[admin (no pm's please)]

Work has begun on a "simple" way to add web pages to forums.

I can't say very much more at the moment, but the intention is to create a system that will be a lot easier than say editing templates.

Time scale for release is aimed at late May to coincide with our two year anniversary.

[nabs24]

Yay

i was looking forward to it

[Danny M]

cool, sounds good

[Roy]

[admin (no pm's please)]

hijacking back to topic

The system can now display pages and do a page not found.

trivial I know, but this is the essential building block if things are to integrate with forum and portal.

[admin (no pm's please)]

First feature, when you are creating a page, you will be able to set a page style.
BLANK - no predefined look, but will read a header file cms_blank_header.tpl which you will be able to edit.
DEFAULT - A default custom header, in effect one of a range of new page templates that will be developed.
FORUMSTYLE - this will read your forums simple_header.tpl which just defines a few odds and sods and reads the CSS definitions from your selected forum template.
FORUM - this will read your overall_header.tpl with switch_portal_view defined. Thus allowing you to create pages that automatically match other pages from your forum.

Each page will also have attributes:

title - self explanatory
css - a css file to be read in. Typically this would not be used.
header - a header file to follow on from the other header files.

flexibility with headers is important to allow a consistent look from page to page.

[admin (no pm's please)]

portals are now loading in pages, so pages are very flexible

Next stage has to be a start on the actual editing facilities.

[Roy]

Cool sounds like its all working out, so far so good lets just hope it continues to be like this for the rest of the work load.

[admin (no pm's please)]

We shall see, the big issues will be things like can we set up a wysiwyg editor for the pages, so that people do not need to know html.

[Roy]

[quote="admin (no pm's please)"]wysiwyg editorquote]

Now you've lost me is that even a real name.

[admin (no pm's please)]

What You See Is What You Get wysiwyg

[admin (no pm's please)]

We also now have a concept of page order and a short title for a page.

I have been looking at freewebs and one of the way they simplify things is their templates place links to the pages you create in the templates, thus avoiding you needing to get to grips with linking to different pages.

We must do similar things and the default templates we will create will have to have things like:

{MYFF.WEBPAGELINKS}

a portal component that will list the available pages.

The aim is that via some smoke and mirrors, we retain all the powerful editing facilities we have, but for the novice user they can get something up and running very simply.

[snowgoose]

ok Admin just read this here post and im just wondering how one would go about adding web pages to thier forum once completed? do you edit in the Cp or what is going to be the normal way ?

Cheers

Jacob

[admin (no pm's please)]

That is a good question.

Conceptually it should be in the admin panel, and I think that is where it is going to be.

From a marketing point of view, it should probably be done differently

[snowgoose]

cant you use some sort of seperate webpage registration where users can sign up and use the wysiwyg editor which then automatically adds a portal on thier forum linking to the specific page they just created?

Just a question

Cheers

Jacob

[admin (no pm's please)]

Sounds like an added complication to me.

I am seeing one thing at the moment, as I am looking at a certain service to make sure we will have competitive facilities, it is not letting me edit anything unless I allow popup adverts and click on adverts

You may note on here that when you are actually in the admin/control panel there are no adverts at all, let alone ones that really hurt

[admin (no pm's please)]

Probably one of the most significant things about the new facility is that the admin side is going to be ajax/web2.0 driven!
Currently the plan is to use the toolkit from dojo.jot.com.
This means in practice that the whole usability of the interface goes up several notches, as common operations no longer require a reload of the whole web page
As we get the hang of this technology it may well make an appearance on the forums in general. It is very notable that phpbb3 is *not* an ajax application, e.g. we are waiting for a forums system that is technically outmoded before it starts.
That is the problem with such a long development phase.

[pivotkings]

You know the adding web pages.Im sorry but it just makes it more confusinng

[Brandon7]

sweet!

thx admin!

[admin (no pm's please)]

Painful day on this today.

The learning curve is the web 2.0, and having coded some of the basic interface for adminning the web pages, I started to add a web2.0 interface to handle publishing/unpublishing pages.
It kept on coming up with a dojo error in firefox, and after gradually cutting back the code I finally ended up on the basic "hello world" example code... and that gives the same darn error

I will play a bit more, but at the end of the day there is more than one way to code ajax.

[snowgoose]

is this just going to be a simple wysiwyg editor or will users be able to add in thier own html tags and code?

[Nick(NR)]

[X-Men_God]

I was hoping Mff would do this one day!
This is great news!

I really can't wait!!!

Keep up the good work admin!!!

[admin (no pm's please)]

I am pretty keen myself, I think this is far more important than most suggestions we get.

Tomorrow I think I will try the XAJAX libraries. Once we are up and running doing sensible things with AJAX we may be able to put this into Beta with relative speed.

[snowgoose]

well if your needing any forum owners willing to do beta testing id be willing to do it

[CodyT07]

[admin (no pm's please)]

[admin (no pm's please)]

yeeha

Finally using xajax rather than dojo, I have code at the "hello world" stage. e.g. something that finally does "something" albeit something not very useful like printing hello word.

Hopefully from here it will be relatively quick to see something doing something useful.

[admin (no pm's please)]

We have publish/unpublish working albeit without proper feedback, once the feedback is in, the we are on full steam.

I have to say I like XAJAX, the JavaScript code gets largely generated for you, from code done in php on the server, this means that whilst the JavaScript may need to change as this tech develops, the generation code should take care of it without rewriting tons of pages. It is also far less klunky as the code gets written in one place with the AJAX client/server ping pong game still happening, but being handled by the library

[admin (no pm's please)]

publish/unpublish now works perfectly.

It is notable that the noddy xajax examples do not take into account the stuff that is going on in a phpbb2 forum, but that in light of this I was able to surmise that a particular API call should exist to help me, and a quick check revealed it did that sort of logical progression gives me a good level of confidence in this process.
I may be at the stage now, where the time for thinking and talking is done and a real tranche of work is the way forward.

[admin (no pm's please)]

Another break another post

I thought I was on to a quick winner earlier, I wanted to write a reordering function for the web pages that would use Ajax, and in about 2001 I had written a slick table sorting JavaScript function that knocked the socks off anything around at the time So I figured this for a quick result.
Of course something written 6 years ago using cutting edge internet explorer JavaScript of the time, failed miserably in firefox in 2007

I am not running again in Firefox and tomorrow I suppose I need to check if that works in ie7, oh the joys of competing web standards

But the current result at least is buttons that on the office server instantly move web pages up and down a list:



If things work out in ie7 tomorrow, I will try and get creation and editing off the ground.

[Brandon7]

great news admin!

[admin (no pm's please)]

I have now eliminated the up and down arrows where they are irrelevant and tested in ie7

The only bug that transpires is that if you are editing the order in two different browsers simultaneously it gets a bit confused

Next step some initial investigation of wysiwgy editors. The beta release may not come with one of these, we will just have to see how it goes.

[admin (no pm's please)]

[Brandon]

Wow, this is looking good, Admin

[admin (no pm's please)]

You can now successfully edit pages and save them in the wysiwyg editor

This means the todo list is down to:

upload manager - so you can upload your own pages and media
page creation - you can't actually create any pages yet. I have simply put a few into a database for testing.
navigation bar - to allow navigation between pages when viewing them
page properties - background tags etc
default templates - if anyone can find some free web page templates it would be handy!

[admin (no pm's please)]

Just musing, I think to keep the interface relatively simple, the page creation page and the page editing page, should have all the options for a page on it.
Whilst that will mean one crowded page, it will at least be ONLY one page.

[Symon]

Can i ask a silly question

Ok here goes what would be the major plus from having the web pages you are doing now than to say using the component pages as webpages

[admin (no pm's please)]

wysiwyg editor
automatic navigation bar
easy interface
many different ways to display pages
simple html page names of your own choosing

It has to be conceded you can do almost anything you want with the portals, but at the level of web page design, even I would concede there is an element of rocket science involved This will be far far easier to use, but will still offer the same and more power.

[admin (no pm's please)]

I am unsure at the moment, as to whether to have options you can set to control the BODY tag, freewebs has these options, but to my way of thinking, most of what the options control should be set in the CSS of a template, and hence it is a lot more options on the page that will be largely unused. Once people get into setting these tags they probably will start to find setting these via a menu a bit clunky and restrictive compared to getting down and dirty with the html.
I tend to believe that where possibly we should both keep things as simple as possible, but also not restrict the advanced user.

[admin (no pm's please)]

I think the same argument applies to CSS files, you will of course be able to create and include them, but this will happen automatically with page headers people will be able to select.
So lets not confuse things.

[admin (no pm's please)]

Page creation done

It does become apparent that along with the pages, there need to be some general configuration options, even the ability to use the wyswyg editor probably needs to be a setting as it is not compatible with the Safari browser.




I can also see a need for macros to be defined that could be substituted back into the header to allow for varying body tags such as media maybe I do need an "advanced" screen allowing body settings to be made

[nabs24]

I'm happy to be the person who sorta started this of with my stupid question

I never thought it would turn out so well and admin ill be happy to be a beta tester as im used to it

windows live mail beta
windows live messenger 8.1 beta

im in the beta club

[admin (no pm's please)]

This won't have "beta" testers as such, everyone will get it at once, and as soon as the system is viable.

What we do need is templates. templates will take the form:

<html>
<head>
...
</head>
<body {BODYTAGS}>
..
..
.
.
{WEBPAGE}
..
.
.
</body>

and will have an associated css file.

When a page using a template is shown, then{WEBPAGE} will get replaced with the page contents.

[Brandon]

When you say templates, do you mean regular old html/css website templates(in the format above)? or something specialised?

[admin (no pm's please)]

Nothing clever, just a file and associated css file and images that will display as a decent looking html page, and where we can substitute peoples own content into the template to make it their page.

[admin (no pm's please)]

Well a few more things added.

1) Hopefully got the pesky quote escaping working on the system. This is a real pain, for mysql ' needs to be escaped as \' or else the code is totally vulnerable to mysql injection attacks, but given that loads of places in php try and do you the "favour" or protecting you against this, you can all to often end up with \\' and hence \'s appearing all over the shot wrecking things

2) page deletion now done, again using AJAX.

3) Basic image file uploading done. It would have been good to add a decent status bar in AJAX for this, but that is very bleeding edge technically, and I have not chosen to deal with that level of pain and risk.

3) images are now displaying. Not as easy as that might look, as normally "images/test.jpg" would be the same file for all forums!

One point about why I write this blurb, point 3 was being dealt with in a way that worked, but was inefficient, I find if I write things down, it means I have to justify it. In this case I didn't like my excuses for doing things the easy way, and so stopped and wrote better code!

[admin (no pm's please)]

Any cosmetic thoughts? The image name is hyperlinked to preview the image.

Template handling is the last essential that needs writing

[admin (no pm's please)]

I have barely started on it yet, and some important issues need working out, but I think there will be one template screen where you can select from the template range, install templates and edit and delete them.

When a template is installed, its files will either be the default or your own copy if you have edited the file. A bit like the portal system.

[Nick(NR)]

question, would we be able, to ignore the forums css for the pages and define our own?

example:
http://asraifans.myfastforum.org/index.php?component=indexpage

all the white text should be the same color as the borders

[admin (no pm's please)]

Some of this will have to come out in the wash, but the current view is that if you set a page to use a forum template, then you will get the css from that template.

But you can use your own templates and have full control.

The big question is now does this integrate with the portal view of a forum?

The answer is I don't yet know

The priority is to achieve a balance of simply understandable functionality and the advanced editing people have come to expect from myff.

e.g. I don't want it to be the case that our advanced users get told they can't do clever things with web pages and the web page interface is the beginners realm only. But I do want the web page interface to be far more easy to use, and hence each interface that is being written must be kept simple.

[admin (no pm's please)]

Been spending some time regression testing and tweaking, a lot of the way the web pages are done is using Apache web server smoke and mirrors.

e.g. if you access say:

http://forum.myfreeforum.org/webpage.html

then no such file really has a physical existence, similarly if you access:


http://forum.myfreeforum.org/images/image.gif

the file does exist, but not at that location.

This is complex enough, and so for example I have had to tweak the wysiwyg editor to deal with the fact that the images are not where it would expect them to be! But what make things trickier is that we do loads of this sort of trickery already for the forums.
It is quite easy for one layer of server tricks to break another
As of now I think I have the new stuff restricted enough not to be doing anything nasty

I have also knocked out some initial database work on the template system, and I hope to get the template page done over the next day or so.

Deployment time schedule is way ahead of my original guess, but some staging may be needed. e.g. it may be good to put in the layer that could cause disruption one week to see if it does cause any issues, before adding the actual functionality a week later.

[admin (no pm's please)]

A new look for the web page main page. I found I was clicking on the wrong place and previewing rather than editing. So decided this was clearer:

[CodyT07]

Sorry to be mean but admin could you make the images smaller, a lot of scrolling to left and right through 800 by 600 resolution
Looking good by the way.

[admin (no pm's please)]

A very basic template installer without all the needed functions is now done, some delay as I decided all templates should have an XML file to describe them and that needed an XML parser.
A little over engineered perhaps, but if we are going to do this, it may as well be done properly.

[admin (no pm's please)]

Template installing/uninstalling/reverting/copying/editing... seems done.

I have *not* done a wysiwgy editor for templates, as for templates the html(ish) structure is not pure html and wysiwyg editors are a bit of a law to themselves on what they do with page source

What remains is the global configuration, a lot more error checking and making it all display correctly.

[Nick(NR)]

I could swear your hijacking a joomla layout there?

[admin (no pm's please)]

and why not?

[Nick(NR)]

no reason, just set myself a site up with it, just an observation.

Getting used to things in there and spotted the similarity.

[admin (no pm's please)]

I have just added a "free web template" to the system, we are going to need a load of them, there are loads out there that appear free of usage restrictions, and it only takes a few minutes to modify them to work with our template system, well at least I think it does, as we are still a little ways short of the system showing any web pages with the new templates.

[CodyT07]

[admin (no pm's please)]

The previews ain't exactly a priority, writing it is!

[CodyT07]

[admin (no pm's please)]

yeeha

The configuration page is now done, and more to the point the displaying of pages in the various views is also done.

So for example if you choose "Portal Page" you will see pages like the www page of your forum, but with your page content rather than the portal component you might otherwise see.

The last vital components are the {MYFF.NAVBAR} which is the glue that holds it all together and of course a few useful templates!

[admin (no pm's please)]

That is a template called FractalRed, which contains a few portal components including the new {MYFF.NAVBARCOLUMN} component.

Notably in doing this I have spotted a small template error in one of the existing portal components and corrected it

When developing templates for the web pages, they are going to have to include the css definitions for forum elements in order to be able to deal with forum portal components.

All things being equal though this is looking good, each time you add a web pace it will appear in the NAVBAR making the process very painless.

[admin (no pm's please)]

Same page in delicious_fruit:

[admin (no pm's please)]

[admin (no pm's please)]

This is actually getting to be fun, I have only done three realish templates so far, that's the problem with Saturday people keep interrupting, and I really need to stop working anyway, but with each template things are getting improved.
A not insignificant change is the css files are now sent compressed which speeds things up.
We also how have NAVBAR,NAVBARLIST,NAVBARROW,NAVBARCOLUM components which allows the NAVBAR with the aid of css definitions to fit seamlessly with different style of template.
As I see it I need to add about 20 or so templates to lay the basis for this feature, which will also be a reasonable exercise in testing it out.
If anyone has a good web template that is free to use, I can try and add it.

[admin (no pm's please)]

These are getting pretty easy

[admin (no pm's please)]

[admin (no pm's please)]

[CodyT07]

Let us have some fun!
Good work by the way, can't wait.

[admin (no pm's please)]

Well we are getting close now.

There is still error checking to be done with the web page editing, currently it does not enforce file types check for duplicate names etc.

I also need to create enough templates, each is taking maybe 20-30 minutes at the moment, and sometimes giving me cause to code. e.g. the last one made me add a "div=" parameter to {MYFF.NAVBAR} so I could make the template have a BR between links.

With more templates, the interface may also start to look clunky and need a rethink

[admin (no pm's please)]

Just took an hour to manage a template addition First one was so locked into use body tags for its look, the adverts were never going to work Next one bombed out massively and strangely until I realized that the helpful comments in it, were in the same format as phpbb2 template directives

I have rationlised the interface a bit more, I have split adding and editing templates which is easier and more consistent with the rest of the admin panel, and I have also removed the ability to edit a javascript file for a template. The latter is no loss at all, as if in a rare case a template was using javascript and if you really did need to edit it, you can always copy it and edit it via the web page editor.

[admin (no pm's please)]

Just given up on two template in succession, as they were very awkward to get formatted right, I think to some degree the ones I am struggling with actually have less than brilliantly constructed style sheets. It is very easy to get an example page looking right, less easy for the structure to be truly right with other content.
Maybe the right approach is that if it ain't doable in 30 minutes, then cut losses and move on.

[admin (no pm's please)]

Quite pleased with this, we all here know one of the facts of life is that free means advertising, but the new web pages are now done with one set of automatically colour integrated adverts at the top of the page, both reasonable and aesthetically decent in my view, as well as keeping to totally valid html.

We have to make pragmatic decisions on advertising at times, but it will be a tough day in hell before I change it from something as clean as this.

[Nick(NR)]

????well????

[admin (no pm's please)]

how you manage than then?

[Nick(NR)]

Right, I've uploaded the image again seeing as my pain in the ass brother decided to turn off the router before I was finished.

as for the layout, I saved the green/grey image and used it as a base to build from. I'd be able to do something better if I had page code or would images you can edit into a layout be ok?

[admin (no pm's please)]

the easiest thing will be when the code is in place you will be able to have it on the system and I can export it to make it available.

I am contemplating some sort of points means prizes system for people contributin templates

[BookwormUK]

[admin (no pm's please)]

[Nick(NR)]

I like this one:

Click to see full size image

[admin (no pm's please)]

Do you think the code will work?
The templates that ain't making it in, are by and large the ones where the dynamic navigation bar does not work as menu items in the templates are coded in an overly complex way.

[Nick(NR)]

the text is just a better view of how it would look, I can make them completely textless.

[admin (no pm's please)]

The trick is in the subsitutions:

[snowgoose]

looks like progress is getting made with this any ideas about release dates yet or not?

[admin (no pm's please)]

Possibly 14th April, remaining code to be done is trivial, but I want there to be 100+ templates to choose from. 21 is the total so far.

Aside from the templates, there are a few installation issue, such as each forum needing its database updating with three new tables, and certain really critical system files needing replacing.

I'd like to start replacing the files this weekend, so we can check for issues in stages.

[admin (no pm's please)]

25... but adding new templates is still giving pause to the make the code a bit better to work better with different templates. This will be another controlling factor, code won't be considered for release until adding templates does not show the need for tweaks.
Seriously though we must be close on that score.

[Viper]

[kingz4dragon]

Looking good admin can not wait until it is done.

[admin (no pm's please)]

Same here, but it has to be right, I think tomorrow I am going to drastically rewrite the template editing system to make it far more powerful and in a way that will enable people to "export" templates. This will have a lot of advantages

[Nick(NR)]

You've got me an viper willing to make a few templates so if you don't hit 100, now worries, you'll get there, like I said to actually make a working version, I'd need the whole thing in place otherwise it'll just be a base for you to edit upon.

[admin (no pm's please)]

It is a bit of a shame that you both have time on your hands, but there is no actual functioning system available for you to create the things


But it is important the code is right before being made available. I have just smashed up the editing system and rebuilt most of it this morning as I figured it was not as good as it needed to be and in the final analysis it is better more me to do that as many times as needed before making things available than to let this out the door wrong.

However time wise, I was able to do 17 templates yesterday using open source templates that are freely downloadable. With each passing template the system gets honed and the process faster, not least as it gets easier to spot the templates that won't work. I think a few took as little as 10 minutes

With the new system I am putting in place, even less of the original template files will need editing.

[admin (no pm's please)]

Getting actual file editing and uploading in the web template code is still to be done, but the rest of the system is back functioning in its easier to use incarnation, have added 4 templates as I alternate between coding and template adding, there are generally two less things to edit in templates now to get them working.

[kingz4dragon]

Sounds like you are making progress with this and thats good to hear keep up the good work admin.

[admin (no pm's please)]

Well it is all getting there, template editing can now be done again at the same level as yesterday, albeit with loose ends in the interface for the new stuff.

35 templates in all now, 5 so far today.

[admin (no pm's please)]

17 added for the day, along with a few more additions to the editing code.

I quit coding for the day and concentrated on templates, as I have been mulling over the way to upload files to the web page system

You see on one level web pages and web templates are different, it makes sense to me to drill down to editing these in separate menus.

But should there be a separate "upload file" system for both? To my way of thinking that would make the option a little hidden. I think I prefer a menu structure:

Add Templates
Edit Templates
Edit Web Pages
Upload Files
Web Configuration

Where "Upload Files" gives you a list of directories to upload to, including the template directories which should be quite obvious e.g. a directory list might be:

[admin (no pm's please)]

The new upload file manager is underway, along with dropping one of the core ideas I started with about how things would work

I am quite happy about this, if there is one lesson I have learnt in being involved in the design and coding of computer programs for more than 25 years it is that implementation is all to often driven by the human interface. Attempts to ignore that, or to pretend to be so damned clever you can visualize how things will work without physically seeing them on screen has generally poor results. As does a "can't backtrack" mentality.
A healthy approach is to accept the reality of getting things wrong and not to be afraid of knocking things down and rebuilding.

[admin (no pm's please)]

upload/file manager looks ok now. Though I expect the functions will fail dismally currently

I think I may take a break and then spend a few hours adding more templates and debug the screen tomorrow morning.

One thing I am doing is not allowing the creation of new folders, disallowing this simplifies the interface and is adequate for almost all needs. There will always be an image directory for images.
Not many web sites need to run beyond a few dozen pages, and a single layer is enough for that.