Gossamer Forum
Home : Products : Gossamer Links : Discussions :

Looking for FAQ or previous post

Quote Reply
Looking for FAQ or previous post
Hello All,

I've just started working with Links SQL vs 2.0.4. I have searched the Forum and FAQs for an answer but have come up a bit confused. I'm sure my question has been asked a million times. Perhaps I'm using incorrect terminology for my forum searches. If someone would please direct me to either a previous post or an FAQ I'd really appreciate it. I also tried the FAQs over at linksql.com but for some reason I'm getting errors.

I will pose my problem to the best of my newbie ability. Please forgive me if I don’t use the correct terminology or if it sounds confusing. I’m doing the best I can.

Along with the regular links that we'll have displayed, we would like to have links to articles that we will add or people will be submitting to us. We will want the articles to be displayed using a LinksSQL page or template (instead of an outside URL) when clicking on the link. I thought perhaps using the Detailed Page option would work but I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong there. It works but not in the way I want it to.

Here's what we've done so far:
- Added a column with the links table editor named "Article".
- Under Setup/Build Options/Build Settings - checked "yes" to the build_detailed radio button.
- Experimented by adding the line <a href="<%detailed_url%>"> (but were unsure where to add it) in the link.html template. Depending on where we put the line determines the degree of errors in the way the page is displayed or the way the links operate. This leads me to believe that the Detailed page option is not what we should use. Hence, we removed the line.
- Experimented in trying to include the “Article” field on the link.html template but this only adds the article text that is in the field underneath the description on the regular links page. It does not open up a different page.

When we "add a link" for an article, we don't add an URL to the URL field. We add the article copy to the article field. When the link is clicked on, there is a error page (of course, because initially no URL was added). If the detailed page option is used, it still doesn't show the article and the link (title of article) is still bad.

I feel like the answer to this is probably very simple. Just a line of code added here and there. However, I have yet to locate anything in the Forum or FAQs that I can understand and implement. I am not a programmer and would be considered a complete newbie when it comes to coding as well as using this program. I would appreciate any help sent my way.

Thanks in advance!
N. Lord


Quote Reply
Re: Looking for FAQ or previous post In reply to
I'm not 100% sure what you are trying to do.

If you are trying to just include a block of html-formatted (or text formatted) stuff into a template, you'd use a tag <%include filename.ext%>

That include file is parsed, so it can contain links tags.



PUGDOG® Enterprises, Inc.
FAQ:http://LinkSQL.com/FAQ
Plugins:http://LinkSQL.com/plugin
Quote Reply
Re: Looking for FAQ or previous post In reply to
Wow, I must have really come across poorly. I apologize for my inadequate post. We don't want to include a file. We want to add the text to a form field called "Article" in the "Add a link" form. Then, once the link is clicked on, we want the article text to appear with a page built by the LinkSQL program. Any help on this would be most appreciated.

Quote Reply
Re: Looking for FAQ or previous post In reply to
I would recommend creating another table called Articles, which could include the following columns:

Username (Foreign Key from Users table)
Article_Authors (TEXT)
Article_Title (LONGTEXT)
Article_Body (LONGTEXT)
Article_Added (DATE)
Article_Edited (DATE)

Then copy the add.cgi and modify.cgi scripts, yet use a different DBSQL object of Articles rather than Links. Then copy the add and modify templates, but reference something like addarticles.cgi and modifyarticles.cgi in the FORM ACTION codes...also customize the forms to include the appropriate column names.

-OR-

Purchase pugdog's FILE ATTACHMENT/UPLOAD Plug-in and have users upload articles. This would save end-users time with entering in data.

I have modded Links SQL for an online journal web site, that includes articles, bibliographies, book reviews, film reviews, etc....

http://anthro-globe.com

Regards,

Eliot Lee
Quote Reply
Re: Looking for FAQ or previous post In reply to
Thank you, Eliot Lee. I appreciate the code. Looks like it would work, however, it's a bit advanced for me. You see, I don't even know how to create a table so already it's over my head. Thank you for your answer - I appreciate yours as well as Pugdog's time regarding my problem. In order not to waste anyone else's time further, I'll try to contact support at this point.

Thank you.
N. Lord

Quote Reply
Re: Looking for FAQ or previous post In reply to
Uh...all you have to do is go to the MySQLMan (Table Management) application and then select:

Add Table

Then add the particular columns like I showed above...

NOT that complicated...to say the least...a lot easier than managing flat files, if you ask me.

Good luck finding a solution!

Regards,

Eliot Lee
Quote Reply
Re: Looking for FAQ or previous post In reply to
Hmm...that doesn't sound too difficult now that I know where to go. Perhaps I'll give it a try. Who knows... maybe I can get this thing going after all? Smile

Thanks, Eliot!
Nadine


Quote Reply
Re: [Stealth] Looking for FAQ or previous post In reply to
Would you still say this is a preferred way to incorporate Articles / News Items?? (although I'm still not sure of the method)

Would like to modifiy my existing format from out-of-box Links with company, address, and such, but so that the companies can post Press Releases as often as they wish.

Thoughts on this??

Thanks

John
Quote Reply
Re: [gatman] Looking for FAQ or previous post In reply to
Personally, I think the easiest way to do this is to keep it all in the Links table. You can just add columns for each extra bit of information and a text box for the Press Releases which the company can just add to when they want. It does become more complicated if you want to have a different entry for each news article - I think the only way to do that is to add another table but this adds a lot of extra problems like how to seach the table, modifying the listings, etc.
The UK High Street
Quote Reply
Re: [afinlr] Looking for FAQ or previous post In reply to
Yes, in fact I did add two new Links columns (NewsHeading and NewsItem) as a test and thought I was going in the right direction until researching and seeing the comments above.

Just want them to register once, post their pertinent company info (name, address, description) and as they may so desire (and we encourgage) to comeback and post Press Releases. Would prefer that once they logged in after 1st time, they would not, again, have to complete the name, address, description data when they post new Press Releases - that data would be appended to the bottom of the Press Release.

John