Looking for Ideas on Article management
Hellish
Regular
Well, as you well know, Totse was based on articles and they sure as hell werent in HTML format. Im looking for some suggestions on software to use that work with CSS to look like the forums but in the place will be the articles. This would ease the integration of new articles. Any ideas?
Comments
Take screencaps of each article and make output as pdf and place in repository? I dunno ...
That won't work as well.
I will have to look it up. Can you post a sample or give us a test file so we can see what we're dealing with.
Thanks
http://totse.info/bbs/showthread.php?t=279
Why not just do a homebrew system?
E.g. store the articles as txt/xml files, then write a simple php/whatever script that will parse the articles and display them? Maybe write a similar script to automatically create a thread in the relevant forum when an article gets submitted.
Or this can be done manually at first, as I can't imagine there will be a ton of articles coming in. I suspect Jeff was doing it manually, it was taking him a while to add each article. And then, once you've got the manual process in place, you will know which bits can be automated and we'll have a clearer idea as to how to automate them.
I don't normally write in PHP (I have to use ASP), but again, I could help you out with that if you need some help.
Whatever you do, don't go the Wiki route / change significantly the way the articles are presented. I outlined my major concerns about that in the thread I linked to above.
This looks like the best option. I'm siding with Agent 008.
If we do end up having one, make it easier to submit. An online form would be ideal.
One of the reasons that other site didn't get a lot of contributions was because a lot of people are very self conscious about submitting creative work to a person (you had to ask zok for the password - shows a lack of understanding of the human psyche if you ask me)
A cold on-line (optionally anonymous) form removes a lot of that second guessing (because it's submitted almost instantaneously)
I understand the format you're all going for, but sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.
Ehh .... Doesn't leave much to the imagination. I agree in some, for instance protocol articles, it would help the article be MUCH more valuable to the user.
If I come up with any specific ideas I'll post back.
A little background first playdota is a community based website that mainly focus on the most played modded warcraft 3 game's custom maps. Since they are tend to discussing the game most guides appears and in no time a solid system was implemented.
Basically here is how they manage their article
First they create a sub forum where people can publish their article as a draft and when they author thinks it's finished the article are then being moved to other sub forum that automatically link it to the main site
Here is their example of the article portal in the main site : http://www.playdota.com/guides
As you can see there's a top picked article and a list of the rest in the bottom with a simple navigating system (You can sort it by date, type, etc)
Here is the example of the guides : http://www.playdota.com/guides/starting-strong-staying-effective.
And here's the forum links : http://www.playdota.com/forums/251734/starting-strong-staying-effective/#post1364660
With only a simple bbcode they can achieve a good article layout based on their preferences. The author can add pictures or you tube as they see fit but they can also write a simple text if they choose to. The in-forum layout helps the author to receive feedbacks from the reader on what they wrote.
Pros :
- Simple and easily managed article system
- The use of bbcode and in-forum system does not require complicated knowledge for the authors
- Can be edited and updated with no hassle at all
- Already proven to be working steadily
Cons :
- Author can troll the main site by editing the published article
- May not fit with the culture in here
- Rating systems makes some good article to be hidden