Block Suggestion/Request....Anyone who can help please do

inSaNE_iRIsH · Wizard Joined: Jun 19, 2003 Posts: 101

I have a suggestion for a new block. I am not positive if it can be done, so let me know what you think. The whole idea came from what I am trying to do for a website I am making, so I will explain what I am trying to do and then what I want the block to do. I am new to the world of phpnuke and blocks and can’t write one myself or I would, so hopefully someone will help me out.

I am making a website that is basically going to be dedicated to being an online storybook for my children (the first of which is due on Aug. 2). I have a phpnuke run website and have gallery installed. What I want to do is have a gallery album be shown on the home/start page of the site. I will give an example. Let’s say I have 3 albums in my gallery called Album1, Album2, and Album3. I want the contents of Album1 (pics w/captions of the baby) to show in the mainpage as that is the primary purpose of the site, but I will use the other albums for miscellaneous other stuff as well. The rest of the albums would still be accessed via the normal route of the gallery link and then choosing from a list of albums.

I am fairly certain that the only way to achieve this (if it is possible at all) is to make a block that will show the entire contents of an album and then place the block inside the news module on the mainpage. I am hoping someone can help me out with this, as I would like to get the site all setup and running prior to the arrival of my little bundle of joy.

Any help anyone could provide would be greatly appreciated. If you don’t think it is possible or have other suggestions please feel free to say so here. I figured however that if a block can be made to pull random pics or new pics from a gallery/album then this should be doable with someone’s know-how.

Thanks in advance. I will be monitoring this thread closely hoping and praying for a reply.

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slackbladder

Instead of a block what about something a bit easier Smile

The NEWS module doesn't have to be in the homepage - why not install gallery and put only 1 album in it. Using the MODULES config in admin (www.yoursite.com/admin.php) on your gallery module, click on the 'put in home'. This will make that gallery module appear directly on your homepage (news can be added to the hompage using a block!). If need be make your 'highlight' photo pretty large 400x400?

Secondly install another gallery module (named slightly different, gallery2, using different albums) and use this as your album2, and album3.

Just a suggestion

Tony

inSaNE_iRIsH · Wizard Joined: Jun 19, 2003 Posts: 101

I thought about that possibiliity as well, however I ran into a couple of issues.

1) For some reason when I try to put the gallery in my mainpage I get an error...seems like a common problem based on the forums for gallery, but i didnt see any answers...this is what my backup plan will be if I can get it figured out(i have a post about that in the gallery forums just in case i have to go that route) and if I can't get the entire album to show as I would like

2) I want more than one picture to show on the homepage, I want all of the pictures (or atleast a good number of them) to show on the homepage.

What do you think...

inSaNE_iRIsH · Wizard Joined: Jun 19, 2003 Posts: 101

any chance you can help me out dari?

dari

hmm...so you want the contents of the album to show in the index, not the front page of the entire gallery.
i might be able to come up with a block that will display an album of your choosing, and you could make that a top-center block on your page.
however, i move house in 1 week, so i probably won't be able to get it started until after then. i'll keep you updated at this forum.

inSaNE_iRIsH · Wizard Joined: Jun 19, 2003 Posts: 101

that would be awesome, I would really appreciate it...good luck with your move, hope all goes smoothly (maybe for slightly selfish reasons of then you might get to this quicker... Laughing

)...i will keep my eye on this forum with great anticipation... Very Happy

dari

off the top of my head, the easiest way to do this is using an IFRAME, pulling the CSS data from the nuke site so that it matches up well. it'll take me about 5 minutes to code up a test block and see if it works.

dari · Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2003 8:51 am Post subject:

OK, i made a block, using an IFRAME. the only problem is that the source of the IFRAME is the album URL. In the example below, the source is: http://www.nukedgallery.net/modules/gallery/wagalot
As you can see, since it pulls from an independant page, the background, etc do not match the theme of the Nuke site. However, that is easily fixed. Simply copy the following file: gallery/css/standalone_style.css.default to gallery/css/standalone_style.css (no .default at the end). Edit the file so the page background (the "background-color" field under the BODY element) matches the background color of the block in your site. To find the proper color, view the source of your page, and look for the color on a block. In my example, my block is a top-center block, titled "test". I searched for it in the page source and found:

Code: ›
<table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="8" bgcolor="#efefef"><tr><td>
<center><font class="option"><b>test</b></font></center><br><center><IFRAME src="http://www.nukedgallery.net/modules/gallery/wagalot" FrameBorder=0 width=600 height=900></IFRAME></center></td></tr></table></td></tr></table>

The stuff you want to look for is the "bgcolor" field in the table declaration. Set the Gallery page background color to that value and you're good to go. Before and after pix here:
Before:

After:

The only thing that would have to be changed on your side is the height and width values of the IFRAME.
This is an imperfect solution at best, but it's a quick fix until I can get something a little more solid coded up. If you're interested in the code, drop me a line.

inSaNE_iRIsH · Wizard Joined: Jun 19, 2003 Posts: 101

absolutely...i'll check it out...shoot me the code...

inSaNE_iRIsH · Wizard Joined: Jun 19, 2003 Posts: 101

hey one thing...i hadnt thought about it before, but will this be a center block? or will it require no blocks on the right hand side?...cause it would be nice for it to be center with blocks on the right

dari · Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2003 9:39 am Post subject:

i had that test set as a center block w/ blocks on both left and right. the iframe width depends on the thumbnail size and number of pix/row in your album, so users with smaller resolutions may have scroll bars. hence the "imperfect solution".

inSaNE_iRIsH · Wizard Joined: Jun 19, 2003 Posts: 101

cool...i'll give it a run...can you email me the code

inSaNE_iRIsH · Wizard Joined: Jun 19, 2003 Posts: 101

works perfectly...that is kinda what i was thinking on how it could be done easily, but i lacked the knowledge on how to code it...

you are right, it might not be a perfect solution, but it works very well for the time being and i appreciate it...

if/when you make more heavily coded one let me know...i will definitely use it/check it out and problem shoot it with you...thanks again for all your help...

dari

no problem. my DSL will be down anytime midnight tonight, Eastern Time, USA, but will be immediately transitioned to the new house (I know people at the DSL provider, and they're doing an uber fast switch for me). So, if all goes well, the server will be back up and running on Saturday afternoon. But, I probably won't have any time to really work on it for awhile, probably until after 6 July. I'll let you know as the time approaches.

inSaNE_iRIsH · Wizard Joined: Jun 19, 2003 Posts: 101

damn...i wish i new people at the dsl company...mine took forever

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