News Module Post still active after end date

[sky writer]

I have a couple of questions.

1. When I give a News post a start and end date, after it reaches the end date, the post is no longer visible on the site, BUT it remains marked as ACTIVE in the backend.  What is the rational for this?  It can become confusing as you have to go into the posts page to see that the post has an end date, and is therefore not visible, even though it appears ACTIVE: Yes in the posts list.

I can live with this, I just don't understand why it would not be set up to switch to Active: No after the post reaches it's end date.

2. I use the Blog Menu Module, and because of the above News Module functionality, the post counts in the Blog Menu are not always accurate.
Let's say I have a group named "Reports", and I have four posts in this group.  The blog will show (4) because all four are active (visible).  But if I have an end date on one of these posts, then it will become invisible, but not inactive, so the Blog Post count remains (4) even though only three posts are visible on the site.

Hope this makes sense, I will gladly clarify if requested.

[sky writer]

Has no one else wondered about this?

Why would a post which is made invisible after it's end date, still marked as ACTIVE in the backend?

[BerndJM]

Hi,

I can understand your confusion about this behavior, but in my opinion there is a difference between "inactive" and "outdated".
Active/inactive can be set manually - outdated is an automatism.
Maybe a better solution would be a kind of "three-state-signalisation" in the backend.

On the other hand:
I don't know the blob menu module (could you please provide a link for it?), but I think there is not such a big thing to modify this module in a matter so it respects not only the actual state of a post.

Regards Bernd

[sky writer]

Thank you for your reply.

I see your point about the difference between inactive and outdated.  And I always understood this difference.  What I don't understand is, once a post is outdated (automatically), what is the point (or benefit) of it still being shown as ACTIVE?  If there is a real world justification for this then I would be more accepting of the behaviour.

Ha!  Sorry, it's the bloG menu ( http://www.websitebaker2.org/forum/index.php/topic,6563.0.html )
I figure there must be a way to adjust the blog menu code to NOT count a post which is outdated, but I don't know where to begin to look.

[sky writer]

I guess it might help to give an example of why the current state makes it difficult for me, in a real world situation.

I have a LOT of news posts on a sports club's website.  Scattered within these post are some which I re-work, and re-use from time to time, instead of adding a new post, as the content stays very similar.  I used to MANUALLY mark these particular posts ACTIVE and INACTIVE, to take them in an out of rotation.  They were always easy to find as they were the only marked "Active: No" in the post list Modify Page.  This manual switch began to get to time consuming, so I changed over to using a dated start and end time.  Which works great EXCEPT, when the post is outdated and removed from visibility on the site, it is still marked "Active" Yes" in the post list, and so blends in with all the actual ACTIVE visible posts.

Hope this makes sense.

[snark]

So if you modify the modify.php to display wheter it is shown or hidden your problem will be solved?

File: modify.php

I guess changing:

Code:

<?php if($active == 1) { echo $TEXT['YES']; } else { echo $TEXT['NO']; } ?>

Into

Code:

<?php
$t = time();

if($published_until < $t))  { echo 'div style="color:red;">not visible</div>'; } else { echo '<div style="color:green;">visible</div>']; } ?>

[sky writer]

I can understand your confusion about this behavior, but in my opinion there is a difference between "inactive" and "outdated".
Active/inactive can be set manually - outdated is an automatism.
Maybe a better solution would be a kind of "three-state-signalisation" in the backend.

I totally understand the difference between the manual and automatic functionality.  My question is, when a post passes it's end date, it is automatically removed from the front-end (not visible), so what is the point of this outdated post being kept in the "Active: Yes" state in the back-end?

Please help me to understand the rational behind this.

[sky writer]

I am still curious about the News Module functionality, but I have fixed my issue specific to the Blog Menu.

To properly display the number of visible posts in the Blog Menu...

In the Blog Menu module, open include.php

change:

Code:

// make database query and obtain active groups and amount of posts per group
$result = $database->query($query);
if($result->numRows() > 0){
if ($group_header != "") {
echo $group_header;
}
while($group = $result->fetchRow()){
               $id = $group['group_id'];
$query_detail = "SELECT * FROM " .TABLE_PREFIX ."mod_news_posts WHERE page_id=$page_id AND active=true AND group_id=$id;";
$detail_result = $database->query($query_detail);
$num = $detail_result->numRows();
$output .= "<li><a href=\"" .WB_URL.PAGES_DIRECTORY .$page_link .PAGE_EXTENSION ."?g=".$group['group_id']."\">" .$group['title'] ."</a> (".$num.")</li>\n";
  }
}
$output = "<ul>".$output."</ul>";
       echo $output;
}
if($display_option==0 or $display_option==1){ //show history

To:

Code:

// make database query and obtain active groups and amount of posts per group
$t = time();
$result = $database->query($query);
if($result->numRows() > 0){
if ($group_header != "") {
echo $group_header;
}
while($group = $result->fetchRow()){
               $id = $group['group_id'];
$query_detail = "SELECT * FROM " .TABLE_PREFIX ."mod_news_posts WHERE page_id=$page_id AND active=true
AND (published_when = '0' OR published_when <= $t) AND (published_until = 0 OR published_until >= $t) AND group_id=$id;";
$detail_result = $database->query($query_detail);
$num = $detail_result->numRows();
$output .= "<li><a href=\"" .WB_URL.PAGES_DIRECTORY .$page_link .PAGE_EXTENSION ."?g=".$group['group_id']."\">" .$group['title'] ."</a> (".$num.")</li>\n";
  }
}
$output = "<ul>".$output."</ul>";
       echo $output;
}
if($display_option==0 or $display_option==1){ //show history

To fix the post count in the monthly Blog Menu listing:

Change:

Code:

$query = "SELECT MONTHNAME(FROM_UNIXTIME(".$date.")) as mo,MONTH(FROM_UNIXTIME(".$date.")) as m,FROM_UNIXTIME(".$date.",'%Y') as y,COUNT(*) as total FROM " .TABLE_PREFIX ."mod_news_posts WHERE page_id=$page_id AND active=true GROUP BY y,m ORDER BY y DESC,m DESC;";

To:

Code:

$query = "SELECT MONTHNAME(FROM_UNIXTIME(".$date.")) as mo,MONTH(FROM_UNIXTIME(".$date.")) as m,FROM_UNIXTIME(".$date.",'%Y') as y,COUNT(*) as total FROM " .TABLE_PREFIX ."mod_news_posts WHERE page_id=$page_id AND active=true AND (published_when = '0' OR published_when <= $t) AND (published_until = 0 OR published_until >= $t) GROUP BY y,m ORDER BY y DESC,m DESC;";

Hope this helps.

[pcwacht]

You could allso place somewhere in view.php a query wich sets the outdated posts to inactive
I think this will solve most matters
something like:
update set active=0 where publish_until < today

I can help you with this, looking at the best place to put it. And make a query that works.

The active - inactive was first in News, the dates came later. They where not made act upon each other.

Allso for archival point of view, my opinion on this
inactive is same as 'not there', so don't show anywhere
outdated could still be needed in an archive, so show in a blogmenu or archivemenu
I can allso help with this one, changing the blogmenu and view.php so this will work as well

There are simple many ways to look at this.

John

[sky writer]

Sometimes, if you beat your head against the wall long enough, a door opens.

I was attempting to implement snarks idea and noticed that the News 3.5 module already has a "visible" / "not visible" functionality in place.  The problem was that I have been using Argos theme on all of my website for years, and for some reason there is no distinction between the three states of the clock icon.  All three show the icon attached.

So when I looked at my post list, the icon between the Active state and the Move Up Arrow was always the same no matter what the date status was of the post.  When you hover over this icon, the tooltip says "Modify", and honestly, that's all I thought that icon was used for, to modify the post. 

I have now copied the clock_16, clock_red_16 and no_clock_16 icons from the WB_Theme Images folder, and I now have an icon that represents the timeliness of each post.

I am so thankful for this process.  I can now update these images on all of my sites and have this much missed functionality.

[Argos]

I was attempting to implement snarks idea and noticed that the News 3.5 module already has a "visible" / "not visible" functionality in place.  The problem was that I have been using Argos theme on all of my website for years, and for some reason there is no distinction between the three states of the clock icon.  All three show the icon attached.

I accidentally stumbled upon this post, and read about this little bug in the Argos theme. I'm not sure why I created it this way years ago, but I'll look into it. I guess it was just a mistake by me.

[sky writer]

Sorry, I guess I should have contacted you directly on this.  Honestly, I wasn't complaining, as I love your theme.  I just noticed this issue and figured you must have had your reasons, so I didn't want to imply that you had a "bug".  But if something good comes of this discovery, great!

I just ended up putting together a mix of the icons from the two themes in the way I liked best.

Keep up the good work!

[sky writer]

Also for archival point of view, my opinion on this
inactive is same as 'not there', so don't show anywhere
outdated could still be needed in an archive, so show in a blogmenu or archivemenu
I can allso help with this one, changing the blogmenu and view.php so this will work as well

This is a very good point, and something I had never considered.  So, now my eyes are more open to the difference that others have described.  Thank you.

I would be interested in having this functionality (online, outdated items still showing in blogmenu monthly archive menu listings), now that I have fixed the Argos theme icon issue.

[pcwacht]

To show outdated items in blogmenu remove the published_until from the query so the query will give all items when active = 1 and published_when equals or greater then today.

" AND (published_until = 0 OR published_until >= $t) ;";

Have fun,
John

[sky writer]

The blogmenu used the News view.php file (it adds a modification here and there), so any changes I make will affect the regular display of news.  If I take out " AND (published_until = 0 OR published_until >= $t) ;"; in the blogmenu includes.php file, then the blogmenu listing itself displays the correct number of posts which should be listed, but the actual listing does not display the outdated posts because the News view.php file restricts those outdated posts.

Hope this makes sense.

[sky writer]

I'll try to clarify by giving an example.

Let's say I have one News group, names "Reports"
The "Reports" group has four posts, one published in January and three published in October.
The post published in January has an end date of March 1, 2011.  The three from October do not have end dates.

If I go to my regular News page from my main menu, I see the three posts from October and not the one from January.  This is what I expect and so all is well.

I then have my separate BlogMenu which has a listing by Groups which I've named "Current News Index", and a listing by Months which I have named "News Archive" and would like to act as such.

In the top "Groups" listing, the group "Reports" shows (3) beside it, and when clicked shows three messages, which is what you would expect.

In the bottom "Monthly Archive" listing, there is October, followed by (3).  This is fine, but I would also like to see January (1) in this archive listing.

So, if I go into the News view.php file and remove:

Code:

AND (published_until = 0 OR published_until >= $t)

I end up with nothing working quite the way I would like.

If I go to my regular News page from my main menu, I see the three posts from October and the one from January.  This is not right as the January post should be invisible since it is past it's end date.

In the top BlogMenu "Current News Index" listing, the group "Reports" shows (3) beside it, and when clicked shows all four messages, which is not correct.  I can change the blogmenu include.php code to get the (3) to show (4), but I do not want to see the posts past their end date in this listing.  This listing should display the same results as the regular News page.

In the bottom "News Archive" listing, there is January (0) and October (3).  If you click January, you see the one post.  I can again change the blogmenu include.php file to get the (1) beside January, which would mean this listing is now correct, but at the expense of the other listing and the regular News page listing.

Hope this helps someone help me.

[pcwacht]

Then both the blogmenu and the view.php must be changed to reflect your wisehes.

In view.php there are 2 major routines, one to show all posts and one to show a post.
The first needs no alteration, since there we don't want outdated posts to appear, thus not getting the possibility to go to an outdated post.
The second, when a post is given show it, even when it is outdated.

open up view.php, around line 322:

Code:

// Get post info
$t = time();
$query_post = $database->query("SELECT * FROM ".TABLE_PREFIX."mod_news_posts
WHERE post_id = '".$post_id."' AND active = '1'
AND (published_when = '0' OR published_when <= $t) AND (published_until = 0 OR published_until >= $t)");

change to:

Code:

// Get post info
$t = time();
$query_post = $database->query("SELECT * FROM ".TABLE_PREFIX."mod_news_posts
WHERE post_id = '".$post_id."' AND active = '1'
AND (published_when = '0' OR published_when <= $t) ");

Next we need to get the blogmenu to count outdated items as well (januari in your example)
For that there is some query in blogmenu wich uses the published_until wich should be removed as well.

I can do that but need your blogmenu's include.php. There doesn't seem to be a last version on amasp.

You can do that as well, just hunt for published_until and take it out

John

[sky writer]

All this change does is allow direct access to the outdated news posts.  It still doesn't show the post in the listing, so there's no way for a visitor to click a link to see the outdated post.

I've tried every combination I can find and they either always show outdated posts, or never show them.

[sky writer]

Here is my BlogMenu include.php file.

Code:

<?php
/*
 Website Baker Project <http://www.websitebaker.org/>
 Copyright (C) 2004-2007, Ryan Djurovich

 Website Baker is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
 the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
 (at your option) any later version.

 Website Baker is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
 GNU General Public License for more details.

 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
 along with Website Baker; if not, write to the Free Software
 Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307  USA

 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Code snippet BlogMenu for Website Baker v2.6.x
  Licencsed under GNU, written by Erik Coenjaerts (Eki)
 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*/

// function to display a Blog Menu on every page via (invoke function from template or code page)

if (!function_exists('display_blog_menu')) {
function display_blog_menu($page_id,$date_option = 0,$group_header = '<h1>Categories</h1>' ,$history_header = '<h1>History</h1>',$display_option = 0) {

// register outside object
global $database;

//get link to the page
$query = "SELECT link FROM " .TABLE_PREFIX ."pages WHERE page_id=$page_id;";
$result = $database->query($query);
if($result->numRows() > 0){
$link = $result->fetchRow();
            $page_link = $link['link'];
}

// convert all numeric inputs to integer variables
$page_id = (int) $page_id;

if($display_option==0 or $display_option==2){ //show categories

// query to obtain categories for the selected page
   $query = "SELECT * FROM " .TABLE_PREFIX ."mod_news_groups WHERE page_id=$page_id AND active=true ORDER BY `position`;";

// make database query and obtain active groups and amount of posts per group
$t = time();
$result = $database->query($query);
if($result->numRows() > 0){
if ($group_header != "") {
echo $group_header;
}
while($group = $result->fetchRow()){
                $id = $group['group_id'];
$query_detail = "SELECT * FROM " .TABLE_PREFIX ."mod_news_posts WHERE page_id=$page_id AND active=true 
AND (published_when = '0' OR published_when <= $t) AND (published_until = 0 OR published_until >= $t) AND group_id=$id;";
$detail_result = $database->query($query_detail);
$num = $detail_result->numRows();
$output .= "<li><a href=\"" .WB_URL.PAGES_DIRECTORY .$page_link .PAGE_EXTENSION ."?g=".$group['group_id']."\">" .$group['title'] ."</a> (".$num.")</li>\n";
    }
}
$output = "<ul>".$output."</ul>";
        echo $output;
}
if($display_option==0 or $display_option==1){ //show history

        //determine sorting method
        switch($date_option){
            case 0:
                $date = "posted_when";
                break;
            case 1:
                $date = "published_when";
                break;
        }

        $output ="";
        //query to obtain history per month for the selected page
        $t = time();
        $query = "SELECT MONTHNAME(FROM_UNIXTIME(".$date.")) as mo,MONTH(FROM_UNIXTIME(".$date.")) as m,FROM_UNIXTIME(".$date.",'%Y') as y,COUNT(*) as total FROM " .TABLE_PREFIX ."mod_news_posts WHERE page_id=$page_id AND active=true AND (published_when = '0' OR published_when <= $t) /*AND (published_until = 0 OR published_until >= $t) */GROUP BY y,m ORDER BY y DESC,m DESC;";
        $result = $database->query($query);
if($result->numRows() > 0){
if ($history_header != "") {
echo $history_header;
}
while($history = $result->fetchRow()){
                $output .= "<li><a href=\"" .WB_URL.PAGES_DIRECTORY .$page_link .PAGE_EXTENSION ."?y=".$history['y']."&m=".$history['m']."&method=".$date_option."\">" .$history['mo']." ".$history['y']."</a> (".$history['total'].")</li>\n";
             }
         }
$output = "<ul>".$output."</ul>";
        echo $output;
}

}
}
?>

[pcwacht]

This should do it, didn't test it though..

Code:

<?php
/*
 Website Baker Project <http://www.websitebaker.org/>
 Copyright (C) 2004-2007, Ryan Djurovich

 Website Baker is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
 the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
 (at your option) any later version.

 Website Baker is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
 GNU General Public License for more details.

 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
 along with Website Baker; if not, write to the Free Software
 Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307  USA

 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Code snippet BlogMenu for Website Baker v2.6.x
  Licencsed under GNU, written by Erik Coenjaerts (Eki)
 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*/

// function to display a Blog Menu on every page via (invoke function from template or code page)

if (!function_exists('display_blog_menu')) {
function display_blog_menu($page_id,$date_option = 0,$group_header = '<h1>Categories</h1>' ,$history_header = '<h1>History</h1>',$display_option = 0) {

// register outside object
global $database;

//get link to the page
$query = "SELECT link FROM " .TABLE_PREFIX ."pages WHERE page_id=$page_id;";
$result = $database->query($query);
if($result->numRows() > 0){
$link = $result->fetchRow();
            $page_link = $link['link'];
}

// convert all numeric inputs to integer variables
$page_id = (int) $page_id;

if($display_option==0 or $display_option==2){ //show categories

// query to obtain categories for the selected page
   $query = "SELECT * FROM " .TABLE_PREFIX ."mod_news_groups WHERE page_id=$page_id AND active=true ORDER BY `position`;";

// make database query and obtain active groups and amount of posts per group
$t = time();
$result = $database->query($query);
if($result->numRows() > 0){
if ($group_header != "") {
echo $group_header;
}
while($group = $result->fetchRow()){
                $id = $group['group_id'];
$query_detail = "SELECT * FROM " .TABLE_PREFIX ."mod_news_posts WHERE page_id=$page_id AND active=true 
AND (published_when = '0' OR published_when <= $t) AND group_id=$id;";
$detail_result = $database->query($query_detail);
$num = $detail_result->numRows();
$output .= "<li><a href=\"" .WB_URL.PAGES_DIRECTORY .$page_link .PAGE_EXTENSION ."?g=".$group['group_id']."\">" .$group['title'] ."</a> (".$num.")</li>\n";
    }
}
$output = "<ul>".$output."</ul>";
        echo $output;
}
if($display_option==0 or $display_option==1){ //show history

        //determine sorting method
        switch($date_option){
            case 0:
                $date = "posted_when";
                break;
            case 1:
                $date = "published_when";
                break;
        }

        $output ="";
        //query to obtain history per month for the selected page
        $t = time();
        $query = "SELECT MONTHNAME(FROM_UNIXTIME(".$date.")) as mo,MONTH(FROM_UNIXTIME(".$date.")) as m,FROM_UNIXTIME(".$date.",'%Y') as y,COUNT(*) as total FROM " .TABLE_PREFIX ."mod_news_posts WHERE page_id=$page_id AND active=true AND (published_when = '0' OR published_when <= $t) GROUP BY y,m ORDER BY y DESC,m DESC;";
        $result = $database->query($query);
if($result->numRows() > 0){
if ($history_header != "") {
echo $history_header;
}
while($history = $result->fetchRow()){
                $output .= "<li><a href=\"" .WB_URL.PAGES_DIRECTORY .$page_link .PAGE_EXTENSION ."?y=".$history['y']."&m=".$history['m']."&method=".$date_option."\">" .$history['mo']." ".$history['y']."</a> (".$history['total'].")</li>\n";
             }
         }
$output = "<ul>".$output."</ul>";
        echo $output;
}

}
}
?>

changed 2 querys, line 60 and 84

John

[sky writer]

These two changes do not achieve what I am after.  They just change the (4) total post number that appears beside the blogmenu items.  Line 60 affects the blogmenu group menu list, and line 84 affects the blogmenu monthly menu list.  It does not change the actual display of the news posts associated.

I currently only change line 84 because I don't want to show outdated posts in the blogmenu "Group" menu list.  So I do not want the outdated post totals included in the total count in line 60.

I have the blogmenu acting the way I want.  I really believe that it is the News view module which needs to be tweaked to only show outdated posts during certain instances.

Hope this helps.