Put articles in several menus at the same time

[OlivierMiR]

Hello,

I am planning to develop some functionality for Joomla 1.5 and am looking for some pointers about where to start and where to look for similar projects, if exists.

Basic idea

1. add the ability to add "sorting keywords" to an article, when submitted (naturally these keywords must also be modifiable afterwards)
2. add the ability for the admin to create a menu displaying automatically all articles containing a given keyword.

NB: Idea 1 is different that the meta-keyword already existing in the publication, that is why I call the keywords "sorting keywords": they will be used to sort the articles in the front-end, not to help robots to describe the articles.

Main usage
This would implement a sort of "multi-category" management, which is really missing from Joomla, IMHO. An example would be, management by location AND subject. You want a menu to display every article talking about "brussels", and a menu to display every article talking about "basket-ball". You have articles describing basket-ball competitions in brussels, and would thus like the article to appear in both menus. You don't want to manually create links to both menus each time an article is submitted.

Possible extensions to the idea

• the administrator could have the ability to define the possible list of sorting keywords once and for all, and restrain what can be chosen to the sorting keywords he defined.
• the administrator could be allowed to create a menu chosing, instead of a simple sorting keyword, a set of AND or OR-conditions that the article must match in terms of sorting keywords to be allowed in that menu. Example: the menu "Belgium" will display every article containing the keyword "Brussels" OR "Liège" (an other city in Belgium) OR ...
• "event" articles could be implemented in the same way, to implement a calendar, by adding some fields to the article submission like "date of event". The administrator could then create a menu displaying every events talking about "sports" AND taking place in "brussels", e.g.

Questions

1. Are there any similar existing extensions / projects aiming at the same functionalities? I haven't found any browsing the extensions site, but there are so many...
2. Any hint about where to look for implementing idea 1? I have followed the tutorials (module and component), but find nothing on how to extend the existing "submit article" functionality.

About the second question (implementation of the idea 1, giving ability to the poster to add a "sorting keywords" list when submitting an article), I guess I should create a new component, and somehow reuse in it all the functionality of the existing thing in Joomla which allow posting articles, simply adding some fields for my sorting keywords... But I guess it's not so easy.

That's one more reason for the question 1. It would be far easier if I find an existing component adding some fields to the "submit article" Joomla functionality.

Thank you for any help or pointer.
Olivier

[redarc]

Hi Olivier

NB: Idea 1 is different that the meta-keyword already existing in the publication, that is why I call the keywords "sorting keywords": they will be used to sort the articles in the front-end, not to help robots to describe the articles.

I don't understand what the difference is between your sorting keywords and tags, other than that you want to use them (the sorting keywords) to arrange presentation on the front end. Your sorting keywords would add another set of words to maintain and I suspect that there would be a one-to-one correspondence between the two sets most of the time.

[OlivierMiR]

Thank you for your answer and sorry for my late answer.

Indeed the difference between meta-keywords and sorting-keywords may be small, but I think it exists: the sorting-keywords may be technical and we may not want them to appear in the google results, i.e., we may want to hide them from the public.

Example: we want to be able to sort the articles considering the association which submitted the article. Each submitted article should then be given a sorting-keyword like, e.g., "BA-L" (Belgian Association - Louvain) or "EA-P" (European Association - Paris). These keywords would be useful to sort the articles, but not as meta-keywords to be used by a search robot like Google.

Plus: I would like to be able to choose the keywords from a given list (defined by the administrator). meta-keywords do not give this opportunity, so I'll need to program something anyway.

Finally: knowing how to add something to the article submission form would be a useful knowledge, I think. Not only for the "sorting-keywords" thing, but also for other purposes...

I hope I can receive some help on that matter from more experienced Joomla programmers...

[DeathxByxTaxes]

I know this post is a bit old, but I'm also trying to do the same thing, anyone else have any insights?

[OlivierMiR]

Unfortunately I found no other solution than copying parts of com_content, and replacing all "Content" entries in class names and files by "MyCompName".

This is really ugly. I hope the Joomla community can help us doing it better.

[AmyStephen]

Tagging is the key. Tag your content - that will give you a link - use that link to create the menu item.

If you don't want your tags to display, there is no reason to put them on a page.

jxTENDED is just now beta testing their labels product which should be helpful to you.

Thanks,
Amy

[OlivierMiR]

Thanks for your reply. I was beginning to feel a bit lonely here...

Unfortunately, I checked it, but it is too expansive for us (i.e., the cost is > 0). We are looking for a free (as in free-speech, implying, as in free-beer) solution.

About the "tagging" solution, I'm not sure I understand what you mean, if it is different than the jxtended solution. Would that provide the automatic filling of a menu item to display every article corresponding to a given keyword?