Joss

I wondered that, but didn't ask in case I was being idiotic. How does that then get used in the rest of the thing? (my head is spinning slowly...)

Hi Macrura how do we do that? (showing my complete ignorance here!)

Okay, I output just the following (where you say to output the table) to see what is happening $out .="<p>{$e->event_start_time} - {$e->event_who}</p>"; (event_who is just a field with a name in it so I can see what is outputing) But all I got was: "12 Mickey" I have no idea what the 12 is - the Mickey event is in February 2014. What am I missing? Thanks, Macrura Joss

Hi Macrura - thanks for that, I will try it later once I have finished with some barbershop I have to arrange. Strange life! Joss

Okay, so, like I have said many times before, I ain't no coder! I am currently taking an old and tired static angling site and turning it into a singing and dancing, Bootstrap 3, Mobile first, Processwire site - which seemed a good idea at the time! The reason is that the bloke wot did the website is retiring and the "committee" will need to update it. Now, the problem I need to create a very basic events page that will be laid out more or less like the original http://www.harlestonanglingclub.co.uk/Bookings.php So, I create a small handful of fields and bung them in a repeater - they will never display many events in one go, so this does not need to be more complicated. I have a event_start_date and an event_end_date field with the output format set at none - so it spits out the time format. What I need to do is: 1. Split the resulting array up by month so that I have several new arrays, each one being a specific month in a specific year. (I have no idea what the months or years will be; this will be defined by what is in the array) 2. Loop through each of those resulting arrays to produce a table - probably using the "month" from the result displayed at the top of the table, then the rest of the results as shown. However, I have not the slightest idea HOW to take my repeater field array and split it into new arrays by month and ... well you get the idea. HELP!!!! Loads of Love Joss

As someone who spent years recording translations for corporate and TV productions I can say unequivocally that German is a beautiful, precise joy of a language. But WHY oh WHY is it so bleedin long!!!!! When translated properly (and we used the best translators around for spoken languages) it was regularly 30% or more longer than the English version. And to make things worse, because the subject and object can end up the other way around, if we had a very fast cut video, we could be saying the wrong thing in the wrong place, as it were. Not to mention that in German you at the end of the sentence the verb put! Why? Is it to build up tension or something??? The solution, if we had no elbow room, was to use shorter sentences, and simplify the script, though often at the expense of any poetry, sadly. Thankfully, we also had wonderful voice overs like the gentlemanly Wolf Kahler (a regular on the voice circuit) who with his glorious rolling R can turn even the most castrated German translation into gold!

I am currently sharpening up my branding credentials by doing an online course on branding. It is a free course which is being put together by the Open University (a remote access university in the UK) under the moniker of Future Learn. https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/secret-power-of-brands-2014 (The course will be restarting in the new year if anyone wants a go - it is very good.) Doing the course has reminded me that often the technical considerations of a website perhaps do not take into account the needs of the brand and its relationships with brand followers - the customer, mostly. So, I thought I would note down a couple of paragraphs of observations that although probably not new to most of you here, might also serve as a reminder about how important the brand is and how both the developers AND the clients should not be sidetracked by this wonderful new technology into undermining the brand, or losing the opportunity to reinforce the brand. Big Brands and Little Brands It is very easy to assume that a brand is something that only belongs to a colossus of a company - Coca Cola, Ikea, Virgin, Woolmarts. These brands pour huge amounts of capital and service expenditure into promoting and sustaining their brands and have built them over many years,. But a tiny company, organisation or even a single crafts person can also benefit from all the rules and ideas that are used to help large brands; it is but a question of scale. For instance, Coca Cola works hard to seek consistency of product throughout the world. As global travel has become easier and cheaper, this has proved invaluable as the loyal customer can enjoy the same drink, at the same quality, wherever they go. In a smaller but equally important way, a local builder/decorator will do better if his "brand," basically the person themselves, has a reputation for consistently good work. If they slip up on a job then they undermine their own brand and lose market positioning - their formally loyal clients will go find another builder. The words associated with branding actions may seem idiotic when applied to just one bloke with a paintbrush, but they are no less valuable. So, just because the website your are designing is for a local group of fisherman rather than a supermarket chain, does not mean that the brand can be ignored (even if the client does not realise they have a brand) Brand Types There are various versions of branding: 1. A mark or label saying that you own this brand 2. Guaranteeing quality by building a reputation for quality 3. Promising Pleasure - your life will feel better by owning this product 4. Inviting belonging - basically, building a brand in such a way that you build loyalty; you make people feel like they have ownership of the brand You can see that these are more or less in chronological order. The first version is how brands first appeared a few centuries ago. The second is something that grew up in the late 19th, early 20th century, the third version is something we recognise as much more modern and the fourth is very much the new approach to branding. The fourth is especially important to modern, large, multi faceted companies where they can build confidence in the main company brand that will then influence all their main products. A great example is Virgin where the "Virgin" brand informs us about how we feel about their planes, trains, record shops, broadband, cola and so on. Wally Olins, a world leading brand practitioner, defines a modern brand as: "Branding is a profound manifestation of the human condition. It is about belonging: belonging to a tribe, to a religion, to a family. Branding demonstrates that sense of belonging. It has this function for both the people who are part of the same group and also for the people who don’t belong." It is very easy to see how this might relate to some of the functionality that is possibly with a reactive and interactive web policy... The Fifth Brand The most recent version of a brand expands on version four to take in modern social media and the general interconnectivity that has come with the growth of the internet. This is where Brand can be seen as a platform, where the brand is making things useful to the user rather than being just about ownership. Ebay and Google are both good examples of where a brand is more than a product but is something useful too. Version five is a difficult fit for a lot of business out there with very traditional products and services but that does not mean it should be ignored. When we create a website for a brand, taking time to think about or quiz the client about how their product/service is viewed and used by their clients and how the website can connect with not just the client, but connect with how they use the brand, might mean that the website becomes more than just a brochure for the brand, but becomes PART of the brand. How can a website be the brand? Obviously, an website for an online shop where the shop is the brand, is the brand itself. It is not representing the brand, the brand is the shop. That is a bit of a no-brainer, you would have thought. But I have seen enough online shops that seem amazingly divorced from the brand. They use a very obvious template, take people through the catalogue in a very common way and give the shopper exactly the same "chopping" experience that every other online shop does. Oddly, bricks and mortar shops tend to do the exact opposite. They will work very hard at giving shoppers a unique experience, within a unique environment, all designed in such a way that the exercise of shopping becomes not just efficient, but enjoyable. The experience of shopping must have the same brand values as the very products themselves. Can not an online shop take into account the same criteria so that it too not only sells products associated with the brand but reinforces and becomes part of the brand? This same criteria can be taken away from the online shop and applied to any other kind of website. Again, just as with the shop, the website should, as part of a modern brand, become a useful thing. It should be an enjoyable and informative experience in line with any other manifestation of the brand. The website should offer the user (the client or visiter) the ability to be involved with the brand, to take ownership of it and to feel like they belong to it. But, this should be within the confines of the specific brand. It must have the tone and feel that the brand needs because the site will BE the brand, not just be reproducing the brand. Shared Value Companies, big and small, will often get involved with local or national issues either by offering time for nothing or by being philanthropic; giving donations to local causes and so on. Shared Value is the idea that a company can, rather than just give stuff away, design their product, services and the brand itself so that it brings benefit to society, local community, environment and so on without doing a give-away. By building the brand using the principles of shared value, the company can bring together the ideas of being beneficial while making a profit - rather than these being two mutually exclusive elements of the brand. Simple examples of this is, for instance, a company deciding to use energy from renewable resources or recycling any waste from manufacturing. These are written into the operating costs of the company and will benefit the brand and benefit the environment, for instance, at the same time - and this will help increase profits. Small companies can also use the idea of shared value. A local company, for instance, can, as much as possible, use local suppliers - benefiting the local economy directly while also selling to the local economy. The two work hand in hand without being philanthropic and so create profit directly. If a company decides to work in this way, then this should be taken into account with the website. Can the design process of the website use the companies specific philosophy of shared value? Does the website highlight how the brand works and is supported through Shared Value? For more on shared value, see this presentation on YouTube - it is long and badly filmed, but if you are into branding, then it is a must watch: So, there you go. A very short thought on branding and how, when creating a website, you should start with the brand and not with the technology. Personally, this is where ProcessWire is useful. Simply because it does not limit how your web design might work, it allows you to look at the brand in detail, work out how the brand should be embodied in this thing called a website, then use ProcessWire to quietly achieve not just a Web Site, but a Brand Site! (I should copyright that...) Joss

It would be if it wasn't for the fact that it will look completely different, most of the old content is being chucked and the structure is going to be completely different. But other than that.... You mean, they have been letting you get away with stuff again? hmmm .... a quick word in your shell like?

Me too. Currently it is like this: http://www.harlestonanglingclub.co.uk/ It is made with a very old copy of Bream Weaver (sorry, couldn't resit the pun) by an old theatre director pal of mine. He is stopping his involvement, so I need to turn it into something the "committee" can handle without breaking it! Oh, and I think it needs a bit of prettying up! I will ensure it has a "Made with ProcessWire" on it. And I wonder if I should employ some hooks......

Trust me, Ryan, I never pop! Sorry I have not been around. Couple of distracting bits going on earlier in the year and I was away a bit (serious glamping!) and also been working on an album for a publisher. My web activity has dwindled to nothing! I do have one little project for an angling club coming up, however, and of course I will be using Drupal, Wordpress, Joomla ... PROCESSWIRE for it. I suppose I should, as an amateur, stick to those things with thousands of clunky plugins, but for some reason I want the site to work and be more or less maintenance free. Fussy me. Hugs all round.

I have just added a note to my original post to not try and use a mix of the github version and the wiki version - use one or the other. For learning purposes it is probably best to use the wiki version as that explains more of the how and why

Yes, I have noted that bad habit of yours before ....

Damn, I should remember to make my rhetorical questions more .... rhetorical!

Sorry, I have been out of the loop for a bit. To be honest, I really am not sure at all. The first thing to check, however, is what you have called your category field, since it seems to be complaining that it can't find that field. It should be called article_category, if I remember right.

Sorry chaps - been missing in action. Should be back around now! Joss PS: Did I miss anything?

Did you create the field gallery_thumbnail_size for the gallery? As for not showing images, I am not sure - have you checked the source of your page to see if the image url is showing and is pointing at an image? You may have a path problem or something.

I cant get to my installation at the moment, but can you check whether you have included the functions file properly? Also, here is a link to the three files so you can check you have them right (or, for that matter, I pasted them into the wiki okay) http://stonywebsites.co.uk/gallery-files.zip Joss

Ummm - now, where have I put them??? What is the issue you are having?

Lots of lovely bright colours, but where is the sound? This is the thing that gets me about the internet. When it started, it was lauded as this wonderful MULTI media world where everything would interact with each other. Coming from the mainstream production world where we had been creating interactive programmes on laser disc (and later, CD) this sounded perfect. However, what we have ended up with is: Mute web sites A button to play some audio A button to play some video A few moving images Lots of dancing boxes, with no accompaniment. No relationship between any of the above So, although it caters for lots of different media, often all in the same place, it is rarely properly multi-media in the same way as a television programme or a game would be. In fact, the only time it is is when someone embeds a game or a TV prog, I am not sure why this is, really. Originally audio, particularly, was seen as a very good way of making a site inaccessible - it took too long to download and the viewer may not even have a sound card. Fair enough. But although the internet has sped up hugely, and every device on the planet can play sound more or less, we still seem stuck with the same way of looking at things. I would love to produce bespoke audio for websites - proper atmospheres, custom composed, unique scored, carefully thought out spot effects, but every time I mention it to people they tend to look at me as if I have gone mad. It is just a case of looking at a website as if it is an app or game, rather than a series of pages. I know it puts the price up, but surely there are advantages for some companies, just as there is in advertising.

I think in your selector you put $matches = $pages->find("created_user_id=$author, limit=50"); That will be where $author is the user id you have picked up from wherever. It will then return all pages that are associated with that user. So you need to add the user id to the search. Obviously, the existing search template is looking at other search criteria so you will probably find it easier to start from scratch using clues from that template rather than try and modify it. Worth noting that there is also a modified_user_id field if you want to pick up the last person to edit the page. So if you wanted to search for both: $matches = $pages->find("title|article_introtext~=$q, created_users_id|modified_users_id=$author, limit=50"); Sorry, this would be easier if I was in a position to actually try this, but I am stuck in the studio this week.

Okay, here goes. This is my blocks demo as a profile - I haven't actually tried to install this, so I am guessing it will work! Bear in mind that I did not intend this as a profile, so it is uncommented! http://stonywebsites.co.uk/blocks-profile.zip Blocks are created under Content Management >Blocks in the pages. Footer blocks are selected in Footer Settings under settings. Home page blocks are selected on the home page. This particular version uses page fields and repeaters. This is designed with Bootstrap so you will see span fields all over the place allowing you to set how wide the blocks are. (remember that in any row it has to add up to 12!) Anyway, it might help Joss PS: It comes with my Bootstrap admin template which you don't have to use

Eeek! Okay, I will try and find time to export it as a profile later (need to check what sort of state it is in!) Joss

This is a bit more complicated. In the Simple News System, the "category" pages have the TUT_news_index template to display the news articles. That means that the script just needs to look at the "name" of the page to see which category to display - the name being the category itself. With authors, you need to retrieve the information in a different way. The most obvious way is to create a simple form that adds the user "name" to the URL which you can then retrieve. To get a list of users you can use foreach ($users as $u) { echo $u->id; } So, you could create a basic form an use the above code to populate a select drop down. The form action would need to be a specific listing page, probably using variation of TUT_news_index as the template. If the page were called news-author, the form field would be something like: <form id='search_form' action='<?php echo $config->urls->root?>news-author/' method='get'> <select name="author"> <?php foreach ($users as $u) { echo "<option value='{$u->id}'>{$u->name}</option>"; } ?> </select> </form> Look at the search template that comes with the default ProcessWire to see how this works. On your template for your news-author page, you can then retrieve the value using $author = $input->get->author You can now add that to your find statement $newsposts = $pages->find("parent=/news-articles/, created_user_id= $author, limit=10"); (Obvbiously, use wire("pages") if it is part of a function) After that, carry on the same. I am nowhere near anything useful like a server, so this is completely untested, but look through the search template file that comes with the default PW installation and that will give you lots of info.

It is a bit thin, to be honest, I have loads more technical credits that have never made it on there (especially very old stuff) - most of which I have forgotten too!! Mind you, it is safe to say that it has never got me any work.

Strangely, our eldest's new boy friend has started as an assistant editor at Aardman Animations, and if you look up the credits on "The Wrong Trousers" on IMDB you might see a familiar name. I was brought up in North London, but because my mother was born and brought up in Burma (In the 1920s) and my father was well spoken, my accent is pretty neutral and boring unless I am hamming it up!