New additions / Changed behaviour

Hi to all,

I found Flexicontent and was a fan immediately.
I manage a website with articles, videos and downloads. For the articles and videos I just used the normal content manager and for the downloads I used DocMan. But I wanted to do everything in Flexicontent because of the flexibility and tags. The biggest challenge was to replace DocMan. I had made changes to DocMan (and the standard content component) I also wanted in Flexicontent. So, here are my additions/changes. If you like the changes and want the source files then please reply.

1) I want all visitors to view all content titles. Also the titles for registered users. (category view). So, I changed all necesarry select statements and got rid of the 'access' where clause. I protect now on the content items level.
When a visitor clicks a link for a protected content item he/she will be redirected to the login page with a return parameter to the content item. In the category template I show a lock image with the protected content items to let visitors know the item requires a login.

2) DocMan has the ability to show which item is new. So, I choose a simple method for Flexicontent and added a field in the select for the category items. This field uses the DATEDIFF sql function to determine the 'days old' and when below the 30 (hardcoded for now) the value will be 1 else 0. Besides this addition I build in the ability to show all new items on top of the list simply by listing the new field in the ORDER BY clause of the select statement.
In the category template I can now show a 'new' image. And with a some extra code in the template I separate the new items from the rest.

3) I added the ability to show the 'new' image also to the categories. In a recursive loop the categories are checked for new content items. If so, the category is marked and in the template I can show the 'new' image. Also with the ability to show the categories marked on top of the category list.

4) I use AceSEF and found the AceSEF extension for Flexicontent. Unfortunately, the extension was not prepared for download links. So, I have altered the extension to meet my needs.

I think I also did some other changes. But these are the biggest ones.

To show an example of what is posible now, you can check www.petersteffens.nl/downloads.html . It is Dutch, but you can just walk around.

Greetings, Wijnand

Thanks a lot for sharing

Can you maybe share some of the changes you made in the codes if some people are interested in?

The coming days I will try to make a structured report of the changes and attach them to the topic.

Congratulations,
That's a great sample of integration. I'll study all your changes and see if I can integrate that in the core
That's really cool to share, thanks a lot.
Emmanuel.