EXT: MOC Articles¶

What does it do?¶

This extension requires Typo 3.6 or above and also Templa Voila!

• NEW: The extension is indexed! By default the display of articels is indexed (cached), whereas list of articles, types, targetgroups and categories are not. The extension can be configured to allow these list to be cached as well.
• The extension is very comprehensive article administraion extension. It handles articles of different types: Articles, Documents (attached files etc.), Manual and Links. Displaying an article depends on its type. Every articles will have two dimesnsion that they can be sorted on: Targetgroup and Category (Subjects). Targetgroups and categories can be inserted at will in appropriate tables. Each article can have several targetgroups and several categories.
• Each articles has the posibility to have files attached and a collection of external links. Besides, individual articles can be related to one another.
• Support for three levels of access: Public, Semi public and private. Public articles are visible for all users, Semi public is visible for all users that are logged in via the frontend, and the private articles are only visible by fe users member of a configurable list of fe groups. We use the the private articles as a sort of internal knowledgebase, directly available on our intranet, and integrated into out publically available knowledgebase.
• The application is built with fe editing in mind, but this is built on a modified version of the julle_feedit extension and the FCK HTML Editor, and is hence turned of by default. Turn in on (via a constant) at own risk! When my changes are integrated into the julle_feedit extension, the FE editing feature will be documented and turned on by default.
• Each article has a flag telling it whehter this article should count as a news items. The extension contains a small plugin that can list the latest articles with the newsflag set. (possibly only for a special targetgroup or category). The extension will work togeter with another extension moc_newsmail, for sending out newsmail with the latest articles. This extenion is not developed yet, but is high on the wish list for some of out customers (meaning it has high priority for us:)

Screenshots¶

In the screenshot above, ther plugin is inserted in two version. The one marked 1 is the main plugin, the article browser, it allows you to browse and search for articles. In this case, the plugin show the different categories and how many articles are in each category.

The instance of the plugin marked 2, is the Newest articles plugin, here configured to show only one article. This plugin can be configured to show a given number of articles sorted by the newest first (the default is the latest 5), and can possibly be limited to show only newest articles in a given category, for a given targetgroup, or even only to show articles of a certain type. All articles can be marked (and is by default) as newsitem and will then be listed by this plugin. However one can also configure the plugin to disregard this flag, and treat all articles as newsitem.

Creation of Targetgroups¶

The first step will be to insert target groups. In this example, I will create three different target groups called Enterprise , Small buisness and Family law representing three different areas of services the law firm deliveres (all titles is fictious). The records are in this example inserted into the Default storage page of the site, as this is the usual case.

Creation of Categories¶

Creation of categories is straight forward, just click create new record in the list module in the correct sysfolder and chose category. Then enter a title for the category. In this example we chose to create the category Precence, which should hold all articles that tells about cases that makes precence. As there is also defined targegroups and hence an article can be about a conviction making precendence in family law.

For this example, we have also creates some categories, that are only relvant for a certain targetgroups, for instance Divorces, which only really makes sence for the targetgroups family law, and ontoher called company fusion, which only has relevance for the targetgroups Enterprise and Small buisness. This does not matter as the plugin is made such that for a given target group, only categories which contain aritcles will appear in the list. Thus if there is no articles with targetgroup Familly law and category Company fusion (Which would be a very weird article:), then the category Company Fusion will not be listed in the plugin inserted in the Family law part of the site, but would be listed in the general knowledge base and the two other parts of the site.

Creation of articles¶

Creation of articles is also very simple, but there is quite a lot of fields associated with an article record. The first thing to choose is the access type of the article.

Simple configuration¶

If you only need a very simple article base that nas only one targetgroup, configuration is particular simple:

Insert a single targetgroup and dont mind its name.

Then insert the categories that you would like your articles to be seperated into. Create as many as you like.

Start creating articles, and make sure that the articles are maked as Public, and that they har the targetgroup that you created.

Insert a plugin of type articlebrowser and make sure that you set the Limit articels to these targets to the targetgroup you created.

Thats it, no more to it.

Advanced configuration¶

In this example we pretend to have a site with three different main areas of content, each one presented by a targetgroup. The targetgroups are IT,Public and Iværksætter, so three targetgroups with these names is created. We decide to store the articles in aseperate folder, that is not in the storage folder of the site.

Next we create som categories, as many as you like.

The layout of the site is this, the name are in danish, but the ones that we are interested in is the pages called Vidensbase which is knowledgebase in danish.

The folder for storing the articles is called Artikler og Nyheder.

You'll notice that there is four pages called Vidensbase, one for each of the main areas IT , Public and Iværksætter and one global (never mind that there is a duplicate one that is hidden).

If we take a look at the global page called Vidensbase, we see this:

Here we see that the startingpoint is set to the page Artiker og Nyheder as we wanted. The drow down menut called Limit articles to these targets is not set, as this is the global knowlegdebase, and we want to list all articles.

If we take a look at the page called Vidensbase in the IT section of the site:

Here we see that the drop down is set to the targetgroup IT. Which means that this will only show articels in that targetgroup. The same can be done for the two remaing Public and Iværksætter.

Now we also want to configure the Newssection. The first thing that needs to be done is to create a Templa Voila templateobject that has the static template datastructure from this plugin. Please see the TemplaVoila manual for how this is done.

When inserting a plugin of typo Newest articles you can againg specify which targetgruops you want to limit to. But wee need to tell the plugin where the articles can be show as the plugin can not show articles by itself. This is done in the constants section, with the parameer showPID.

Advanced configuration with a menu¶

This is not documente yet, but here is the configuration that I use:

temp.articlemenu < plugin.tx_mocarticles_pi1
temp.articlemenu {
 TOPLEVEL {
   name=Knowledgebase
   elementWrap = <div class="level-0-notactive">|</div>
   elementActiveWrap =  <div class="level-0-active">|</div>
   elementCurrentWrap =  <div><img src="fileadmin/templates/images/greybox.gif" /><span class="level-0-current">|</span></div>
   ActiveATagParams = class="activelink"
   CurrentATagParams = class="activelink"
 }
 SUBLEVEL {
   elementWrap = <div class="level-1-notactive"> | </div>
   elementActiveWrap =  <div class="level-1-active"> | </div>
   elementCurrentWrap =  <div><img src="fileadmin/templates/images/greybox.gif" /><span class="level-1-current">|</span></div>
   //ATagParams = class="navilink"
   ActiveATagParams = class="activelink"
   CurrentATagParams = class="activelink"
 }
 SUBSUBLEVEL {
   elementWrap = <div class="level-2-notactive"> | </div>
   elementActiveWrap =  <div class="level-2-active"> | </div>
   elementCurrentWrap =  <div><img src="fileadmin/templates/images/greybox.gif" /><span class="level-2-current">|</span></div>
   //ATagParams = class="navilink"
   ActiveATagParams = class="activelink"
   CurrentATagParams = class="activelink"
 }
 CODE >
 CODE=menu
 showPid = 3
 storagePID >
 storagePID = 13
}


lib.navbar =COA
lib.navbar {
 10 =< lib.menu
 20 < temp.articlemenu
}

This will produce an output tha looks like this

Feel free to play around with it, an maybe finish up this section of the manul...

Constants¶

The constants section has these configration properties.

Specifying storage folder¶

The extension will first check if the typoscript parameter storagePID is set. This is by default set to .field = pages, thus taking the value from the pages of the content record

If this is not set, the plugin will check to see if a General Storage Folder is defined in a page in the Root path

If this is not found, the current PID of the page (where the plugin is inserted) is used.

All articles, categories, targetgroups and links must reside in the same folder! (Thanks to rene for stressing this).

TS Reference¶

Reference for plugin 1:

Stylesheets¶

An explanaiont will come.