Thread

Hi,
I am trying out various CMS and frameworks whether they work for my next project.

The project basically is a cms but unfortunately not quite. These are the features we shall need:

1. Articles
The articles are published by the publisher, but written by one or more authors. Can I reflect this, i.e. can I do this with EE out of the box?
2. “Organigram”
All the authors have profiles, which in turn show the articles and publishers by these authors. Is this possible?

As I only doing a preliminary review, I would use this information to delve into the system and try to implement it - if necessary.

Thank you in advance
juro

1.  Should be no problem- I’d have a user group for the authors, a different one for the publisher- have the author entries go in with a status of ‘closed’ and only the publisher have permission to ‘open’ the articles for public view.

2.  Also not a problem- there are a couple of ways to do it.  The standard member templates have a link to ‘show all entries’ by the author.  I personally would probably use a standard weblog and pass the username for my author in the url- pick it out via a segment variable and use it in the username parameter.  The query module would be another option.  But short answer- this shouldn’t be a problem.

Overall?  Sounds good so far- but you’re right.  One of the trial options will give you the best chance for getting a real feel for how it all will work.

BIG ETA- after a pm, I realized you were asking if multiple authors can be assigned to a single entry.  The answer to that one is ‘no’, each weblog entry can only have a single author technically assigned to it.  While you could use a custom field to store info on multiple authors, this wouldn’t be true multi-author capability in the sense you’re looking for it.  My apologies for any confusion on this one- I just flat misinterpreted what you were asking for.

Thank you for your answers. Took me a bit longer 😊

Beeing new to EE, I don’t quite understand your methods - yet.

1. Where do I do this?
2. Do I understand this correctly. I create a weblog for all my authors’ profiles. How can I now link these profiles to users in my custom created user group “author”?

3. I have a weblog that holds all my articles that are related to other categories. How do I create this relation?
4. Also, my authors are associated to at least one of these categories, how do I create this relation?
5. Some of my articles are featured and are displayeed differently. How can I achieve this?

All comments are appreciated!

The short answer to your question is by using categories, taking information from the db/ Weblogs and using code like conditional statements.

Best thing to do is have try a few tutorials and search these forums.

It sounds like you dont have any grasp of how databases work,and you dont really need to, to use EE, but the basic logic of how things work will help you greatly on building any site driven by a database.

The help on these forums are great but people are not going to spoon fed you the exact code you need.

Unfortunately I have too much of a grasp as of how databases work (being a software developer), so it is hard for me to abstract enough to let EE do the work for me 😊 Therefore I have to get used to constraints EE keeps the user in.
Normally I would have custom built the application but the customer insisted on using EE and I am happy to learn something new. In this light a relationship is an easy join on a few tables - this is abstracted in EE.
And it is not about spoon feeding anything, it is about getting to know those constraints and the possibilites of the framework as quickly as possible - using any resource available - so if you don’t want to help, don’t - but don’t lecture, as this wastes your time and mine.

You guys are both right- it will take some playing with the system to get the full range of possibilities- and the Getting started tutorials are pretty much ‘must read’ for having a good grounding in EE.  (For something more advanced- Boyink’s tutorials on doing a site in EE are brilliant).

That said- questions are always welcome- particularly when part of the problem is a terminology one.  That’s pretty much the case here.  ‘Authors’ profiles’ would by default be the member profile- styling of which is handled in the member profile templates (Admin- Members and Groups).  So for example, your profile is found here- and there’s a link to show all of your entries.  That would be one way to handle it. 

Another way would be to use the query module to pull member info directly out of the database and make your own list of authors- linking to a custom ‘profile page’ on a regular template.  Pass the username or member id in the url- you can then pull out any member info you want- and you can easily show all entries by that author either via query or via the weblog module- limiting it to just that author via the username or author_id parameters.

So- more than one way to skin that cat.  You could even make an ‘authors’ weblog- but since the authors are members and that info (and control panel) is already available via the member data- which can have custom fields and such- I wouldn’t go that route unless I had a good reason. 

That all make sense?  Just a number of different ways to do it, depending on site needs and personal preferences.

As for the work flow issue- see if this kblog entry clears things up a bit.

And as always- be nice :coolsmile:

Hi Robin, thank you. That did help. I have (of course watched the videos and read/completed the tutorials) but still have to get my mind around the “framework”.
I am going to sit down and read the links you posted and if I do not get it, I’ll come ask again.

Thanx again and I am always nice :D

So now I have the next question 😉

If I create categories for my weblogs (nice hierachial structure) can I assign authors/members one or more category?

E.g.
category:
cat1
|- subcat1
|- subcat2
cat2

user: user1

user1 = { subcat1, cat2 }

or do I have to create a custom field for the member and manually add the category in there?