Hey everyone. Got a question that I hope someone may be able to help me with.
My website is http://www.fuelthescene.com so if anyone wants to look at it and see what I'm talking about so you can understand what I am having trouble with, be my guest and check it out haha.
As you can see if you're looking at the site, I have my news posts on the main page broken up into two columns.
I currently have my news posts set to ONLY come from my News forum, not any other forum. However I was thinking maybe of having another forum be a News forum, maybe a "reviews" section or something, and was thinking that I would like posts from that forum to be on the main page too. I do know you can have posts from different forums on the main page in your news section. However, I would like to keep them separated, especially with the two columns/rows of posts being there.
I would like the left side to have the News posts from my News forum, and the right side to have the other posts, possibly the "Reviews" forum or somewhere else. Is there anyway to accomplish this? I know it does it by time the thread was started, so currently it would put them all in a jumble. Is there anyway to have them sorted on the main page by what forum they are posted in, rather than what time they were posted at?
Thanks a lot and I would greatly appreciate any help!
-- Jamie Roberts
If I understand you correctly, you want to display news from different forums. If you would like to take a look at my site, (in my sig) you'll see that this is exactly what we do.
That is simply a tiny line of code in a php code block:
ssi_boardNews($board = 40.0, $limit = 4, $start = null, $length = 500, $output_method = 'echo');
Board number can be found by hovering over the board title, the information is displayed in the Status area of your browser, bottom left usually.
Limit: How many news items to display
Length: Character count.. 500 letters for example.
These are SSI (Server Side Include) functions that pulls information around your site into an area of choice. More information about these can be found at SMF.
Will that make it though where they aren't in order by time, but by board?
Like on my website right now it's in order by time. So if I have a post from News last, it'll appear at the very top left. But then if there is something from "random forum" posted right before that it is the next one down. I would prefer to keep them separated. Like have the left side for news, and the right side of stories from the "random" forum. Will that code do that? Or is it even possible?
They are individual Blocks, the top one is a front page block, the others are 2 articles, side by side shown only on the home page.
Each has that one line of code, the SSI does the rest and separates each topic with a horizontal rule
I think there may be some other snippits in the snippets board that offer more functionality.
Do you have AIM, MSN messenger or Yahoo messenger? I'm kind of confused as to exactly what you mean. Do I edit this through my FTP, or through the SMF/TP admin section? It's not telling me that I have any blocks on the front page, I just have it set through another area to put stuff from the News board on the front page. I'm so confused. :(
Sorry, I'm kind of busy right now.. Just create a php block, paste in the above code.. Job done, all you need to edit is the little details, length, limit .. etc, it's really quite a simple code. The SSI function will do the rest, no need for any server side edits.
Ohhh create the PHP block in my front page blocks?
Bingo :) Thats all it is.. Try it.. You might like it ;)
I used to manully create news articles for the home page, this way, it takes information from boards and displays it in the block.. Genius ;D
How can I make the articles appear side by side instead of on top of each other?
www.fuelthescene.com
Go to:
Admin > TP Settings > Front Page > Articles layout for the front page: C
I think that should do it..
Thanks so much!
You've been a massive help!
You're welcome, may I also suggest that you change the colour of your Horizontal Rule in the .css style sheet for the theme you are using.
It's currently black on a black back ground.. impossible to see the line.
Also... you need to turn off certain visual options for the actual article.
Author, Views, ratings.. etc.. People will assume its for the topics..
Those options are for the article itself that the code resides in.