[OzzModz] XenPorta Improvements

[OzzModz] XenPorta Improvements 2.0.1 Beta 1

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Nulumia

Nulumia

Well-known member
whitesky submitted a new resource:

XenPorta Improvements - Adds various improvements and tweaks to XenPorta 2 Pro by 8WayRun

xenforo-xenporta-featured-threads-improvement-preview.jpg


** Beta Notice **
I plan to keep this addon in beta phase for roughly one week while collecting any bugs or feature suggestions. This addon will remain free and is released with permission from the author (Jaxel).
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** You MUST have a valid purchased license of XenPorta 2 for this addon to work...
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Read more about this resource...
 
Upcoming features:
  • "About The Author" block, below article / above comments (like on Wordpress blogs)
  • Additional article grid image overlay effects, FontAwesome magnify icon, etc
  • Article carousel widgets
 
This;

  • Display the Featured Banner or first attached image above article content on the article view page! (Similar to Wordpress blogs.) If a Featured Video has been assigned, it will display above the article!
  • ... Set the priority to check first and display the Featured Banner (if assigned), or the first attached image. If the priority image is not found, the remaining option will be used.


Will make my life far easier, I have been asking Jaxel for it since I purchased. Does this apply to articles and the featured banner?

There is currently a hidden auto promote tool in the AdminCP - are you able to make it actually automatic?
 
Dubbed Navigator said:
This;

  • Display the Featured Banner or first attached image above article content on the article view page! (Similar to Wordpress blogs.) If a Featured Video has been assigned, it will display above the article!
  • ... Set the priority to check first and display the Featured Banner (if assigned), or the first attached image. If the priority image is not found, the remaining option will be used.


Will make my life far easier, I have been asking Jaxel for it since I purchased. Does this apply to articles and the featured banner?

There is currently a hidden auto promote tool in the AdminCP - are you able to make it actually automatic?
Click to expand...
Hope you enjoy the feature!

So this setting is only for the new above-content image on the article page, and is designed with the following assumption: That not every article will be a feature (with featured banner), but most will have an attached article image/icon which displays in the article grid. I added the priority basically for aesthetics purpose - as some sites might tend to attach small-ish or random sized images as the article icon (which may not format well to the new above-content image), while using larger/wider/clearer images for the Featured banner (again, this is a likely practice, but still assumption).

This setting can then allow a preference to look for and display the Featured Banner first, in which if there's none assigned, it will fallback to the first attachment.

I will probably extend this one step further - as obviously articles can have more than one attachment, and the image chosen as the "article icon" may not be the first one attached. So I will likely change this to prioritize the assigned article icon image, then finally to the first attachment.

As for the auto-promote feature, I've been using it for some time on my dev installation with no problem!
 
Nulumia said:
Hope you enjoy the feature!

So this setting is only for the new above-content image on the article page, and is designed with the following assumption: That not every article will be a feature (with featured banner), but most will have an attached article image/icon which displays in the article grid. I added the priority basically for aesthetics purpose - as some sites might tend to attach small-ish or random sized images as the article icon (which may not format well to the new above-content image), while using larger/wider/clearer images for the Featured banner (again, this is a likely practice, but still assumption).

This setting can then allow a preference to look for and display the Featured Banner first, in which if there's none assigned, it will fallback to the first attachment.

I will probably extend this one step further - as obviously articles can have more than one attachment, and the image chosen as the "article icon" may not be the first one attached. So I will likely change this to prioritize the assigned article icon image, then finally to the first attachment.

As for the auto-promote feature, I've been using it for some time on my dev installation with no problem!
Click to expand...


There's no problem with the auto promote feature, I'd just like it so I don't need to go in and run the job for each forum everyday.

Images feature very heavily for my forum, I'd say 80% of threads will have an image.
 
Dubbed Navigator said:
There's no problem with the auto promote feature, I'd just like it so I don't need to go in and run the job for each forum everyday.
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The setting I use is the one included in XenPorta:
Admin -> Options -> [8WR] XenPorta 2 (Portal) PRO -> Auto-promote forums

Whenever I make a thread in the selected forums it's immediately promoted to an article, just making sure that's what you meant.
Dubbed Navigator said:
Images feature very heavily for my forum, I'd say 80% of threads will have an image.
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Should work great then! I do believe in the Wordpress characteristic of showing the featured image or video above the article, helps prop up the article as the visitor takes in the text.
 
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Nulumia said:
The setting I use is the one included in XenPorta:
Admin -> Options -> [8WR] XenPorta 2 (Portal) PRO -> Auto-promote forums

Whenever I make a thread in the selected forums it's immediately promoted to an article, just making sure that's what you meant.

Should work great then! I do believe in the Wordpress characteristic of showing the featured image or video above the article, helps prop up the article as the visitor takes in the text.
Click to expand...


From what Jaxel said, that function just ticks a box to create an article, it doesn't actually promote. If a user submits a thread in my forum, it doesn't automatically display as a new article. Confusing. Entirely likely I haven't done it right, but in my mind there should be a facility where a thread is automatically made into an article and displayed in the porta widget.
 
Dubbed Navigator said:
From what Jaxel said, that function just ticks a box to create an article, it doesn't actually promote. If a user submits a thread in my forum, it doesn't automatically display as a new article. Confusing. Entirely likely I haven't done it right, but in my mind there should be a facility where a thread is automatically made into an article and displayed in the porta widget.
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I see what you mean, thanks for clarifying. So my guess here the reason that's intended is that when making a thread into an article, the article conversion page needs to come up to specify things like chosen image for the icon, excerpt and break text, category to assign the article, etc. If a thread was automatically made into articles, it would have to bypass and skip these steps - or somehow have default values designated to use. To my knowledge there's no current way to get around this, unless the approach was done a bit differently. I'll check it out though.
 
Nulumia said:
I see what you mean, thanks for clarifying. So my guess here the reason that's intended is that when making a thread into an article, the article conversion page needs to come up to specify things like chosen image for the icon, excerpt and break text, category to assign the article, etc. If a thread was automatically made into articles, it would have to bypass and skip these steps - or somehow have default values designated to use. To my knowledge there's no current way to get around this, unless the approach was done a bit differently. I'll check it out though.
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Forgive my narrow vision on this, but can't this all be specified as a default on the admin page?

I get the feeling I'm looking at the plug in with a different scope to what it's intended. I enjoy the look of the articles, but at least for my purpose, all threads in a specific forum should be converted and promoted at point of being posted.
 
Dubbed Navigator said:
Forgive my narrow vision on this, but can't this all be specified as a default on the admin page?

I get the feeling I'm looking at the plug in with a different scope to what it's intended. I enjoy the look of the articles, but at least for my purpose, all threads in a specific forum should be converted and promoted at point of being posted.
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Sure, while I'm not clear whether you mean this for the original or my addon, I do agree that this would be great. I reviewed FAQ/discussion for XenPorta and yes that functionality just isn't there. But I can certainly investigate if I can add defaults for auto-promotion into this addon :)

If it's possible, articles would automatically promote and you'd access the manual settings page only if you'd want to change things afterward.
 
I use Xenporta to create my forum's homepage but in a fairly basic way. I'll grab this when it's out of beta and try in my dev to see if there's any value for us.
 
Mendalla said:
I use Xenporta to create my forum's homepage but in a fairly basic way. I'll grab this when it's out of beta and try in my dev to see if there's any value for us.
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Happy to hear you're interested and hope it will help with your website. Should be out of beta soon along with some new features such as the About The Author block on article pages.
 
Nulumia said:
Sure, while I'm not clear whether you mean this for the original or my addon, I do agree that this would be great. I reviewed FAQ/discussion for XenPorta and yes that functionality just isn't there. But I can certainly investigate if I can add defaults for auto-promotion into this addon :)

If it's possible, articles would automatically promote and you'd access the manual settings page only if you'd want to change things afterward.
Click to expand...

The comment was about the original plugin.
 
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