Yes, a forrum is a forrum. But when you go on a site, you might - or not - expect to see a presentation, something that site is about, and easy links to everrywherre.
Can haz? O:-)
Soooo...what do you want on this front page?
Something "static"? (some plain text with possible custom styling)
Something configurable? (i.e. possibility to select "blocks")
Mmm... I still miss the home page...
Prreferrable static, simple and possible to just use.
I like the idea as long as it's optional. For the most part a portal does everything that I want if I need a frontpage. So long as I can haz my portal hi-jack the frontpage option. :) Would be a great thing to maybe create multiple versions of. For example one frontpage could be forum centric. Another frontpage could be user centric.
Feature Cat I don't recognize you...you wan something simple? :o
I think it meant for starters! On a related note, it'll be interesting to see if/what challenges a portal/blog/article system still poses on our codebase.
https://github.com/engelnyst/TinyPortal :)
Aha. Very cool idea. I did try several portals (TP, SP and PortaMx) on SMF 2.1 alpha some time ago, and they all mostly seemed to work (apart from a couple of minor glitches).
BTW: One thing I have noticed is that the old table for layout doesn't seem to be necessary with modern browsers. Even IE8 will handle portal panels made out of divs. IE6 and 7 will totally crap themselves, but so what? :D
Taking a quick look at it. Oooh goody. Inline css n stuff. Yummy. :D
Could do with a basic front end cleanup, but that's not a big deal.
ETA: For example, some of this seems redundant. I can't see why the display: none; needs to be on both elements, since having it on the parent should do the trick.
<td id="tprightbarContainer" style="width:' ,$context['TPortal']['rightbar_width'], 'px;' , in_array('tprightbarHeader',$context['tp_panels']) && $context['TPortal']['showcollapse']==1 ? 'display: none;' : '' , '" valign="top">
<div id="tprightbarHeader" style="' , in_array('tprightbarHeader',$context['tp_panels']) && $context['TPortal']['showcollapse']==1 ? 'display: none;' : '' , '">
Awesome. I have actually been getting ready to start doing some testing on elkarte with TP after I recently updated the shoutbox to use better ajax. Did you have to do any big changes? There's a lot of code to be fixed in TP with stuff like Ant posted.
It 's not my repo, just found it while searching for elk on github...
ah, I didn't really look at the name. Just assumed. lol Sorry about that. I think that is the nighthawk or nightwish or whatever his name was, that started the first SMF fork?
Nightwish started Eos Alpha - http://forum.miranda.or.at/index.php#c7 - and looking at Github, it was July 2011 when it was forked from SMF.
It was not the first SMF fork. It is the first fork that happened after SMF became BSD. A certain other fork actually branched privately in August 2010 but since they're not on Github it wasn't actually an issue for them.
Well what I meant to say was open source fork. You weren't, and still aren't open source as far as I know. Well, at least I haven't seen a license decision out of you guys yet. Did I miss it?
Hey question: has anyone tried shoving this into an elk yet? Just curious, since the last change on the repo was 3 months ago, and elks these days may protest at the intrusion.
Hey I just tried force feeding this critter to an elk. The elk didn't like it much. Got a bad case of indigestion. :P
After editing package-info.xml to suit 1.0 Alpha, the only apparent glitch was with the second edit in sources/Dispatcher.class.php:
<operation>
<search position="replace"><![CDATA[ // was it, wasn't it....
if (empty($this->_function_name))
{
$this->_file_name = $default_action['file'];
$this->_function_name = $default_action['function'];
}]]></search>
<add><![CDATA[ $tpAction = whichTPAction();
if (!empty($tpAction))
return $tpAction;
]]></add>
</operation>
So I found the corresponding code in the latest elk's intestines:
// was it, wasn't it....
if (empty($this->_function_name))
{
$this->_file_name = $default_action['file'];
if (isset($default_action['controller']))
$this->_controller_name = $default_action['controller'];
$this->_function_name = $default_action['function'];
}
And tried replacing it with this:
// Testing TP edits...
$tpAction = whichTPAction();
if (!empty($tpAction))
return $tpAction;
// End testing TP edits...
Result: one grumpy elk, which didn't want to play and was sulking in the corner.
Got the TP stuff from here, which I think is the right repo: https://github.com/engelnyst/elk-tiny-portal
ETA: Admin was ok, but trying to go to board index gave "Fatal error: Call to undefined function whichTPAction() in K:\VertrigoServ\www\elkarte_tp\sources\Dispatcher.class.php on line 108"
# Time Memory Function Location
1 0.0007 402592 {main}( ) ..\index.php:0
2 0.0310 4620976 elk_main( ) ..\index.php:143
3 0.0413 5020264 Site_Dispatcher->__construct( ) ..\index.php:209
Aha. It hasn't added any admin shiz for the portal. D'oh. No settings, tabs or anything. Looks like it still needs a fair bit of work before it's usable.
No, we haven't made a decision because we're still debating going paid - though if we do go open source, it'll be MPL 2.0 with Exhibit B.
Was thinking about starting some new portal stuff. Is feature cat going to get working on this or what? :D
One thing I have in mind for the blog-like is, since now there is an hook where query_see_board is generated, to use a board and remove the board from the boardindex, not sure about the admin panel yet (I may use an entirely different page for the configuration).
Of course this is still at the stage of thoughts. Nothing done yet.
Once this is done, the other thing to do would be to replicate the Display controller (or maybe extend it? Probably is not yet ready for extend...) in order to inject somewhere the query to show the first message on all the pages of the topic.
The rest should be the same (i.e. MessageIndex).
Do you see any drawback?
/me doesn't know about them drawbacks.
Please, try it! Display controller can be extended already now, afaics. TE re-worked it to a decent class with its actions alone, and we've accepted a helper method for the template callback. re-checks the code quickly*... Hey, it haz *no $db anymore, not even one! ;) (but it haz 14 (that's fourteen) globalz as of now)
Btw: https://github.com/elkarte/Elkarte/pull/569
It'd be interesting to know how this'll work: could make the dispatcher call a subclass instead of the Display controller class, just it'll have to be only one action_ method replacement hooked.
Yep, it is possible to extend it, though there isn't much code that can be reused as far as I can see...
In fact it would be an extend for the sake of extending it and nothing more...
I was thinking to split it up a bit like that:
https://github.com/emanuele45/Dialogo/blob/display_controller/sources/controllers/Display.controller.php
Of course I don't know if this is a good thing, though in my mind seems easier to deal with and there may be pieces that can be reused.
In fact I think that the only thing I should replace is also the one that I put as private and so cannot be replaced... lol
http://www.elkarte.net/index.php?topic=134.msg3238#msg3238 ;D
Me thinks this needs to be revisited. The way the current hook works, will not allow you to push the forum off to another action. The hook is only called if $_GET['action'] is empty. Which means, your front page hook works great if you hook into it because the $_GET['action'] is empty. I think the hook needs to be pushed up before the empty() check for action. Maybe right after the $default_action[] array is set. This way, the default action can be overridden. But this would mean that whoever hooks into the frontpage will need to make sure they take care of setting the default action if not on the frontpage. Hope that makes sense. And please tell me if I'm not thinking right about this.
meh... looks like that won't work either to move the hook up. $default_action never gets set either, unless $_GET['action'] is empty...
First thought (which doesn't answer the issue, I think): if we add a home page, I'd think it has to be the default action for Elk no-hooks install, right? We can also set 'action=home' on it. So, that changes the scenario to: the default action will be "the action when no valid ;action= is set", and the home page will be "action=home".
By default, the default action (=the action when no valid ;action= param is set) would be redirected to 'home'. The hook overrides that.
Does that make sense? (disclaimer: 3 am!)
How should it all behave instead?
ETA: please note, Elk recognizes actions with no 'action' set, but another forum-ish parameter: index.php?msg=321.
Ah yes. I think that will fix the problem. A default_action of "home" will need to be specified, at which point we are overriding this with our hook. The forum action (Boardindex) will have to be tied to a different action (not default). Maybe this is something I can work on. Been itching to join the party a little here. Just a little shy and lacking a bit of courage to think my code will hang with the big boys and girls. :D
ROFL. Reminds me of when I joined the 2.0 dev cycle. I thought everyone there knew heaps about front end stuff, then realised I knew almost as much as they did, then learned more. :D
Does everyone want to be able to enable/disable the homepage option? I was thinking a nice little checkbox to give the option in Features and Options > Layout > Enable homepage. Then we could just provide a basic html layout welcome page so that people know they can customize their own homepage.
Sure. People might not bother to write a page, so.
Oh you're talking about having a home page as a default feature. I thought this was more about portals.
A basic home page option would be kinda cool, especially if it can be edited with SCE (would be crazy not to). I can see it being rather popular.
Without the help of a portal, I think a homepage would be rather useless or too plain at most for most user's.
The point isn't to create a home page that everyone would want. How could we ever do that? The point is to give people the option to have a homepage. This can't be done without a mod currently. There are hundreds of posts about people wanting to know how to move smf into a sub-directory so they can have a home page. It's useful, and easy to do with the code base. A simple checkbox to turn the option on/off. Then if people want, they can customize the homepage.template. They would have to customize it anyway, to get what they want.
Yeah I mixed my portal questions in with this since it will be working along side the homepage option. Sorry to confuse. I'm not sure I'd add the option to store the homepage code in the database using the editor. My plan was to just provide a simple controller and template to give some ideas on how things could be done. Nothing special out of the box since nobody would want the same home page as everyone else.
Well TBH, these days most peeps expect everything to be done by wysiwyg. I prefer to roll my own, just because I can get cleaner code that way, but most users either don't know how or don't want to know.
I think some way of editing in admin would be advisable. It's easy to initialise SCE anywhere, and it will handle HTML as well as BBC. So, if you don't do it, my bet is it'll be one of the first things people start grumbling about. :)
How do you propose to do it then? You can only save html/javascript through the editor. What about those who want to do PHP instead? Is what you save in the editor going to be the only thing that displays on the page? Are you going to have multiple fields to edit that will fill in different sections of the page? Where are we going to store this data? Would you create a DB table just for the front page code to be saved? The settings table only allows 65k characters to be saved in a row. This limit could easily be passed by putting home page code into it. Lots of directions we could go with this. Just seems like bloat the more we dive into it. I'm cool if that's what everyone wants, but it's not what I had in mind. lol
I wanted to keep it simple. Document the template and controller with some comments to help people understand how to pass data back and forth and call it good. If we need to we could have some document written up for it on a wiki if we ever pick a place or software to do a wiki. :) Speak up with what ya'll want!
Hmm. Ok, you're starting to make sense. I'll STFU. :D
https://github.com/elkarte/Elkarte/wiki O:-)
What I was thinking here is that very few want a static home page, those that using a simple static page will want for sure to be able to introduce HTML.
What I would like to have is a set of tools:
a blog,
an articles system,
a blocks system,
maybe others.
All working together, all working independently.
Once you have that, do you want to propose a portal? Just pack the three together and have fun! :D
As I said before I would use a board to store both the blog entries and the articles, so that everything is tightly connected (and the blog can be easily "converted" in the article system O:-)).
The admin interface can (and should) be different (i.e. the boards are phantom boards visible only from the blog's admin page and not in any other place of the admin panel, not even in the permissions page).
But these are just thoughts, unfortunately I haven't found yet the good inspiration to begin work on any (well, I started work on the tags that is part of a blog :P, but got derailed by hashtags lol).
Time to bump this!
Since we are getting close to beta, having a site home page "description" seems like a good thing to do.
Right now on the site elk is installed in the user root, so I'm thinking to move that to /forum and then place some static landing page in the base. It would have a brief description and then a few links, one to the test/developer forum, one to Github repo, one to GitHub download for the beta. Can jazz it up as we go if needed.
Other thoughts, good/bad idea, volunteer to make the page O:-)
Good idea!
/me hides
Good idea .. I'd help but my english really sucks..
Heck your English is better than mine ! I'll plop something together so we can take a look and decide if its a way to go.
I think the "Let's add a home page" was more of an idea to add a home page into the forum code right? Or did I just run with the idea of adding a page into the code? lol
I'll volunteer to design a page for this if we want. Assuming we want to match the current scheme of our default theme?
Thank you thank you thank you .... Sold O:-)
You know like most threads this one went on a bit ..... but I was going back to the start of
So it was more of a landing page for this site, so people know what we are, where to get the software, how to help etc ... one pager with the links to git, the forum, and our beta package (when we tag it) Using our theme stuff is great, I would have done that or grabbed a github page template to get started, but do what works for you!
Probably a good test for using SSI.php
<?php
$ssi_layers = array('html', 'body');
$context['page_title'] = 'ElkArte Home';
require_once('forum/SSI.php');
?>
This is our brand new homepage :D
<?php ssi_shutdown(); ?>
Looks darn nice to me 8), thanks for putting this together. I'll need to play around with font awesome !
I don't know if I'd add to much more content TBH, I like that landing page as its clean an to the point.
My only thoughts are to add some line about it being Open Source, Free, Community Building Software or ElkArte is a community-developed, free and open source project for building online discussion groups, or something along those lines.
@TE @emanuele any thoughts on this (don't worry its almost impossible to hurt IchBin's feelings :P )? So do you Like it, Hate it, don't have a front page and leave it as it is, other?
Yes, I'd put a description and the download button at the "top", something like the attachment maybe.
But the general look is very :+1:!!
If I get a moment this week, I'll try to do a couple of layout options to see if we like something best.
I do like the design, and I agree with eman, we need more text.. It's currently a good info for developers, however the "normal" user needs to be the focus.
Some recommendations:
1) What is ElkArte?
ElkArte is a powerful forum software, which is based on the well known Simple Machines Forum .. Blablabla.. Many of our contributors are former SMF team members with several years of experience in developing forum software...
2) ElkArte features:
We do have supercool features such as Post by Email, mentioning users, notifications, likes and all that cool stuff you may already know from the common social networking platforms.. Blablabla.. Wanna test ElkArte yourself? register an account on elkarte.net community forum.
3) Why ElkArte?
ElkArte is a comepletely free software, licensed as open source under BSD-3clause Blablabla..
4) Infos for developers / contibutors
Want to get involved in developing ElkArte? We are an open source project and community that encourages others to help! Join us at our space on GitHub. we use common standards such as jquery, unit-testing and travis build service to reduce the amount of bugs.. our software is OOP and follows strict MVC standards (with link to our docs @ github wiki)...
Not too much infos, just a short "spot" for those sections to to arouse the user's interest.
Not sure about the mass of green with white text. Thinking it would maybe be easier for people to deal with if the other way around. Maybe try both and get feedback?
Updated with stolen text from TE. Changed font to dark color except title. And moved download button to the top right.
I like this layout better.
http://www.ichbin.us/elkarteHome/index.php
Looking good :D
If folks are happy with it I'll put it on the site.
Nice! :D
It almost fits into a 1024x600 so it's very good!
The black on green is bit "difficult" for my eyes, though I think it's okay. ;D
ETA: forgot to add, I think the text of the "why" fits better the "what", and the text of the "why" should be more like "We wanted to create a wonderful and modern forum (and not only) script. Want to be part of it? Come and share the fun!" or something.
@IchBin Any updates? If your time is short: could you eventually attach the current version? I'd personally like to get the landing page online ASAP.
Feel free to work on it. Wasn't aware anyone wanted any real changes, so I haven't touched it for a while. There's one function in the index file that pulls from the github api that will likely need to be cached. Api only allows so many connections before hitting their rate limit.
Files attached.
thank you..
I've modified it a bit and this is the current result, it's based on SSI.php. Hope you like it..
The php function has been replaced with a javascript version. Should be better for the api rate limit, it's now the viewers IP instead of the server ip which will be blocked.
That page keeps getting better and better :)
Why the need for SSI? I didn't see the need to pull in all the stuff that comes with SSI just for a simple front page.
Page looks great btw!!
I personally like it when header and footer are equal for all pages. SSI.php is IMO the easiest solution to achieve that. We'll probably need SSI at some point anyway, just to display news (infos about new versions, security fixes and such things )..
I haven't contributed on github, but I did contribute in a way. I created the logo, but then it was altered. All that remains is the antlers.
Yep I know, that's the reason I added a text right under the avatars (directly taken via github api).
Yeah, that's one of the reasons it would be best not to use that as contributors reference. Yes, for the home page is nice because it gives some color, but then in the credits is a bit... and underestimation...
If github is so wrong, what are we going to do for the credits then ??? And if its so wrong what does that say about the copyright ???
Github is right. Xarcell contributed without using github...
Truthfully, I would stick to Github contributions. It's just a better and easier way to track. Otherwise you'll have everyone claiming or bitching about being a contributor. Stick to Github, because eventually that's where only the solid contributions will come from anyway.
Is perfectly fine.
I seem to remember the mod is "out there", I (or anyone) should find, package and post it in the appropriate board. :P