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shlomot
05-28-2008, 07:51 AM
Dear Brian,

Below is a first draft of our requirements from an Articles Library.

Even though I've purchased Dynamics, I'm too brain-dead to figure this plugin out, mainly with the little documentation that there is.

Can you please tell me if Dynamics is the organic tool for the job to start with, does it require major customizations, and who can perform customization and integration for us?

Thanks in advance.

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Articles Library: A Brief

Top Synergy Connections will provide its audience (see permissions) with a rich and ever-growing library of articles about relationships and self-improvement.

For this project, I think that we should focus on the optimal turn-key solution, with minimal outstanding requirements and customization.

Article Sources:

Experts - Members of the community that belong to the experts usergroup. This articles will be posted on public categories. Articles are not moderated but new postings shall be viewed by admin or another QC usergroup. Please note that, quite often, experts are too busy to post their own articles, and we'll have to do the dirty work for them.
Members - Regular members can post articles. These articles are posted to member's category, and member sets the permissions for who else can view the article. There's a public gallery of all viewable members articles. Articles are not moderated but new postings shall be viewed by admin or another QC usergroup. If member proves to write expert articles, they'll be assigned the Experts usergroup.
Syndication - From time to time we'd like to publish authorized syndicated articles from various sources (see XML Import, and Credit Box).
Tutorials (open academies) - Top Synergy Connections will host open university projects. Participation fees are being charged from the students and the tutorials are available to them alone. Tutorials are written by the course admin or TS admins. We would also like to have a friendly tool that will automatically generate a syllabus out of the training material. Syllabus will be viewable by all.


Categories:
There is not much to add here since all CMS solutions provide today unlimited categories, sub-categories, and category-based permissions.
The think that I think we should focus on is friendly disply of user-category, friendly to the member and to the community at whole (for reading, commenting, and rating) - per member's permissions, as with good album and multi-media galleries.

Author Block (Credit Box):
One of the must-have features that are missing on many CMS products is two extra fields that can be set (per article) to show under the article block: Author Block and a disclaimer. Author Block is the main motivation for article authors to publish articles or to allow syndication of their articles.
Also, when we RSS or XML our articles out, either by a link on the page or via automated readers and syndication tools, the content of this fields should be an integral part of the document.

Ad Publishing:
The more freedom we have to configure ad publishing on the article, the better. Articles return great ROI to both advertisers and publisher, provided that the ad-publishing allows flexibility in location and design.

Sometimes it is even required to use conditionals for ad publishing for different usergroups.

RSS/XML Subscription:
Good SEO practice to allow subscription and even auto-pinging.

Automated XML (or other method) Import:
It will be great if there's an engine that links to predefined article syndication sources and imports articles based on keyword filtering.
If so, these articles must be moderated!!!

SEO:
Friendly URLs, meta-tag editing control, language coding control, and and auto-pinging services.

Languages:
Many of the articles will be published in Hebrew (RTL orientation and other issues). We need to look for a solution where a CSS can be assigned to a category, very much like it's done per forum in vB 3.7

Brian
05-28-2008, 06:20 PM
Sounds like pretty much everything there can be done with the default features. Is there something in particular on that list that you're having a problem with?

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shlomot
05-29-2008, 12:05 AM
Hello Brian. I'm glad to see that I was betting on the right horse :)

However, I'm having a real challenge trying to grasp the gist of your script (business logic) without proper documentation.

Can you refer me to some ABC for dummies manual or list of steps to be taken for this project?

Sounds like pretty much everything there can be done with the default features. Is there something in particular on that list that you're having a problem with?

Brian
05-29-2008, 01:20 PM
Admin CP => vBa Dynamics => Usergroup Permissions
There you can set the different permissions for your Experts group and such, and also allow Admin's to submit entries as other members for those experts that will be busy.

For the "Author Box", I believe you can add some custom fields (Admin CP => vBa Links => Custom Fields) to allow your members to enter this info.

Ad Publishing wouldn't really have anything to do with vBa Dynamics as that would be handled through your advertising program.

RSS feeds can be enabled in the Admin CP (vBa Dynamics => Modify Settings => External Data Options).

Automated XML imports are the only thing on your list that is not possible with the default software.

SEO - Spider Friendly URL's can be enabled via the settings, and there are also options there to modify the meta tags and such.

Assigning a specific style to a category can be done by going to Admin CP => vBa Dynamics => Manage Categories => {choose category} => Custom Style For This Category

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shlomot
05-30-2008, 02:36 AM
Either something is wrong with me or I suffer from some badly ingrained fixation.

I cannot even figure out how to display the articles category on my forum's homepage (http://www.topsynergy.net/).

I'll pay, I'll beg, I'll clean your home :) Just please help me to get the show on the road.

Is a 30-year programming and IT project management career going here down the drain?

satfix
05-30-2008, 01:41 PM
Either something is wrong with me or I suffer from some badly ingrained fixation.

I cannot even figure out how to display the articles category on my forum's homepage (http://www.topsynergy.net/).

I'll pay, I'll beg, I'll clean your home :) Just please help me to get the show on the road.

Is a 30-year programming and IT project management career going here down the drain?

I manually edited the navbar section of my template to add it.

locate the <!--nav buttons bar--> area of your navbar
add this:


<td class="vbmenu_control"><a href="http://www.yoursite.com/forum/dynamics/index.php">Articles</a></td>


The title that will appear on your navbar is "Articles" - you can change this to what you want. The path assumes the dynamics folder is in your forum folder. Modify this to what fits your path.

I'm not sure if there's another way - this is just what I did to add it to my navbar


rich

Brian
05-30-2008, 01:43 PM
I cannot even figure out how to display the articles category on my forum's homepage (http://www.topsynergy.net/).

Articles are not meant to be displayed on your vBulletin homepage. vBa Dynamics is a competely different section and you will see your articles wherever you uploaded the 'dynamics' folder to on your server.