Hi, Everyone!

I created an Editor's Choice mod in which the Admin can place a graphic and comments right into any listing.

It gives the Admin the ability to provide opinions about various listings and to bring special notice to good listings by placing a graphic in any strategic place in link.html. We use our Tank graphic.

For a peek, go to http://www.armynavy.com . Look in Clip Art and Editors Choice.

You'll also notice that the Editor's Choice category has been excluded from add.cgi using Bobsie's Exclude mod.

If anyone's interested in using this, I'll work up a page or two and post them on my site. If you think it's pretty good, then I'll add it to Links Resources.

This modification is entirely inspired by Joker's great Logo Links and Join mods, and by the work of Bobsie, elms, and Loopy.

If I've forgotten anybody, I apologize.

Let me know.
Thanks.


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www.armynavy.com

Great job, Trained Monkey.

So, it is basically a beefed up Detailed page, right?



Regards,



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Eliot Lee
Founder and Editor
Anthro TECH, L.L.C
http://www.anthrotech.com/
info@anthrotech.com
==========================
Coconino Community College
http://www.coco.cc.az.us/
Web Technology
Coordinator
elee@coco.cc.az.us

isn't this pretty much editors pick? why do you use a category and not just a new page like.. what's cool, what's new

This is gonna sound pretty lame, but I don't even use the What's Cool or Detailed pages, and, to be quite honest, I don't even know how they work.

The main idea behind Editor's Choice is to put the comments and graphic right in with the link, no matter which categories the link is in. When I go to other sites, I always appreciate any info that helps to whittle down the pack. Now, my visitors can get a little blurb right at the main link, without having to jump to another page. This seems very convenient and effective.

As far as setting up a separate page for listing all the Editor's Choice sites, if there's a better way to do it than setting up a separate category, I'm all for it. I just want to make sure that I can exclude link owners from trying to add their site to the Editors list. That's why I felt safe using Bobsie's Exclude mod and a new category. Would I just rename What's Cool and tweak a few things? Would the Detailed page be the better one to rename as Editor's Choice?

Is there already an editor's pick modification? Have I duplicated someone else's work? I looked around and didn't see anything. It was probably right in front of my face.

Let me know how I can improve this thing if you think it's worthwhile. The basic mod is a few additions to links.def and a few more tags in link.html. It's simple, but very nice to have.

Thanks for your comments.

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www.armynavy.com

ok.. one more time.. didn't hellraida make editor's pick along time ago???

jerry

ahem...

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/scripts/forum/resources/Forum3/HTML/000903.html

[This message has been edited by widgetz (edited September 17, 1999).]

Yep, I missed hellraida's work. However, my purpose was really simple. Adding the Editor's Comments and a Graphic in link.html were just what I needed. It gives me the ability to provide independent comments and a nice visual tool right in the link. I copied Description in links.def and pasted it in as the last field, then I renamed it Editor. This gives me the comments field that I needed.

Now, it looks like a better way to do the Editor's Choice page would be to use the What's Cool page. What changes to What's Cool would I have to make? Would I just have to rename it and then check off isPopular in admin.cgi for listings that should be included in the Editor's Choice page?

Are there any time limits on the What's Cool page? Would I have to renew a listing?

Thanks for your help.

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www.armynavy.com





[This message has been edited by TrainedMonkey (edited September 17, 1999).]

TrainedMonkey

As Jerry pointed out, go to this thread:

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/...um3/HTML/000903.html

It has a step by step on how to do it. Its clean, sweet and easy. Couple it with span pages and bewm. A very nice addition to your links. I use it for a "Site of the Month" script, which I manually select.





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The Crowe crowe@charter.net
www.lit.org Links Engine for Writing on the net!

Thanks, Crowe and Jerry. I'll see what I can do.

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www.armynavy.com

 

What does this have to do with the Editor Choice mod written by TrainedMonkey? Can't there be two similar mods? The Editor's Pick and the Editors Choice mods, while similar, are different and give choices to Links users. It sounds like, instead of encouraging TrainedMonkey, he is being berated for doing something independently of someone else. That may not be the case here, but it sure reads that way.

umm.. ok.. well.. yea..

i thought he didn't know about the Editor Pick mod and thought maybe he was about to attempt something and find out he wasted his time..

i don't know.. i just though i'd let him/her know before he/she did it..

btw.. bobsie.. you've been gone forever now.. but i think the forums went ok without a moderator.. no havoc..

jerry

 

Bobsie:

I was offering what help I could. I myself did what TrainedMonkey was trying to do by using hellraida's mod. Both My SOTM and TrainedMonkey's mod are essential the same as hellraida's mod. Very MINOR changes, something even a perl NOVICE like myself could change. I felt that giving TrainedMonkey the same link I used would help him do the same.

I wasn't trying to curb his creativity or disuade him from what he was trying to do, but the BASICS of what he was trying to do have been done, and rather than re-invent the wheel, I thought it would save him some time rather than trying to code it from scratch.

I didn't see anything negative towards TrainedMonkey by anyone on this topic. I hope this clears it up. I used the Editor's pick mod to do something SIMILIAR, just as TrainedMonkey is trying to do, something Similiar, as as you put it Bobsie, they can be very similiar and still different. I was in fact incourging him by giving him the very resource that aided me.

I apologize if my statement sounded crass or unhelpful, I truely thought I was assisting.







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The Crowe crowe@charter.net
www.lit.org Links Engine for Writing on the net!

Thanks, Bobsie. I've been around the forum enough to know that Jerry was just trying to help. In fact, I did use hellraida's Pick mod after he and Crowe suggested it, and it works great. This should be posted in the Resources section.

I also wanted to mention, however, that despite the fact that I'm a complete novice, I did manage to add something to an Editor's whatever that is turning out to be very useful.

I added an Editor's Comments tag, using an if/endif, to my link.html. To do this, I added an extra field to links.def and links.db. Not complicated, but really worthwhile. I'm finding that I use it when I'm validating a listing. I'll look around the site, and then I can choose whether to put in a few comments. It's great.

It helps the visitors, too, because you can't always rely on the Rating system. If you see just a few votes for a site and it's got a 10 rating, well, the likelihood that it was the link owner who put those votes in is pretty high. With your own independent comments right there in the link, your visitors get an extra bit of (hopefully) helpful information.

BTW, in case somebody wants to add an Editor's Comments field and they already use Loopy's Comments mod, you have to come up with another name in links.def for your Editor's Comments. Otherwise, your Loopy Comments will get snagged and put into the links. That's what was happening to me, anyway. I just called it Editor.

So, maybe I should just pull out the part that I am happy to be able contribute, albeit a simple thing, and rename this the Editor's Comments mod.

Thanks to all. I'm very appreciative.

Editor's Comment: Try the newly renamed Editor's Comments mod!



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www.armynavy.com





[This message has been edited by TrainedMonkey (edited September 26, 1999).]

[This message has been edited by TrainedMonkey (edited September 26, 1999).]

TrainedMonkey, can you please post the mod?

I think it would be cool for an editor's pick graphic show up next to the links right there in the in the categories next to the link without having to go to an entirely different page to view them.

 
Hey! Did someone come up with a way to span the editor's pick page and I missed it? Got a pointer for me Crowe?

widgetz and crowe,

Perhaps it was the fact that I have spent the last 4 days trying to catch up on all the threads posted since I have been gone. It is just, when I hit that message, it read to me as I stated (primarily based on the second message from widgetz -- the 'one more time' part). So I asked/commented.

It seemed to me that the other mod used a separate page for Editor's Pick, while this one included it right in the link itself (based on the description). To me, that made them different mods for a similar thing.

Anyway, I know you guys were trying to help. I just was pointing out how your messages came across (to me).

 
It is so nice to be needed!

Actually, there was a moderator while I was gone. You just didn't know it. hehehe

Bobsie: you do have a point

But widgetz always sounds like he's on a short fuze.. (Kiddin)..

But the editor's pick mod does indeed at the field and pick to the link, and creates a seperate page. I didn't know if he wanted both, but knew that the editors pick mod did do what he wanted

Crowe


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The Crowe crowe@charter.net
www.lit.org Links Engine for Writing on the net!

you can span pages on editors pick.. yea

hmm.. there was a moderator eh? oops... (going to edit some posts now )

anyways..

jerry

zahid,

Here's a really simple way of adding a graphic to link.html.

Go to links.def and add

Image => [15, 'alpha', 40, 75, 0, '', ''],

at the end of %db_def = (.

Change 15 to whatever is the next number in your links.def.

Backup your database. If you don't and the next step screws up, you'll have to manually fix your whole database.

Add an additional field to your database either by hand by plugging in another "|" (without the quotation marks) at the end of every line, or by using the addfield.cgi program by crisco back on March 29. Do a search using crisco. The topic is "Script for adding new positing in X position od db?"
If you use addfield.cgi, put this in the same directory as your database before you run it.

Then, add something like the following to your link.html.

<%if Image%>
<a href="http://www.zahid.com/zahidspicks.html" target="_blank"><img src="<%Image%>" width="whatever" height="whatever" alt="something" border="2"></a>
<%endif%>

If all has gone well, you should be able to go to your admin.cgi and see a new field on your screen. Now, if you want to add a graphic, type in the location of that graphic and it should show up in the link.

All of this is covered variously in Joker's Priority Logo Links and hellraida's Editor's Picks.

Remember to make copies of everything before you start changing things.

Hope this helps.


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www.armynavy.com

I would suggest another method that will not put extra data into the links.def file. Rather than creating an Image field, I would follow the directions for adding the isEditor field with Yes/No in the other Editor's Mod.

Then add the following variable to the top of the site_html_templates.pl file above the %global section:


Change the attributes:

alt
width
height
border

Then add a global variable:


Then I would add the following codes in your link.html template file:


Hope this helps.

Regards,

------------------
Eliot Lee
Founder and Editor
Anthro TECH, L.L.C
http://www.anthrotech.com/
info@anthrotech.com
==========================
Coconino Community College
http://www.coco.cc.az.us/
Web Technology
Coordinator
elee@coco.cc.az.us

 uh...OK great. I was looking for something a little more tangible than that though Can someone help a poor lost soul?

Let's revive this old thread.

What I would like to do is add a small graphic to selected links. Only I would choose which links get the graphic and I would prefer not to add a field to the database if possible.

Any suggestions?

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Will
Webmaster
FishHoo! Search index for Fishermen
www.fishhoo.com

How do you plan on defining which links are and which are not Editor's Picks without a new DB field like isPick??? BTW isPick does not have to be yes/no... it could <hint, hint> be a number and you might be able to reference it in your links template, like <IMG SRC="/img/<%isPick%>.gif>...

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The Immuatable Order of Modding
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1. Read the FAQ, 2. Search the board, 2a. Search the board again, 3. ask the question, 4. back-up, 5. experiment, 6. rephrase question (or better yet, post solution to original question)

Thanks oldmoney,

Guess I'm a little nervous about screwing around with a database that's almost a year old and working well. I don't suppose I can mess it up to bad if I back everything up.

When you hint that I could use a number, are you suggesting that be a 0 or 1? Would you kindly elaborate on your suggestion?

All I really want to do is put a small graphic next to the links that give me a link back, to make them stand out from the crowd.

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Will
Webmaster
FishHoo! Search index for Fishermen
www.fishhoo.com

Are you using the same graphic for each or a different one?