Articles Application. Article Categories

cnpark70

Is there an option to show category list first rather than going directly to the list of published articles when you click Articles button?
Since I am planning to designate a set category to a one writer and I am thinking about 5 article categories that will have series on it's own, it would be nice to have each member able to see the available list of article categories first to pick from depending on their interest.

Thanks in advance.

Shadowdare

Thank you for trying the Articles application!

There is no page listing for the article categories at the moment.

Would you like to still be able to access the main articles index or redirect requests to that page to the categories listing permanently?

If the former, does the following implementation sound good to you?

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Idea: add an article categories index page

• Add a setting to hide or show an "Article Categories" link in the main menu, and probably one in the sidebar.
• The categories index page will be similar to the default (modern) view of Vanilla's forum category index. It will have a listing of article categories sorted alphabetically, with their names linked to the articles index for that category and their descriptions. Additionally, article counts could be shown as well.
• Developer note: add a "Categories" method to the ArticlesController.

cnpark70

Sounds great. If I may suggest, drop down menu for listing article categories would be awesome.
Thank you.

Shadowdare

I like the idea of adding an articles categories index and I'll implement it when I get some time.

Your drop-down menu for the categories idea is nice, too! In the development version of the app, I've recently added a module for the sidebar that lists the article categories (see screenshot below), but I may add a setting to turn that into a drop-down after hearing your idea, which would be nice for people who have a lot of categories.

cnpark70

That's the reason I suggested drop down menu since I have very crowded categories.
Can't wait. Please let me know when the updated version becomes available.
This is awesome. Thanks a ton.

Shadowdare

Would this work for the Article Categories for now?

cnpark70

It should be more than enough for now.
THank you Shadowdare

cnpark70

I am running on embed friendly theme.
Was wondering if you are going to implement dropdown menu compatible for embed friendly theme?

cnpark70

Hi Shadowdare, Is there a newer updated version of this plug in?

R_J

You'll always find the most recent version on GitHub: https://github.com/shadowdare/Vanilla-App-Articles but there is no newer version yet

cnpark70

OK thank you.

cnpark70

Is there a plug in specifically to work with Articles plugin.
I would like to have a section in Articles preferably above article content to introduce with face picture and briefly describe about author and his work.
Thank you.

Shadowdare

@cnpark70 said:
I am running on embed friendly theme.
Was wondering if you are going to implement dropdown menu compatible for embed friendly theme?

Sure. The drop-down categories menu is the feature I'm working on next. I'll be sure to test it out with the Embed Friendly theme.

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@cnpark70 said:
Is there a plug in specifically to work with Articles plugin.
I would like to have a section in Articles preferably above article content to introduce with face picture and briefly describe about author and his work.
Thank you.

This will be added in the Articles app soon. An "author info" box with the author's picture, author display name, and author bio will be added under the article content and its display could be toggled using a config setting. For displaying above article content, you could override the view and use some CSS styling to move it up.

The author display name and author bio fields are already added to each author's "edit profile" page, so you could use those fields in your own view overrides and custom plugins if you want.

Shadowdare

Just added in the article categories drop-down menu to the module. It works with the Embed Friendly theme, too.

Stay tuned for the next release!