RE: [Phpwebsite-developers] Pagemaster & Categorizer

[Matthew M. <ma...@tu...>]

> Though I'm still
> not quite sure what the 'Sticky' thing is.

Checking something as Sticky gives it top priority. It will _always_
appear on the What's Related list no matter what.

> In fact, it looks like a single element can not
> only have multiple children, but possily multiple parents(?)
> [getParents()].

No, they can only have one parent (although their parent may have a
parent). This is just a misleading function name.

> This leads me to suggest that maybe fatcat could have
> some predefined categories (Images, Links, etc), then a module can create
> its own children of those

Interesting thought. We will talk more about this.

> In this setup, an important function would be the
> 'getAllElements(category)'
> One question about this.  When returning elements belonging to a category,
> do you return elements belonging to a parent of that cagtegory? (Perhaps a
> parameter switch [getAllElements(category,returnParentElements)]). This
> way if I want to add an image to a Pagemaster page, I get not only
> Image>Pagemaster elements, but generic Image elements as well.

Originally I was going to do this but it seemed like a lot of data that
not many people would use. We can look at allowing this through better
interface however.


> Another important function is the 'deleteCategory(category)'
> ... However,
> one possible alternative is that if the category being deleted has a
> parent, to change all elements off the category being deleted to be
> elements of its parent category

I can do this.

> Pagemaster can be handled in two ways. Currently, pages are treated like a
> collection of sections (similar to announcement module).  I'm not entirely
> sure what the reason for the multiple sections functionality was (or is),
> but I'm not sure they don't unnecissarily add to the complexity of the
> module.

PageMaster was written with our university users in mind. Because few of
them know HTML, it was easier to split the material into sections to make
its appearance more pleasing. What I would suggest is the option to have
an expert mode.

> A single image for a section seems limiting.

Again, it was easier to do it that way than to show them how to to create
image tags.

> And what is the necessity for a subtitle that just takes
> up a field in the database

Same reasons as the above.
> 4) Expand the size of the input window and allow a page to be a single
> entity (ie no sections).

Not sure how Adam will wish to treat this. It would be nice however if the
user could set their window size to increase the width of the text area.


> 6) When editing a page, clicking on the image button will bring up a small
> window (similar to the help windows) with the 'Add Image' interface.
> Perhaps a button "Add Internal Image" and "Add External Image".

Possible, but would require some javascript programming (which I am not
great at). Also there would need to be an alternate interface for those
who don't run javascript.

> 8) The uploading of the images could be handled by the document manager.

Depending on the module, that could be kind of a pain switching in and out
of modules.

Thanks for your feedback,
Matthew McNaney
Internet Systems Architect
Electronic Student Services
Appalachian State University
Phone: 828-262-6493
phpwebsite.appstate.edu
ess.appstate.edu