Customise XF Page

[ibaker]

I am trying to create a page for a section of my site using an XF Page node...I can't seem to find anything that will suit other then an Xf page as I first thought about XenPorta but that can't (easily) create a page to do what I want.

For example say I want to create a "Media" section with its own tab and a landing page that is displayed when a user clicks the Media menu tab. That landing page shows a "taste" of each of the components inside that section. I can create the XF page ok, can even put widgets in the right column using the widget addon. I have a forum that has news items in it, also a forum that has podcasts plus an addon that is a News Reader and use the Library addon for Articles. I can easily add all these to the Media Tab using Jake's great Node As Tabs addon keeping them all together in their own section of my site:


Now here is the hard part...I want the landing page of the Media Tab to act like a "portal" of the components contained within the Media Section...Note, I also want to do the same thing for other sections of my site like Photos (a photo gallery, a forum about taking pictures etc all within the Photo section).

The problem is I need to display to the user blocks with random entries of each of the components within the section on the landing page, just like a site portal does to make it more appealing and looking like an intro with a taste of what is in that section.

For example I use XenPorta as my site Home Page with a blocks for news, photos, videos etc:

but XenPorta doesn't make it easy to create another Portal page that can be used for a section of the site as well however that is what I would like to try and achieve for different sections of my site.

It was so so easy to do this with vb and vbAdvanced CMPS but I am lost on the best way to achieve it with XF

The XF Page Node (with some kind of way to randomly display an entry from each of the components in the section) may not be the right solution in the end, not even sure how to do it, so what I am after is ideas, suggestions, help etc from anyone that can assist me, and I am sure others, on how to create these types of section landing pages, using what ever is available, that presents to the user a taste of what is within that section of the site.

Your help is greatly appreciated...thanks

 

[Jake Bunce]

That requires custom programming to display records from each child node in the parent node. Page nodes support a callback function if you want to program this functionality into your page. Or this addon has widgets that might satisfy some of your requirements:

http://xenforo.com/community/resources/bd-widget-framework.297/

But I don't know if the widgets can be applied to page nodes.

 

[ibaker]

Thanks Jake, yes the widgets can be applied to page nodes and that is easily done however these are in the sidebar of an XF Page Node:


It would be good if there was some way to use the XenPorta widgets on an XF Page Node as its content

 

[Andy.N]

Thanks Jake, yes the widgets can be applied to page nodes and that is easily done however these are in the sidebar of an XF Page Node:
View attachment 31101

It would be good if there was some way to use the XenPorta widgets on an XF Page Node as its content

How do you get widget to show on pages? What type of renderer and template location?
Thanks

 

[Jake Bunce]

When editing the template for your page node you can use the sidebar syntax:

<xen:sidebar>
stuff
</xen:sidebar>

 

[ibaker]

Or if you are using the Widget Framework addon, the position is "pagenode_container" but note that will show on ALL Page Nodes. To be specific to a page set a condition to the Page Node:

 

[melbo]

Or if you are using the Widget Framework addon, the position is "pagenode_container" but note that will show on ALL Page Nodes. To be specific to a page set a condition to the Page Node:
View attachment 31102 View attachment 31103

Can you limit Widget Framework to display a sidebar to a usergroup with xen:if conditionals?
I know you could do this for separate widgets but would there be a way to make the entire 'extra' sidebar not show on forum_view for a usergroup?