Die Beste Aller Zeiten

“Place Here” Module User Guide Part II

By Eike Pierstorff

On August 8, 2008

In Manual

(This is a duplicate post so I don’t have to rewrite stuff that was already there)

Leading Paragraphs

The module can set articles in columns. However leading paragraphs span all columns ( so if you have three columns each col will span 1/3 of the width of the module position, but the leading paragraphs will span the full width of the module position)

Columns

see previous paragraph

Trim text

Like the name says this will trim down the text to the specified number of characters (so this expects a number as input, alphanumeric input will cause errors). This is a simple substring operation, so it might cut the last word in ha

Not found title, Not found text

If the id you entered in the id field at the top of the parameters does not return an article this title and text will be displayed instead.

Use Meta Description

If this is set to “yes” the module will use the text from the articles’ meta description instead of the intro text (if there is no meta description the intro text will be used as a fallback). The meta description is the short text you enter in the article manager (last entry in the parameter tab) that is supposed to be used by search engines.

Link to Category

If this is set to “yes” the readmore-Links in the module will not point to the single article, but to the blog layout page for the category to which the article belongs. This will only work properly if there is a link to the blog layout page somewhere in a menu (set up a hidden menu if necessary).

Run plugins

This is not new, but has caused a bit of confusion so I mention it here: Usually all plugins that run on the main content would run on the module content as well. This regularly wreaked havoc on page layouts when comment areas where appended to module contents etc, so I disabled plugins by default for the module. If you need to run plugins you need to set “run plugins” to “run plugins” (could I possibly be any clearer? I think not).

“Place Here” Module User Guide Part I

By Eike Pierstorff

On August 8, 2008

In Manual

The not particularly clever named “Place Here Module” is an extension for the Joomla 1.5.x series that is designed to display Joomla articles in module positions (if you run Joomla 1.0.x you are looking for mod_contentitem). As of yet there is no user manual, so I will cover the options for the module in a few blog posts (nothing fancy, I’ll simply enumerate the options from top down and give a short explanation).

Here we go.

Type

Possible values: Section, Category, Article
The module displays either complete Section, Categories or idividual Articles

ID

Possible values: The numeric ID of a Section, Category, Article, or a comma separated list of IDs
You will find the IDs in table views of the Article/Section/Category managers (last column in the tables)

Number of items displayed

Possible values: a numeric value
Zero ( 0 ) means an umlimited numer of items (as many as there a items in the selected
The module will display the entered number of items, even if there are more items in the selected section/category

Primary Ordering

I have to admit I didn’t think much about the ordering options, I simply ripped this from another module and have never even tested it
Order by category (or section) : if your articles are from different categories or section they will be ordered by the ids of the category or section
The other options are pretty self-explanatory

Secondary Ordering

When the primary ordering is ambigous (multiple items fullfill the same ordering criteria) secondary ordering kicks in ( I think)

Show / Hide yxz…

works like in the article manager
this setting depends a little on the template you use; the module comes with multiple template, and if the template you use does not include code to for example show the title the “show title” setting will do nothing

Large Hadron Rap

By Eike Pierstorff

On July 28, 2008

In Science

The Large Hadron Collider, located at CERN in Switzerland, is a doomsday device constructed from blueprints some aliens projected to earth in the form of crop circles and mutilated cattle anuses (or whatever the plural of anus is) which, when activated, will rip a hole in the fabric of space and time and unleash monsters from another dimension that will bring this world to an end by 2012, as predicted by the Maya several thousand years ago.

Or so some people want you to think, more or less.

In fact the LHC is a particle accelarator that will hopefully give answers to some unresolved questions in physics (like “why do things have mass”, which is a pretty big thing not to know) and which will undoubtly create a lot more new questions in the process.

This raises the question, if science always comes never to an end and increases rather than decreases the number of unknowns, then why do we keep doing it, instead of saying “Goddidit” or “I don’t know or care” ?

There is a long answer to that which involves the fact that, while we’re a far cry away from knowing everything we at least know something, and not the least that we have an idea about how much we don’t know. But there is also a short answer that rather involves the fact that you needed to be a man of straw or a lump of dirt not to be interested in the world around you: just being alive is simply not good enough.

Science is a way to find out about the world; its companion, Art, is a way to cope with what you find out. And sometimes the two celebrate a happy union, like in this, right, rap video, which is not only tremendously funny but also explains (did I say ‘also’ ? That’s the fun of it – ) in rather simply Terms what the LHC is and what it does. The credit for this evidently belongs to science writer Katherine McAlpine, and I hope many many people will look at it.

Check this out

By Eike Pierstorff

On July 18, 2008

In Science, Space

The Japanese space agency has published an amazing animation made from data from their Kaguya/Selene probe. This is a virtual tour through moons Tycho crater (named after astronomer Tycho Brahe, 1546 – 1601 [Wikipedia]). Phil Plait as badastronomy.com explains a bit about Tychos features (and links to the stunning lunar picture of the day, a picture of Tychos central mountain). Note that these are not actual movies/pictures, but are constructed from the data of Selenes instruments.

With that I wish you a happy weekend, I will attend a family festivity over the weeekend and will be offline ’till sunday.

Leo got the axe

By Eike Pierstorff

On July 12, 2008

In Science, Space

The german moon mission LEO – Lunar Exploration Orbiter – has now been officialy cancelled, according to the news magazine Tagesschau (Ludmilla Carone at scienceblogs.de (german) had already written about that). The given reason is the cost, although at 350 mio Euro from the federal budget doesn’t seem all that much for a moon mission.

As far as I can tell the german, and actually the european policy on space projects is to fund projects that promise immediate return on investment (or at least allow to channel large amount of money to companys that must not be subsidized under european law. Maybe the people behind LEO should next time plan for a mission that allows to dish out a couple of billions to private companies to improve their chances).

One might argue that an “If we can’t eat it will won’t pay for it” attudite makes economic sense, but then we germans once believed that potatoes are inedible. Like the potato maybe the moon deserves a closer look.

New Parameters for mod_placehere

By Eike Pierstorff

On June 26, 2008

In Joomla

I finally had a chance to use the place here module in one of my projects – I think this is actually the first time I used this (or it’s predecessor mod_contentitem) on one if my sites (I wrote this originally as a reply to a request in the Joomla Forum). My customer required a bit of extra functionality for the module which might be of use to somebody else, so it becomes part of the ‘official’ distribution. I will briefly introduce the new parameters, but since the module is by now quite complicated I will start asap with a bit of documentation.

Trim text

Like the name says this will trim down the text to the specified number of characters (so this expects a number as input, alphanumeric input will cause errors). This is a simple substring operation, so it might cut the last word in ha

Not found title, Not found text

If the id you entered in the id field at the top of the parameters does not return an article this title and text will be displayed instead.

Use Meta Description

If this is set to “yes” the module will use the text from the articles’ meta description instead of the intro text (if there is no meta description the intro text will be used as a fallback). The meta description is the short text you enter in the article manager (last entry in the parameter tab) that is supposed to be used by search engines.

Link to Category

If this is set to “yes” the readmore-Links in the module will not point to the single article, but to the blog layout page for the category to which the article belongs. This will only work properly if there is a link to the blog layout page somewhere in a menu (set up a hidden menu if necessary).

Run plugins

This is not new, but has caused a bit of confusion so I mention it here: Usually all plugins that run on the main content would run on the module content as well. This regularly wreaked havoc on page layouts when comment areas where appended to module contents etc, so I disabled plugins by default for the module. If you need to run plugins you need to set “run plugins” to “run plugins” (could I possibly be any clearer? I think not).

Like it? Get it from the download page for the place here module for Joomla 1.5.x

Ice on Mars

By Eike Pierstorff

On June 20, 2008

In Science, Space

Nancy Atkinson at Universe Today (pretty much the best ressource for space news) has an article about a presse conference by the team of the Phoenix Mars lander that gave some great news: They confirmed that a white substance that has been visible in some Phoenix photos is indeed water ice.

Water is a prerequisite for life. Some people think that at some point there has at least microbacterial life on Mars, and this has just become a little more probable. Just as important, if humans ever want to build a permanent base on Mars it would be a lot easier if they haven’t to bring their own water from earth.

Here is the original article from the phoenix web site.

Donations yes, but not to me

By Eike Pierstorff

On June 17, 2008

In Joomla

A few people asked if there’s a way to send donations, either for the module or for the support. Now, if I want money I name my price up in front, and I do not take money for stuff I put up under the GPL anyway. But if you liked my work you can of course donate to worthy causes. Like it said in the readme-File for the contentitem-module,

If you feel you must donate any money then donate it to a charity (preferably a childrens fund) in your vicinity or give something to the Joomla Project.

However I’d very much like to see where and how you used the module, so I appreciate it if you send me a link to let me have a look at your site.

mod_placehere: articles displayed horizontally ?

By Eike Pierstorff

On June 16, 2008

In Joomla

There is a small thread in the Joomla! Forum under that title. Now, in theory it is very simple to display articles side by side.

Open the module parameter tab in the module manager
Enter a value in “Number of items displayed”
Set the value for “leading paragraphs” to 0
Set the value for “numer of columns” to the same value as “Number of items displayed”
You might want to set “width” to a sufficently large value if you set “Output mode” to table (so the width of a column should be the value for width divided by the number of columns)

However there is a catch, because this will only work when your template has actually enough horizontal room to display the articles side by side, if it hasn’t the result might be a little unpredictable. The template mentioned in the original post was Rocketthemes “Catalyst” and for that I can only point to my post about compatibility with commercial templates.

The Long Night of the Sciences

By Eike Pierstorff

On June 14, 2008

In Science

It’s “Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften” – The Long Night of the Sciences – in Berlin and Potsdam; the Universities and Science Institutes in the two cities will open to the public with dozens or even hundred of shows, speeches, discussions and exhibtions, ranging in theme from social sciences over languages, history, geography and medicine to mathematics, chemistry, physics… well go see for the self, you’ll find the complete list of events (in german) if you follow the link above.

I caught a cold during a motorbike trip and don’t feel quite fit, but I will nip out to catch at least a talk about the history of quantum mechanics and the related exhibition about Max Planck.

The Long Night of the Sciences is a pretty cool event – the width of topics covered is nothing short of amazing. If you’re in Berlin today you shouldn’t miss this.