building archives for a news site

[funnytoy]

Hello,

I have to move my website on another server and I take this opportunity to improve it a bit.

Since a few days I'm struggling to find how I could customize my archives. My website is principally a news site. We have at least 4 or 5 news posted every days and we have published archives news from 1986. So no need to say that I have hundreds of files.

I used Maginot on the previous server (an old version) and have upgraded to the latest version (Maginot 14) and even would like to try the Beta Maginot 15 version (is it a good idea?). But I'm completely puzzled how to build my archives the way I would like to. There is really few help about Maginot sliced on this forum. To complicated everything I'm French speaker and sometimes it's hard for me to understand some complicated explanations. So please could some of you help me a bit

Basically, here is what I would like to achieve:

The first page of my archives would look like this:

APRIL 2005
-Subject of the first news--30 April 2005
-Subject of the Second news-- 30 April 2005
-Subject of the third news -- 30 April 2005
-Subject of the First news -- 29 April 2005
-Subject of the Second news--29 Arpil 2005
-Subject of the Frist news -- 28 April 2005
-Subject of the Second news -- 28 April 2005

And so on.... No more than 15 or 20 news per page and all the subjects linked to the respective single html file with the complete news created with Maginot.

Then a second page with again at the top April 2005 and then the other news form April 2005.

And to follow of course the news from
March 2005
FEBRUARY 2005
JANUARY 2005
DECEMBER 2004...

So my main problem is to created these sliced pages with:

1/ no more than 15 or 20 news titles per page
2/ each time at the top of the page the current month and year listed
3/ at the bottom of the page a simple menu with the different years linked to the relevant page. ie the link 2002 would open the page where the first 2002 news are listed.
I cannot figure out how I must sliced these pages, what fields I must use to create the links, if I must first create a standard profile...

I'd be so happy if someone could patiently help me step by step to achieve this bearing with my poor English. Since days I'm going crazy with this and have sleepless nights

Thanks a lot to those who are willing to help me

[Parahead]

I used Maginot on the previous server (an old version) and have upgraded to the latest version (Maginot 14) and even would like to try the Beta Maginot 15 version (is it a good idea?).

The latest Release Candidate of Build 15 is hopefully close to a stable release, but it do need more testing. If you are planing on setting up a new site it can be an idea to test it out though...

There is really few help about Maginot sliced on this forum. To complicated everything I'm French speaker and sometimes it's hard for me to understand some complicated explanations.

Build 15 (hopefully) contains better documentation, check it out (even if you decide not to actually use it)...

[funnytoy]

Thanks Parahead,

I'll have a look at the Maginot build 15 documentation and will definitely try to use it.

I have progressed a bit in what I want to achieve but still need some help.

1/I have now created a static profile and with the ssi archive.txt in my page and the style:

<If: Sub: isNewMonth>
<blockquote> <b><font color="#9966FF" size="5" face="Verdana"><Field: Month_Name> - <Field: Year></font></b></blockquote><br>
</if>
<blockquote><img src="bullet.gif" width="11" height="11" hspace="5" align="absmiddle"><font size="2" face="Verdana"><a href="http://path/tomy/archivefolder/<MaginotFile: maginot_archive>"><Field: Subject></a></font><font color="#CCCCFF" size="1" face="Verdana">--<Field: Month_Day> <Field: Month_Name> <Field: Year></font></blockquote>

I have ALL the links to my news displayed in only one page.

2/ I have created a maginot sliced profile and have sliced the news to year/month --> I have several files April200.shtml, April2001.shtml, April2002.shtml ....

What is completely unclear to me:

How can I display the relevant news from each month in those sliced files? I dont know if I must use a template, a style or both and which field I must include and where to have the monthly links to my news displayed in the correct page (I'll finally display all news for one month, forget the idea to limit it to 15 or 20 links).

Who can help me?

[Parahead]

I have ALL the links to my news displayed in only one page.

I think the thing LumberJack want's to achive is pretty much the same although with another twist (basically a sliced Sliced Index Profile [and yes, it should be two 'sliced' in that sentance!]). He solved it by using the NewFilesAdvanced addon. You can read more about it in the Build 15 thread.

2/ I have created a maginot sliced profile and have sliced the news to year/month --> I have several files April200.shtml, April2001.shtml, April2002.shtml ....

What is completely unclear to me:

How can I display the relevant news from each month in those sliced files?

Basically you have allready defined to only show the newsitems for the specific month in each file, that is what the slice do. You have choosen month/year, thus all newsitems that share the same month/year end up in the same file. You just need to use a normal style/template to present them... Hmmm.... Maybe to make things easier to accomplish point 1 above, I would suggest creating some new slice options called Year, Month and Day. This would make it possible for you to produce the output files in a folder structure like Year/MonthName.shtml instead of MonthNameYear.shtml. I can add this later today...

[funnytoy]

Oh, thanks a lot for your help Parahead

I have followed the easiest way, using the style/template to populate my pages with the monthly links to my archives.

I also have used:

<If: Sub: isNewMonth>
<blockquote> <b><font color="#9966FF" size="6" face="Verdana"><Field: Month_Name> - <Field: Year></font></b></blockquote><br>
</if>
in my style to display the month and the year at the top of my page.

The only thing I have to do now is to link all these pages together with PREV and NEXT.

Is there an easiest and pre-build example somewhere that I can use? I only would like something like this:

<<PREV 1 2 3 4 5... NEXT>> with the... when there is too many numbers to be shown on the page.

If you don't have time I'd understand, but your help would one more time be appreciated. It's always a lot more easier and less time consuming with a few help

[Parahead]

I would suggest creating some new slice options called Year, Month and Day. This would make it possible for you to produce the output files in a folder structure like Year/MonthName.shtml instead of MonthNameYear.shtml. I can add this later today...

In order to add this you open up cra_maginot.pl and search for (quite high up in the file):

Code: Select all

MonthYear =>
 [
 q~Month and Year~,
 q~Slice at the end of each month (like a monthly archive).~,
 q~January2002.html<br>February2002.html<br>March2002.html~,
 sub { return "$Month_Name$Year"; },
 q~<Maginot Sliced>~
],


After that you add these lines:

Code: Select all

Year =>
 [
 q~Year~,
 q~Slice at the end of each year.~,
 q~01.html<br>02.html<br>03.html~,
 sub { return "$Year"; },
 q~<Maginot Sliced>~
],
MonthNumeric =>
 [
 q~Numeric Month~,
 q~Slice at the end of each month. (NOTE: Unless you use a second slice, every January will end up in the same file)~,
 q~01.html<br>02.html<br>03.html~,
 sub { return "$TwoDigitMonth"; },
 q~<Maginot Sliced>~
],
DayNumeric =>
 [
 q~Numeric Day~,
 q~Slice at the end of each day. (NOTE: Unless you use a second slice, every day 1 in the each month will end up in the same file)~,
 q~01.html<br>02.html<br>03.html~,
 sub { return "$TwoDigitDay"; },
 q~<Maginot Sliced>~
],

The only thing I have to do now is to link all these pages together with PREV and NEXT.

Is there an easiest and pre-build example somewhere that I can use? I only would like something like this:

<<PREV 1 2 3 4 5... NEXT>> with the... when there is too many numbers to be shown on the page.

Take a look at the documentation for build 15, there are some prev/next examples provided there. You may be able to work something out using those?

[funnytoy]

Wouahhh!!! Thanks so much Parahead, it works perfectly.

An I had no problem to build the prev-next links with the help of the Maginot 15 documentation.

I use Coranto since 2 years. It's a wonderful and so useful script and the forum is a nice place to learn thanks to people like you

[Parahead]

Wouahhh!!! Thanks so much Parahead, it works perfectly.

I have added the Year/Month/Day slice options so it will be included in the official release as well. I realised that those are reallly good options to have when building archives.

An I had no problem to build the prev-next links with the help of the Maginot 15 documentation.

Great! Did you use the examples straight off or did you enhance it to handle the ... scenario you described above? If yes, would you mind sharing your solution with the community? Maybe I can include it in the docs for Maginot as well?

I use Coranto since 2 years. It's a wonderful and so useful script and the forum is a nice place to learn thanks to people like you

To quote SrNupsen, we aim to please.

[funnytoy]

Hi Parahead,

Sorry for the delay of my reply, yesterday was a public holiday here in Belgium and I have been a little lazy

First to answer your question, I did use the example straight off the documentation to build the prev-next links. I'm a webdesigner, not a a programmer, so I tried to make it as easy as possible.

Secondly I'm sorry, but I have had to give up the Maginot 15 and to come back to Maginot 14 because it seemed to cause problems with some addons and some styles:
I constantly had the same message error, telling me to disable Maginot addon and that Subroutine main:: was called, but does not exist. (It isn't already loaded, and it isn't in the cache.) at ccrcore.pl line 568.

I then have reuploaded Maginot 14 and no problem with it!!!

Now my main concern would be to create an index page.
I cannot figure how to do this. I have tried everything possible but don't know what I must include in my style to create the links to the sliced pages(finally sliced by month and year numerically.

[Parahead]

Secondly I'm sorry, but I have had to give up the Maginot 15 and to come back to Maginot 14 because it seemed to cause problems with some addons and some styles:
I constantly had the same message error, telling me to disable Maginot addon and that Subroutine main:: was called, but does not exist. (It isn't already loaded, and it isn't in the cache.) at ccrcore.pl line 568.

Which version of Build 15 did you use? The RC8 has some improvement which might take care of this issue...

Now my main concern would be to create an index page.
I cannot figure how to do this. I have tried everything possible but don't know what I must include in my style to create the links to the sliced pages(finally sliced by month and year numerically.

Use <Field: LinkURL> in the style used by the Sliced Index Profile.

[funnytoy]

Thanks Parahead.

I used the Build 15 RC6 version. So where can I download the RC8 and do you think it's stable enough to use without fearing to have bugs? I cannot take this risk for the website I want to use it for.

I have used the <Field: LinkName> in the style used by the sliced index profile and it also worked fine.

[Parahead]

I used the Build 15 RC6 version. So where can I download the RC8 and do you think it's stable enough to use without fearing to have bugs? I cannot take this risk for the website I want to use it for.

The download link is the same for RC6, you can check out the Build 15 thread as well... And regarding bugs, I can´t give you any guarantee Build15-RC8 is free of bugs, no one can do that with any code, and this is a new release which hasn´t been tested that extensivly so what can I say... *I* use it on my site without problems thus far though (but I kind of have an advantage since I know who to call if I bump into something )

[funnytoy]

Ok Parahead, you won

I have downloaded the build 15 RC8 and have installed it. I'll test it and will report any problem I can have with this version. My redesigned website is online since today and hope I have made a good choice.

[Parahead]

Ok Parahead, you won

It is not a question of winning, you just wanted to have guaranties I am unable to give you...

I have downloaded the build 15 RC8 and have installed it. I'll test it and will report any problem I can have with this version. My redesigned website is online since today and hope I have made a good choice.

I hope you mean RC10, because that is the latest RC in the Build 15 series, which contains some small fixes regarding Sliced Index Profiles...