A Slashdot like Produkt

sdotNews is a slashdot/squishdot like product, that lets you categorize your News in a hierarchical way.

sdot Site

http://nan.objects.net

online demo, news, help, changes

Download

The latest version may be found on plone.org

Prerequisites

• Plone 2.1+ (www.plone.org) (tested with plone 2.1.3 and 2.5)

I only tested this product with Linux, but hopefully it will work on M$ windoze as well (feedback will be apreciated)

Install

• Uncompress the sdotNews product into your zope/Products directory or link it there, e.g.:

  ln -s /path/to/installation /path/to/zope/Products

  Change the owner of the directory e.g.: chown -R plone:plone sdotNews

  Restart Zope.

• There are two ways to install sdotNews: using (1) an external method or (2) Plone's QuickInstaller tool. They both achieve the same result:

1. QuickInstaller (recommended): In the Plone Configuration, found under Site Setup in Plone 2.1+, the Add/Remove Products tool can be used to add sdotNews.
2. External Method: In the root of your PloneSite installation (within the ZMI), add an external method to the root of the Plone Site, with the following configuration values:
   • id: install_sdotNews
   • title (optional): Install sdotNews
   • module name: sdotNews.Install
   • function name: install

   Go to the management screen for the newly added external method and click the Test tab.

Setup

The Layout is defined in sdot_news.css. The sdfolderIcon and sdotNewsImage classes defines the postioning of the images next to your Newsitems, the sdNewsIcon class specifies the postition of the image next to your folder description at the top of the page.

Usage

sdotNews provides a folderish type sdot News Folder. Newsfolder have an Id (part of the URL), a Title (the name, thats what you see in your navigation), a description and an Icon (this visualizes the categories). In this Folder you can add news (and optional PloneArticles). Note that the News you add in a sdot News Folder also show up in the "normal News".

News Folders generate RSS2 and Atom Newsfeeds.

Why a folderish type?

Making the categories folderish has some advantages. You can finetune the permissions (reviewer, manager, etc) on a per folder basis, i.e. you may have reviewers for certain categories (via local roles for users or groups), you may browse the categories with the Plone navigation, there is no need for a special sdotNewsItem type (you may add additonal types to show in the sdot News Folder via ZMI), your users can bookmark the folder of their their interest and it was easy to implement ;).

News Categories Portlet

sdotNews installs a portlet that displays the Categories in which news were posted recently (slashdot like). You will not see any categories in which no news were posted or categories that have not been used for a long time. The portlet will only show up if you added a Newsfolder somewhere in your Plone site. The portlet will be empty until you added (and published) some news inside one of your Newsfolders.

CMFContentsPanel

sdotNews adds two viewlets to CMFContentsPanels: sdot News and sdot Categories. The first displays the newslisting and the second the Categories (= sdotNews Folders). For the correct layout copy the contents of sdot_news.css into the Custom CSS field (in the edit view) of the contentspanel.

Displaying sdotNews at your Frontpage

Use a CMFContentspanel with the sdotNews viewlet as your frontpage.

Alternatively you may simply add an DTML Document named index_html to your siteroot:

<dtml-var sdotnews_view>

To display an icon at this level you will have to add an image named sdot_folder_icon (no extension) in your custom folder or your Plone siteroot. Note that if you do not add icons to your sdot News Folders this image will be displayed by default.

Configuration

sdotnews adds a configlet to the plone configuration panel. You can customize the look and feel of your news many ways without having to edit the templates.

Feedback

For feedback, or help contact nan@futuresign.de. For Bug reports please use the issue tracker,  please let me know when you use it on your site.

License

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA