Flash editor an option in the config.php and have the current textarea method of story creation the default setup.

Simple flash based editor

Obviously any version which made it into GL would be significantly nicer than this editor, but it's enough to get the point across.

The ability to submit articles by email.

Cheers,

Euan.

• use of some sort of BB code instead of HTML
• either multi-language content or at least a language flag, so that switching the site's language will also switch the content of the stories (or the stories themselves, with the language flag)
• some sort of meta-content to add to the story that could be used with search (results) of for the description meta tag
• maybe the same as the previous: having a separate article summary (aka abstract) in addition as well as instead of the teaser
• some sort of history, e.g. who last changed the story and what
• ability to pipe the story through plugins before it's displayed

My point being that they are going through some of the same discussions, e.g. as they are exploring which properties an article should have.

Just a thought ...

bye, Dirk

It would be great to be able to pull a part of text from an article into a larger font block to grab attention. Something like a quote in a newspaper or magazine. I'm thinking something along the lines of this page but more on the sides so it's less intrusive.

You could type [pulltag align=left]Geeklog Named Best Thing Ever[endpulltag]. It would pull out the text insert and put it in bold large letters and boxed in a different color that draw your readers attention to keep on reading.

This would also be a good alternative to images on the front page. You could just use a line of pulltext/quote from the article.

First, my primary use for geeklog is for providing an interactive portal for small to medium sized special interest non-computer related clubs, not as news portals. I'd prefer that the members provide all the real stories and website content with as little time required by me and other moderators as possible.

Sorry if I've repeated too much..
1. I like the idea of pluggable editors as previously mentioned. Wysiwyg, plain text, html, wiki
2. I'm personally a huge fan of wikis, but teaching non-geek club members about wiki syntax is usually out of the question. But a pick option would be great, and possibly use *some* wiki-like syntax for special features?
3. Integrate HTMLTidy for stripping out garbage HTML created by MSWord/FrontPage,etc. This would help allow people to compose the bulk of their work offline in Word (or other editor), then select/copy/paste it into the form without it turning into junk where possible.
4. It might be interesting to allow a member to write the introduction, but upload an html file containing the actual article in HTML with the [picture] syntax embedded. This comes back to the point that serious articles are easier to compose offline, and that many people who'd like to contribute to a website are not always web-html-savy.
5. Allow the author of an article to preview and edit their articles up until the time the article is actually approved (if submission queues are enabled). If submission queues aren't enabled for articles then the author perhaps should always be able to browse and correct their articles.
6. Allow articles to have a start/stop date when being chosen to display on front page or as a featured article. Once the expired date is reached, the article reverts back to being shown only in the topic.
7. Something I've done on another portal was store/group each article's images in a photo gallery album with links back to the main article where they're used. Allows members to browse the pictures and jump to the story where they're referenced. It's great for illustrated technical articles.

• there are topics with subtopics
• each article can belong to several topics
• alternatively: there are "categories and subcategories" (where each article can belong to several) for articles that admins use but users can make their own "topics" and group articles by them

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hai

An other cool feature was that you could place poll's under artickels.

Another cool feature was that you could make difrent blogs in a very easy way.

BLOG:CMS has many more of these cool feature, you should check it out.

Haven't tried any of those, though ...

bye, Dirk

Ok, I definitely second these wishes which have already been mentioned:

• editing of comments
• batch delete of comments
• "report this comment" to an administrator/moderator: helps to get rid of offending posters or spam comments
• (optional) captions for images
• classes of articles: assign topics or individual articles to such classes; this allows for a) custom fields per article class (as mentioned previously) and b) custom theme/template per article class (again, as mentioned previously)
• link management and easy interlinking between Geeklog articles: e.g., inform if an internal article has been deleted but is still referenced somewhere

And finally here are some of my own wishes, which have not been mentioned previously.

• better separation of content and layout/design (better templating, more css, etc.)
• security code for anonymous comments: anonymous users must enter a randomly generated security code to post comments; this should get rid of most spam bots
• simple article-dependent image gallery: automatically create a simple image gallery for all images within an article; this gallery is displayed when you click on a thumbnailed image (simple means: just show caption, previous/next links, and popup the full-sized image on click); see this example on a German newspaper
• change author of an article via web gui
• ratings for articles: like good/average/bad (is somewhat similar to polls within articles)
• include an article's summary as a separate block within an article; one could use this block to insert other related information, like a picture of the author, or links to related stories, or custom fields (see above)

And it's really nice to hear that you will include BBCode into Geeklog by default. Keep up the good work!