PHPCow Help

Hello fellow phpcows,

This is my first post so I just wanted to say great job on the forum..

I purchased PHPCow a few weeks ago and have got pretty much a functioning site now. Lot's of hair loss but getting there.

What I'm trying to figure out is how to "Duplicate a page". In the standard CNN template there was a copy of main that was called "news_default_subcategory" I modified this page so I could link to it from the menu bar on my site, if you were to click on "Milling" it would go to this page and show all articles in that category.

I want to duplicate this page so I can link to them for different categories but can't see a way to do it, unless I'm going blind.

Does anyone have any ideas? The site is in my sig.

Thanks.

Chippie

Hi,

news_default_subcategory is just a default Category template.
If you are going to keep your category layout of one type across the site then:

(1) Add categories/subcategories
(2) Do your blocks and then add those blocks in the news_default_subcategory template. Remember to check "Detect Category Automatically" in your blocks
(3) Build your menu (either use the PHPCow menu system or do your own menu (css/js) and include the code in template.
(4) Include your menu in template.

That's all. In case you wish to do different layout for categories then use "mapped templates".

phpcowfreaks

I'm needing a different category for different pages.

I'm using a single block on the "Milling" page and only shows articles that are in the Milling category.

I want to have a seperate page for the "Turning" category where I will embed the "Turning" single block and the same with all my other categories.

Where do I find "mapped templates"?

Thanks

Chippie

Where do I find "mapped templates"?

Thanks

Chippie
[/quote]

In case the header image for different categories are different but other layout same then you don;t need mapped templates.

Following sites use same template but header images changed with custom functions:

http://www.digitaljournalonline.com
http://www.hhpulse.com

create template and map them. This is in templates sections. I can just give out this much info. Whatever you are trying is just possible thru custom functions in case the category pages are differing only in header images.

Cheers

I did get a reply back from phpcow tech support on how to create an extra page. I just could not find out how to do mapped templates and there it was right at the bottom of the screen when you open up a template.

So now I have 2 HTML templates. test and test_article
I can open up these templates and add my own html, I understand that much.

Now how do I call these templates using a url?

Thanks

Chippie

I'm trying to remember how to do it......but I think you map it to a category, and then any article you post under the corresponding category will use that template.....so you are not so much going to have a URL for a specific template, but only for articles submitted under that category.

Hi Capper,

I'm not needing to put articles in these pages, I just need to be able to include my own html. So I don't need to associate the page with a category. I want to be able to use the schema and the right single blocks so that I have some news content on the page but in the body of the page have my own html.

What I'm trying to do specifically is include a business directory and classifieds section into this blank area. I'm going to use php includes to integrate it. So from the menu when calling the template I need something like mysite.com/directory mysite.com/directory/login.php mysite.com/directory/categories etc So once I have a master template I would just duplicate it and use it for different parts of my script.

Hope that makes better sense.

Chippie

I have external scripts on my site and just added them myself through ftp and then called them in the navigation. Is that what your looking to do or do you really want them to be included inside phpcow somehow? (Sorry still on my first cup of coffee here)

Kaos,

That's how I'm doing it now. If you look on the second row of menu options, Classifieds and Directory are external scripts. But I want to integrate them into the same look and feel of phpcow. Because the scripts are template driven It would be easy to do, If I could just get a blank phpcow page I could make it work.

I could easily view and copy all the html from a page from a browser but the problem is now everything is hard coded html, if the menu gets updated then the page will not get updated. I could drop the single blocks in the page but they are not being populated with content. There is something phpcow is including in the pages to be able to bring in the schema, menus, blocks etc.

Chippie

html pages are for writing your own html and then including those html in templates. There's no way those html can be called by typing address in address bar. An example usage is you may create on html for ad block and then place that html in a template just in the same way as you include blocks.

For example, the Two Tabbed section in black that you see on http://www.hhpulse.com is done in one html with blocks added and then that html is included in template.