Until recently the ‘place here’ module didn’t work with static content. John Woelfel sent in a patch for that, which is now integrated in the latest download (see sidebar). Thank you, John!
Now with audience participation
As you can tell by my silence I’m pretty busy at the moment. But at least I managed to pack a new archive for the Place Here Module that integrates a bugfix from a guy who I only know by his moniker of n7Epsilon (sent in by reader zANavAShi). The module added sometimes a couple of empty elements to its output, that should be fixed by now. I also added a random ordering option.
Does anybody really use the “merge”-feature?
Joomla 1.5 has finally arrived and so I guess I should put a bit more effort into the 1.5 module – so far most bug reports and feature request have been for the “contentitem module”, but I expect that will change soon.
While I’m willing to honour every feature request I possibly can I hate unnecssary efforts, so I do not want to include features nobody uses. The content item module has a feature called “merge items” that allows to display multiple content items as one, so you can print or pdf (can I use “pdf” as a verb?) multiple items in one go. I built this for the guy on whose request I originally wrote the module, but I’m not sure how many people actually use this.
The “place here”-module so far misses the merge-option. I would be interested in your opinion – do you think this is an important feature, or just a nice-to-have (and other features should be other included first), or is this completely useless?
Small Change in the Module for Joomla 1.0.x
I didn’t really intend to make any more changes to the content item module for Joomla 1.0.x because, frankly, the code is less than elegant and the best way to improve it would be to rewrite it from scratch (on the other hand it works, so why bother). Still I implemented a suggestion from the comments, in part because it allowed me to get rid of a large swath of code in the module.
The change concerns the way content items are ordered when they are displayed in the module. There are now three select boxes with ordering criteria (order by section, category, create date etc) that will be applied one after another, although I expect that not all combinations will make sense.
This is one of the few times that a new version is not fully compatible with previous versions; you can still overwrite the files with the new versions, but you have to re-enter the ordering information in the module parameters before thing will work properly. Both the new and old versions are available at the download page (see left sidebar).
Beco-Beermann Website updated with Joomla 1.0.13
Beco-Beermann is a medium sized business located in the city of Bad Salzuflen; they are specialized in swimming gear, water toys and their own line of what they call ‘Aqua Fitness’ (water sports) equipment. I built their website years ago and now it was time for a major update.
The site was running on a heavily patched and customized version of Mambo 4.5.1 with a Design provided by Matthias Pestel. I re-built it with Joomla 1.0.13, using Danel Ecers ‘extended menu’-Module and the indispensable Joomfish for multilingual support. Other than that (well, and the customized start page) I tried to stick as closely as possible to a plain vanilla installation of Joomla, because customizing makes updating really a pain in the lower backside (although I’m not quite sure if there actually will be any updates for the 1.0.xx versions). I just transferred the site from a staging server to the live server so there might be a few glitches to sort out, but most of the work is done.
I have to say I quite like this site; it has well withstood the test of time, it is eagerly maintained and updated and receives a fair share of visitors. Beco-Beermann is a thriving business that in the last years branched out into new product lines and has expanded well in the east european markets and I am actually a little proud that in a very small way I could assist them on their way to success.
Ask and you shall be given…
at least if you ask for something that’s easy to implement. In the comments Pieter asked for a new Parameter so the ‘place here” module would display the articles according to the ordering from the article manager. I added the parameter but I feel that the ordering system should be more flexible, so I’ll think of something.
Mod Place Here – Minor Updates
I did some minor updates on the Place Here-module – partly just behind-the-scenes-bugfixing (including the issues in the comments 20 and 21 respectively) , but also two new parameters:
- Link Titles – does of course what the name says and makes the title of an article a link if there is additional text (please note that articles displayed via the module will use the module settings, not the settings you make in the article edit view)
- Hide current item – reads the article id from the url and hides the article with the corresponding id in the module, so you don’t have the same article twice
Available at the Download page. This is still marked as alpha but apparently a number of people already use it without problems (the alpha status is more due to the fact that a number of features are still missing as compared to the contentitem module for 1.0.x).
Edited to add: There are no special upgrade instructions. Simply overwrite existing files with the new ones.
Okay, so this just doesn’t work
I was looking for a workaround for the Itemid-issue for Joomla 1.0.12 (and for those who cannot use the compatibility setting in 1.0.13) and have to report that there is none.
The idea of of the content item module was to mimick the mainbody-call als closely as possible by using the core functions to display items. The Itemid is calculated in these core functions and unfortunately there is no way to override this (short of modifying core files which would defy the purpose of a plugin API). So I have to say sorry, there is nothing I can do about that.
Q and A for the Content Item Module
I received two nearly identical questions about the content item module, one of which I quote here:
Im using the module on the front page in joomla 1. When I press the read more… link it opens the article, but it stays on the front page. So things I have displaying only on the front page are still there, and the breadcrumb system doesnt work.
Since I haven’t had time to look thoroughly into it I haven’t submitted this to the FAQ, but it’s most likely a problem with the changes as per Joomla 1.0.12 in the way itemids are handled. I think Joomla 1.0.13 has a compatibilty backward setting for itemids, so you should try that first if you have the same problem.
UPDATE: My guess was correct and this has been submitted to the FAQ. Alas that means there’s no easy solution for 1.0.12 (which lacks the compatibilty setting), anybody who cannot update from 1.0.12 to 1.0.13 should contact me (I won’t bother to think of a fix unless I’m asked to).
Reports about my death have been exaggerated
… but not by much, at the weekend I ploughed the meadows with my motorcycle after a bee got caught in my helmet and I proceeded straight where the street made a turn. However this is not among the reasons for a lack of updates in the last week.
The main reason is simply that I’m quite busy with paid work – good for me since it keeps the money rolling in, but I don’t have that much time for fun things.
Another reason is that this was supposed to be largely a site about Joomla programming and as of late I got a little disenchanted with Joomla. My labor of love for these past three years – the holocaust ressource site shoa.de – runs on Joomla, or rather most of the time it doesn’t run. Joomla causes an inexplicably high load on the server (which in turn regularly collapses), user login regularly fails and a structure that allows only for sections and categories has proven to be unsuitable for our purposes, we need subcategories. And don’t even get me started on the trouble the 3rd Party-Components give us. Pretty soon I will have to rebuild the site and this time I will use another software, which inevitably means that my focus will shift away from Joomla – shoa.de has, after all, been the main reason I got involved with Joomla in the first place.
However I will continue to support and (even though it doesn’t look like it at the moment) to develop the content item module, since it seems by now a lot of people depend on it. I generally don’t let people down if I can possibly avoid it.