X-Cart forums

[almenzies]

yeah is there any way of doing this in version 4.0 - I really want to do what mrkenzie describes, but can't find the relevant files.

thanks

[Jon]

If you use your news section frequently, and also want to use the news to increase your search engine ranking, you may want to evaluate our XNews - News Management modification for x-cart:
http://www.websitecm.com/x-cart-mods/xnews-and-seo-links.html

[craichead]

Edit: Forgot to mention that my store is in the /store subdirectory... not in the root. I imagine that this might have something to do with my issue. As i'm only moderately geeky, can someone help.. might be useful to others with their stores in subdirectories.. cheers...



I just changed the func.php to 5 and changed my today_news.tpl to your code and this is what I get:

http://www.whistleanddrum.com/today_news.png

Andy ideas?

Best,

[groovedis]

Originally Posted by almenzies

yeah is there any way of doing this in version 4.0 - I really want to do what mrkenzie describes, but can't find the relevant files.

thanks

I too would like to know how to do this in 4.0. Hope someone can help.

Cheers.

[adivr]

I tried to make it work but when i have change

{$news_message.body}

with this:

{$news_message.body|truncate:114:"...":true}...read more

It's seems to be ok but there is no link to the full message

can someone help me?

[Cris.g]

Hi everyone. I am so sorry but I am extremely confused.
I read this whole thread and I still do not understand how to post newsletters. Is there anywhere I can read step by step instructions?

Thanks

[ozchris]

I've just started experimenting with news and agree it didnt work the way I thought it would at first.

First read the manual, to see how its supposed to work.

Turn on the News Management Module.
Configure it, and add a news listing.
Then create a message.

Unless you have people in your subscription list, you won't get much further, so add a sample email address to your list.
Then you'll see an extra section saying that it's queued, and would you like to send it to your list.

By default it appears in the menu section.
For me, it displayed the body of the message, which is wierd for a menu, so I changed it to display the subject line, and turned it into a link.

<a href="news.php" class="SmallNotes">{$news_message.subject}</a>
instead of the old
{$news_message.body}

I'll probably also get rid of the archive link. It doesn't make me want to click it. And it just goes to the news page anyway.

Wow. my first xcart code change!

[MMANOR]

Originally Posted by mrkenzie

Here is what I did, you can check out the final product at:
www.techcentrichomes.com

I changed the news list so that it shows 5 news articles in the news box. It truncates the news article, it shows the news article title, and then it links to the full news story with an anchor so it goes directly to the news article the user clicked on. It works really nice and it is easy to do.

in /modules/news_management/func.php:
Find this:

    if ($only_first) {
        $query .= " LIMIT 1";
    }

and change the 1 to how ever many you want to show on the main page (I used 5)

Then change skin1/today_news.tpl. I have included the entire page here. I also have an image before each news item. Also, I put in an anchor in news archive so when you click on the news article, it goes directly to the news article they clicked on.

{* $Id: today_news.tpl,v 1.13 2006/03/28 08:21:07 max Exp $ *}
{if $news_message eq ""}
{$lng.txt_no_news_available}
{else}
<table width="100%" cellspacing="2">
{section loop=$news_message name=curr_message}
<tr>
<td><img src="/skin1/images/news_icon.gif" alt="News" /></td>
<td><a href="news.php#{$news_message[curr_message].newsid}">{$news_message[curr_message].send_date|date_format:$config.Appearance.date_format}<br />
{$news_message[curr_message].subject|truncate:100:""}</a></td>
</tr>
{/section}
</table>
<br />
{if $usertype eq "C"}
<a href="news.php" class="SmallNote">{$lng.lbl_previous_news}</a>
{/if}
{/if}
<hr class="VertMenuHr" size="1" />

Here is my skin1/modules/news_management/news_archive.tpl to show how to add the anchor on that page:

{* $Id: news_archive.tpl,v 1.5 2005/11/17 06:55:51 max Exp $ *}
{if $news_messages eq ""}
{$lng.txt_no_news_available}
{else}
{section name=idx loop=$news_messages}
<a name="{$news_messages[idx].newsid}" id="{$news_messages[idx].newsid}" />
{capture name=dialog}
<b>{$news_messages[idx].subject}</b>
<br /><br />
{if $news_messages[idx].allow_html eq "N"}
{$news_messages[idx].body|replace:"\n":"<br />"}
{else}
{$news_messages[idx].body}
{/if}
{/capture}
{include file="dialog.tpl" title=$news_messages[idx].send_date|date_format:$config.Appearance.date_format content=$smarty.capture.dialog extra='width="100%"'}
<br />
{/section}
{/if}

Let me know if you have any questions or problems.

Good luck!

I used this code and it worked great except for one thing. If you can look at the link http://www.mourningnightmares.com/news.php unfortunately it created a huge white space before displaying the previous news. I did take out the line regarding an image for the links because I did not create one. What could I do differently to display the links for the news?

Thank you all in advance for your help.

[baconbits]

Originally Posted by Jon

If you use your news section frequently, and also want to use the news to increase your search engine ranking, you may want to evaluate our XNews - News Management modification for x-cart:
http://www.websitecm.com/x-cart-mods/xnews-and-seo-links.html

Jon, I just installed this mod and it is perfect.

QUESTION: How does this integrate with the News Management? Will members receive a new news article when it's posted?

QUESTION: Can a Member have the capacity when signing up for the email newsletter to select from which categories that they would like to receive info on?

[Jon]

XNews is completely seperate from the built in x-cart news and does not integrate with the mailing list.