MetOpen Home Page Manual

Newbie Joined: Jul 15, 2004 Posts: 199

There's been some requests for better documentation for this module, so i will try to explain it all here.

Layout

They say a picture is worth a thousand words- and I think it will help understand the module. So here's a mockup by tag.

Features
Some news articles are more "special"- MOHP calls it "Features". As you can see in the image features appear on top, span across all columns and have larger title fonts (the style is editable if you know css see below). The way to designate an article as a feature is to put them in a speciall category or you use the same category as your articles- then newest article always appears highlighted as the feature. (See more information about categories below) Find out your feature's category id then go to the language file where it says

Code:

define("_CATIDFEATURE","X");//category id for features

and change the 2 to the category number.

Articles
Your articles will appear in the yellow area that says "articles/news headlines" and continue in the area "articles/news..." (this means you can chose to put hotspot#4 in middle of the article area). By PHPNuke default all articles have a category called "articles" (with a category id of 0). you can change this by looking for the line:

Code:

define("_CATIDARTICLE","X");//category id for articles

and replace the X with the appropriate category id for articles.

Tips
Tips are articles that you want to appear in the right column. I use this for less important or an alternate type of article. For example my "tips" typically aren't full length articles, they have "Story Text" (the first box when you add a story in phpnuke) and no "article text" (the 2nd box) like at JewCentral. Other than the first tip it doesn't show the story text just the title.

Newbie Joined: Jul 15, 2004 Posts: 199

Hot Spots
Hot Spots are special areas on your home page where you can put your own customized content including text, html and blocks. You can see the 9 hot spots in the image above. You can chose to fill in as many or few of these spots as you want.

Putting text or html in a hotspot
Using the image above figure out which spot you want to put your text in. Then locate that hotspot in the language file. So if you chose spot #6 (right below the most recent tip) find:

Code:

define("_HOTSPOT6","");

in the "" put data like "MetOpen has the best PHPNuke Modules" So it becomes:

Code:

define("_HOTSPOT6","MetOpen has the best PHPNuke Modules");

All information you type in a hotspot is treated like html. So you can make it bold <b>, italics <i>, centered <center> etc. To add a line break in html use <br />.

Putting a block in a hotspot
You can also put a block in a hot spot. to do that you must enter text in the hostspot as above. If you dont want any then just put a space, but you'll probably want to put a name for the block. Then you'll need to fill in the corresponding hotspot block definition in the language file with the full block name.

Let's look at an example, that will make it much easier to understand. Lets say you want to put a forums block in hotspot1. The hotspots would look like this:

Code:

define("_HOTSPOT1","Visit Our Forums:");
define("_HOTSPOTBLOCK1","block-FiSubNuke-Forums.php");

You see how the hot spot is filled in with text (remember you can use html to make the words a link or whatever you want) and hotspotblock is filled in with the full block name beginning with "block-" and ending with ".php"

The block must be a physical block in your blocks directory so you cant do an RSS block unless you have a physical block for it. If you do find one please let us know because a few users have asked for it.

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I hope that helps. Let me know if there are other topics you need covered. Also if there are any tips to using this mod that you want to share. Here's one to start you off:
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Putting multiple categories in the articles section
Put all the category ids in _CATIDARTICLE comma seperated with tickmarks except on the outside. for example if you want to put category 0,1 and 2 in the articles section:

Code:

define("_CATIDARTICLE","0','1','2");

Newbie Joined: Jul 15, 2004 Posts: 199

Thanks Tag for supplying the image for MOHP and it's hotspots.

Newbie Joined: Jul 15, 2004 Posts: 199

Categories
All phpnuke articles have categories. You can add categories by clicking on the add button.

Step-by-Step instuctions by Tag:
As admin you have a admin menu on the left side of your sreen, unless you told the block not to load. In order it says:

Administration
NEW Story
Change Survey
Content
Logout

Choose: NEW Story

CATID

1 In Admin New Story, go to Catagory and just as an example type in Feature, then click add.

2. Create an article the article can be something for sale with link such as software, a theme, book, dvd... or anything else you want to say. Make it like you would make any other text article. (see: http://bookwired.com ) for an example of a book.

3. In Catagory click: Feature

4. Save

5. If it shows up in your Feature, you are done. If it does not, go to the next instruction.

6. Go to you database (phpMyAdmin in most cases), find your nuke_stories_cat, browse and find Feature look at the CID number. This is the number they want.

7. open up Met homes / eng_language (or any other language files you will be using with it). Find define("_CATIDFEATURE","1") change that 1 to the number you got from CID in nuke_stories_cat. Save the language file(s), and upload it (them).

8. Your Feature will now work. Remember that in this example Feature is the Catagory you want to assign future Features too. You can name this anything you want, but the associated number in nuke_stories_cat is the number for the language files.

9. If this does not work. Start again at 1.

Use this for TIPS as well: _CATIDTIPS","1" in language file

Newbie Joined: Jul 15, 2004 Posts: 199

Tip: Getting rid of the categories

To get rid of the tips section, change the x is this line to 0

Code:

define("_NUMTIPS","X");

Newbie Joined: Jul 05, 2005 Posts: 14

Tag, do you have a demo of this feature on one of your sites? I am trying to make my site a little more interesting and I know that I haven't even used 25% of this mod.
www.grillinggourmet.com
Thanks
Rick the Grillmaster