Best Catalogue/Directory Extension?
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- Jason Kopacko
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- Cliff what got you involved in WP?
- Thank you,
Jason
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- Cliff Pfeifer
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Oh yeah, it's pretty sick what you can do with custom fields in Wordpress, you can make all that you want, any kind - text, image, WYSIWYG, ECT - fully customize the backend so it's easy to update. You can make custom post types, which are just posts, but you can call them what ever you like (portfolio for example) - it creates a menu tab in the backend to add more, edit, delete - the you can assign fields to them specifically anyway you want.
Check out this:
wordpress.org/extend/plugins/advanced-cu...-fields/screenshots/
And this:
wordpress.org/extend/plugins/custom-post-type-ui/screenshots/
There are a lot of others as well, or you can use straight PHP code and WP functions to do the same thing without a plugin, if you know how to do that
Don't get me wrong, it's a lot of work to get this stuff to show on the front end how you want, but the backend stuff is pretty simple, and you can find all the PHP codes you need on a billion different websites. Once it's all set up, it's way easy to work with.
I mention this because I still haven't updated my site to 2.5, I don't want to buy Zoo again, I think I'm going to redo my website portfolio in Wordpress, then I don't have fight upgrades every year - and I'll have a slick Wordpress demo to show clients as well. Wouldn't be surprised if a lot people go that way, Joomla is asking an awful lot from it's users with all these major platform upgrades. - The difficult we do immediately, the impossible takes a little longer.
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- Jason Kopacko
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Very nice!
My last site that is 1.5....is not upgraded because I don't feel like fighting with Zoo on 2.5 yet.
As for buying Zoo, I hear you. I maintain way more club memberships than I need. - Thank you,
Jason
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- Cliff Pfeifer
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I got into WP about a year and half ago, I was working at a place that did WP development, I needed a job and they hired me even though I didn't know anything about WP. I didn't last too long, all the PHP was way over my head. Since then, I got on here as WP mod, and I've been learning PHP in my spare time, and now I can do some cool stuff with it. Even just a little PHP knowledge goes a long way in WP, it's really set up more for developers than the average user. I'm just now doing custom sites with it, I was doing all Joomla until a few months ago, now it's all Wordpress, next month who knows.
A word of warning though, if you're used to Joomla, you're going to be in a for a tough time starting on WP. It's not even close to as fully featured as Joomla is in terms of the backend and extensions. It's not as easy to work with in a lot of ways, but it definitely lends itself to custom development. Just don't think you can download it and immediately start doing sites the same way you can in Joomla, it's a totally different animal. - The difficult we do immediately, the impossible takes a little longer.
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- Jason Kopacko
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*warning noted*
- Thank you,
Jason
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- Cretan Studies Association
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- Social Anthropology Student
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Martin Simpson wrote:
Hey Cliff - I know you are not paid ZOO support - but one more question if you don't mind.I found the following guide in the ZOO documentation section that shows how you can set up front end submissions...
If I am offering a listing directory to my website visitors and want them to register and fill out the information and then be listed in the directory -- is this in essence what Zoo does?
Or is there no support for front-end addition to the catalog/directories?
Also, in a perfect world, I would be able to charge for such a transaction -- or at least have it submitted to me, then I wait for a paypal payment then I click on button to make their listing "Published" if that makes sense?
www.yootheme.com/zoo/documentation/advan...-frontend-submission
I have been checking out ZOO the past two days to replace default Joomla article system for a news site...generally I've been blown away but how well rounded and integrated ZOO is...
Basically it allows me to do everything K2 couldn't (that is without coding knowledge) in the easiest way and doesn't have some of K2's problem...specifically:
1) it allows tags to have punctuation marks (won't work in K2)
2) doesn't have that weird K2 image handling function which ignores images' dimensions. Max sizes are respected and alignment can be set-up very easily, no coding needed
3) Videos can easily be used - and properly resized - for blogs instead of article images if item image is not available or need not be (couldn't do that in K2 without template overrides and file changes, i.e. making upgrades a nightmare)
4) One can set up the layouts per view to fit all uses, for various site sections...those who don't need all features simply don't use them...
5) Most of the work done in easy drag'n'drop...perfect for an average-Joe user like me...
6) very easy to add a gallery...no need to pay for a article gallery extension to make it work too...
I just haven't been able to find out how to get ZOO to automatically pull related articles (one can add these separately) and how to get that "Edit" link beside items in the front-end (should work but doesn't...bug maybe? )
What worries me though, is that ZOO seems to use a complex way to store article/item content in the database...K2 is identical with Joomla! in this respect, but ZOO inserts all sorts of weird elements and also converts unicode characters to...well, I don't know how they're called...for example what in Greek would be "Σχετικά Άρθρα" (=Related Articles) is converted to this devilish thing "\u03a3\u03c7\u03b5\u03c4\u03b9\u03ba\u03ac \u0386\u03c1\u03b8\u03c1\u03b1"...
Was this done purposefully? Don't know...
It scares the heck out of me of what would happen if I was forced to migrate back to core joomla content...
...those CCKs and alternative content construction extensions are heavily monetized and I can't spare the dollars/euros (drachmas ? maybe) to pay for support...
So far though, I've been able to adjust ZOO (blog application) to my needs without needing to glimpse at the documentation at all...don't get how some people become so confused with it...it's quite straight-forward if one cares to play around a little...
EDIT:
Do you know of any lively free community of ZOO users? Total lack of support is a bit scary, so I was looking a forum/section of active user2user support... - Last Edit: 12 years 9 months ago by Cretan Studies Association.
- You can call me George
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J2.5.8, Syndicate 1.6.5
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- Jason Kopacko
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I use Zoo. The single biggest dissappointment is that the database relations are one-way. You have to link both sides for it to work effectively.
For example, you have an item called Tony Stark and a item called Iron Man. You have edit each item and manually form the relation. - Thank you,
Jason
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- Cretan Studies Association
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- Social Anthropology Student
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Jason Kopacko wrote:
I use Zoo. The single biggest dissappointment is that the database relations are one-way. You have to link both sides for it to work effectively.Funny thing, I had to google "Tony Stark" to get what you where saying...
For example, you have an item called Tony Stark and a item called Iron Man. You have edit each item and manually form the relation.
If I understand you correctly, you're saying something similar to my observation/maybe more like question (wasn't really sure to name it an observation)...that there seems to be no obvious way to interrelate several related items automatically, i.e. to have the component pull information from the the tags/meta keywords dynamically and display "related articles"...
If that wasn't simply my failure to find a solution and is more of a general problem, it would be a major one...
What ZOO allows, to easily pick/add several articles to link to from one specific article - it can be useful when the items are very closely related and the author wants to highlight this and not risk the items getting lost in the web of generally related items by tag/keyword (which can happen unless there is a feature/option rich related articles module like FJ Related Articles Plus ) - is quite welcome....but not offering a proper related items function is damaging to site's articles promotion... - You can call me George
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- Cliff Pfeifer
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In my brief experience with Zoo, I've only used it on a handful of sites - I think it's fantastic for creating portfolios, galleries, or any type of repeatable catalog type content. Once you set it up, it's pretty slick. I did my portfolio, a 200 page wine catalog and a sheet music directory with it in a fraction of the time it would take to do articles with custom coding. I think it's a great app for that reason.
However:
- The free version is only useful if you want to use only what it comes with. If not, you'll want to have 100 hours to make custom changes and a great deal of PHP knowledge. It's not for beginners.
- The commercial version is very expensive for only 6 month subscription. The support was lackluster in my opinion. Their whole forum is locked down, you can't see it if you don't have a subscription -
see how nice we are, everyone can read this post if they want to
Updates are the bigger deal for me though. Especially since Joomla wants us to upgrade every year now and we'll be forced to keep buying this over and over again.
- I don't believe you can edit from the front end - maybe they changed this, it's been about a year since I've used it, but you couldn't before.
- Once you put your content in there, that's where it is, in the Zoo DB tables, not the Joomla article tables. Copy and paste or DB table transfers, either way, switching back will take a lot of time if you have a lot of content.
That's kind of the point, make a wise decision on any component you use for this. If you decide you want to do something else later, you'll have to do it all over again. Just my opinions and experience. - The difficult we do immediately, the impossible takes a little longer.
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