janet.Articles is an article manager module from Janet Systems. An "article" could range from a news list to a link list to an events list, and janet.Articles provides an Article filing and management system with both category and sub-category assignment.

Features

• Category and sub-category assignment of articles
• Determine whether an article is 'live', with an active date range to enable easy management of the article lifetime
• Sticky category to enable article prioritisation and placement.
• Articles display options:
  • Grid
  • Listing
  • Review
  • Directory
  • News Scroll
  • RSS
• Article based Meta data; rewriting page details to match the article.
• Built-in article Rating option.
• Article pagination

Details

This DotNetNuke Article Manager module uses a central database for article management. Modules may be added with different view configurations to allow information to be presented in different formats on different pages for example we can have a NewsScroll style on the front page with grid, listing and Review styles on other pages. Presented below are 5 images shpowing these 5 display styles. An RSS display style presents an RSS icon. Once a day the associated file is saved, taking the other display options as its rules for composition.

In the image below we see the Directory style of presentation. On the top line we have the option to search for an article by part content, or by choosing a letter of the alphabet. Underneath is a table of articles.

Directory View Style

Perhaps the simplest display style. The summary text is used for the mouse over of the title. The number of columns is an option in the display settings.

Grid View Style

The listing style presents a paged list of the articles. The layout of each item is defined by the Listing Text for the category.

Listing View Style

Here we have an article presented in review style. The positioning of the Title, Description, NumViews, RateMe and Back content are defined by the category, just as we have for the listing style, above. Further details of the tokens used are to be found under Configurable Parameters.

Review View Style

For the news scroll we present the title and summary of articles. The list slides up through the frame, starting once again from the bottom. Clicking on an item will take the viewer to the associated Preview URL, as defined by the associated category.

News Scroll View Style

Before considering the edit details associated with the article items, I will first cover the category and sub-category options. The image below shows the listing of categories. We can see the category name and the image which has been associated with the category. Note also that two of the categories are not active. From this point we are able to add a new category, or edit one of the existing categories.

Categories are used to provide a filter for the display of the articles. Each category has its own definitions for the main view styles (review , grid and listing), together with the header and footer text associated with each of these views. Tokens are used to implement a replacement scheme for the detail information of the article. For example to define where the article title should appear.

Edit Categories

In the image below we can see the top part of the options associated with a category. For each category we are able to configure:

• A number of main options
• Review style header, footer and content
• Listing style header, footer and content
• Grid style header, footer and content

We can set the name and image associated wit hthe category. Categories with the sticky parameter set are listed first. Live defines whether the category is active. In-active categories are not shown as an option when editing articles. With the Review URL parameter we define to which page we should redirect for the links from the News Scroll.

As can be seen for each of the 4 main view styles we define the header and footer text, together with how their content will be rendered (not used in directory style).

Edit Category

The Sub-Categories have an initial table layour similar to that above for the categories. In the image below we are showing the editing of one of the sub-categories. As can be seen we are able to gie the sub-category a name, select one of the images known by the File Manager, determine whether the sub-category is sticky and live. Sticky sub-categories are listed in preference to the others.

Edit Sub-Category

The image below presents our articles for editing. We are also able to add further articles from here.

Edit Items

We see below the upper section of the form for editing an article. An article is given a name, internal and external links are defined (these are optional tokens) and as can be seen we are able to select the category and sub-categories to which the article shall be grouped. Note from the above that by choosing the category we are defining how the article shall be laid out. The last two items are the summary and the body of the article.

Edit Item

Our final set of options comprise two sections.

Admin
Items which are relevant to whether the article should be displayed, is it active and the time period for which it should be shown. Also a couple of options relating to the rating of articles. These are used to determine who has permission to vote on the quality of the article and to add a review message.

Page Options
By amending the core DotNetNuke code we support custom meta text for the search engine robots; promoting search engine ratings. Meta text is included in the article content, title, description and keywords. When an article is viewed in the Review Style the meta text for the page is replaced by that from the article.

Edit Item #2

Not highlighted in our image above is the option, should we be using the above form for creating a new article. Whilst using the article manager I had ocaission to want to add a number of articles at the same time, but with a similar template. There is therefore the option to specify how many new articles should be added, copies of the one to be added.

Finally having created our categories, sub-categories and added a number of articles we can make some choices about the display of our module. The various display options have already been covered. When settings the display options, begin by selecting the display type, and the associated category. This will determine how the module presents the information and from which category to retrieve the associated header, footer and main text layout code. For the review style we need to pick one of the articles from the category that we have selected.

The remaining options are associated with the number of items to be displayed:

• Total Items - as you would expect how many items to be retrieved from the database. Note 0 will select all.
• Page Size - determines how many items on each listing view page
• Number of Columns - relevant for the Grid view
• Date Range - This allows us to refine our selection based upon a number of date criteria, for example the lst month, or year.

Edit Display Options

Tokens are used to enable articles to be rated for quality, similarly long article pagination is implemented by the addition of a simple [ page] token within the body of the article.

For examples of the use of the janet.Articles article manager look at the Janet Systems website.

Designed for use with DotNetNuke v. 3, janet.Articles has been developed and refined on www.janetsystems.co.uk.

Configurable parameters

Token	Description
[review]	Link to review page of each article.
[title]	Article Title
[description]	Main body description of the article
[summary]	Displays the article summary text; good to use in the listing style of output, where a short form of each article is required.
[urlint]	Link to the internal URL of the article, to be used where the article has been assigned its own page.
[urlext]	Link to an external URL, useful when the article manager is to be used as a replacement for the included DotNetNuke links module
[numviews]	Shows the number of times that the article has been viewed in its review mode state
[back]	Links back to previous page
[rateme]	Shows the rating for the article plus the option to rate the article, according to selection
[categoryimage]	Images representing the category of the article
[subcategoryimage]	Images representing the subcategory of the article
[more]	Links to more detail; the review page of the article
[moreimage]	more as an image - links to the review page of the article
[page]	Place this within the body (description) of the article. The number of these will be counted up and paging implemented on the article.
[pagenum]	The number of the current page
[pagenext]	Links to the next page
[pageprev]	Links back to the previous page

Installation

The Article module is provided as a private assembly module. There are two steps to installing it within a portal. Initially the module needs to be added to the list of module definitions, then added to the portal at the appropriate place.

To add the module to the list of module definitions:

1. Login with host permissions and navigate to the Modules tab under the host settings menu
2. Select the Module Definitions in the list of host pages.

   

   Module Installation
   Select upload new module

3. Select Upload New Module from either the pop-up list to the left of the icon or from the bottom of the listing of the modules.
4. On the file manager page browse for the zip file containing the article manager, add it to the list and then upload it. We do not recommend installing more than one module ata time.

   

   Module Installation
   Uploading a new module.

5. Review the install report and ensure that there are no errors reported.

To add the module to a portal page:

1. Login to the portal with the required permissions, typically this will be with an account having Administrator rights.
2. Navigate to the page where the Article module is to be added.
3. From the drop down list select janet.Article as your module and select your content area, probably ContentPane.

   

   Module Installation
   Adding module to page.

4. You will need to create at least one category for your first article and to define the display options for the module which you have added.

Metadata Rewriting

DotNetNuke takes the metadata, as used by robots, from the settings for a page. It does not allow for a module to rewrite this information. To be effectivethis information needs to be tailored to the article being reviewed.

Included are directories relevant to different DotNetNuke build numbers. within these are to be found default.aspx and dotnetnuke.dll. These two files may be used to replace the associated two files:

/dotnetnuke/default.aspx
/dotnetnuke/bin/dotnetnuke.dll

Please ensure that you have created a backup of these two files before you attempt to replace them. Also, please ensure that you replace like-for-like use the two files which correspond to the version of dotnetnuke which you are using.

To make the above changes you will need to have access to you installation of DotNetNuke, it is not possible to do this through the usual module private assembly installation.