1) My main task will be integrating stand alone HTML pages into the portal and my thinking so far is that I will need to use Simple Portal pages for this. Is this correct and how do I go about setting up a page navigation menu?

2) I'm also a little unsure on the use of 'Articles'. Apologies for a very basic question, but where should articles be used - what is their purpose?

1) You can definitely use SimplePortal to add a whole bunch of HTML pages through the Pages function. Setting up a navigation menu depends on how you want to do it. You could create a custom PHP/HTML/BBC block which has a series of links to the pages, you could modify your forum's menu, you could add a new menu, etc. You can get the url for each page by clicking on the link (the page title) on the list of pages in the admin area. The choice has to how to setup the navigation is yours, although if you need any help in setting it up then feel free to ask.

2) At the moment, SimplePortal articles are basically just published topics from your forum. When you add a topic as an article, it will be published/shown on your portal (if the Articles feature is enabled, and the article is one of your more recent articles - this is based on the settings you choose).

SimplePortal 2.4 will add a 'forum independant' articles system, that means that users with the correct permissions will be able to create BBC/HTML (different permissions for each, admin will be able to make PHP articles) will be able to create articles that resemble topics, where users can make comments (if applicable) and etc. We will also be looking at the navigation system, to make it easy to find/look at articles, although we are still tossing ideas around about this.

Ok some progress.

I've created a page which works well and I've managed to add a tab to the forum menu to open the page using the tutorial here - Adding tabs to SMF 2.0

This works well, however I'm unable to get the tab to highlight (orange background) once selected.

One of my new tabs Membership is coded in Sources / Subs.php:

'membership' => array(
'title' => 'membership',
'href' => 'http://localhost/forum/index.php?page=page4618',
'show' => true,
'sub_buttons' => array(
),
I'm guessing the highlighting has something to do with the following:

// Figure out which action we are doing so we can set the active tab.
// Default to home.

$current_action = $modSettings['sp_portal_mode'] == 3 && empty($context['standalone']) && empty($context['disable_sp']) ? 'forum' : 'home';

if (isset($context['menu_buttons'][$context['current_action']]))
$current_action = $context['current_action'];
elseif ($context['current_action'] == 'search2')
$current_action = 'search';
elseif ($context['current_action'] == 'theme')
$current_action = isset($_REQUEST['sa']) && $_REQUEST['sa'] == 'pick' ? 'profile' : 'admin';
elseif(empty($context['disable_sp']) && ((isset($_GET['board']) || isset($_GET['topic']) || in_array($context['current_action'], array('unread', 'unreadreplies'))) && in_array($modSettings['sp_portal_mode'], array(1, 3))))
$current_action = 'forum';
elseif ($context['current_action'] == 'register2')
$current_action = 'register';
elseif ($context['current_action'] == 'login2' || ($user_info['is_guest'] && $context['current_action'] == 'reminder'))
$current_action = 'login';
     
$context['menu_buttons'][$current_action]['active_button'] = true;
and that I need to add another elseif condition.

Am I on the right lines?


Russ

Many thanks. Have just tested your code and it works perfectly.

I've also changed my pageID to something more meaningful as you suggest.

Time to start adding some more pages.

Russ

stupid mistake through me.... the above code does work...

when making the Array in Sources\Subs.php the name of the Array has to be the same as the PageID.

        'History' => array(
        'title' => 'Company Info',
        'href' => $scripturl . '?page=History',
        'show' => true,
        'sp_page' => true,
        'sub_buttons' => array(

        ),

i am now trying to get the Sub_buttons array to work...   

am i guesing theres no support for this..?? 

What exactly is your issue? If you are trying to get the sub buttons array to work properly, then please post what you have so far and I can help to correct it. Or I can post an example if you need one.

I have responded to your issue of highlighting the correct button: http://simpleportal.net/index.php?topic=5678.msg35088#msg35088