Topic: DIY Article building?

[kaoss]

Is there a guide to building articles somewere? My site www.806minis.com is automotive based, and I would like to start adding a featured ride of the month, with clickable thumbnails that would open the picture in a seperate browser window or tab, surronded by information about the vehicle. Would this just all be custom html, or is there something simpler that I am overlooking?

[AngelinaBelle]

You don't need to do any coding at all.  You just have to tell SimplePortal which postings are articles and also tell it how you want them displayed. SimplePortal provides buttons and control panels for all of that.
 
SimplePortal articles are all just posts that have been chosen as articles.
So, the first thing you need to do is choose some articles.
Either use the "add as article" button when you are reading them, or else to to "Admin" and, under SimplePortal, choose "Articles"
 
In the Article List, you can add articles, remove "stale" articles, decide which category to put them in. Or you can go to the category list to come up with your categories.
 
Articles are displayed in two ways;
1) On the portal page, between the "top" and "bottom" blocks, but only if
    * you have a portal page (index.php?action=manageportal;area=portalconfig;sa=generalsettings)
    * Articles are enabled (index.php?action=manageportal;area=portalconfig;sa=articlesettings)
 
2) As headings in an article block, if you add an article block to your block list, enable it, and make it visible on one of the pages in your forum (http://www.rockhallsailingclub.org/smf/index.php?action=manageportal;area=portalblocks)
 
 
 
 

[kaoss]

Ok, so I guess that I really didn't understand what there were. So basically it is a way to make a post appear in a block on the simple portal page.

That's not what I was after, so forgive me for my ignorance on this.

I really like this set up:

http://www.chevyavalancheclub.com/

But maybe there is a lot more going on here than I realize.

[AngelinaBelle]

I think there is a lot more going on there than you realized.
I compared the HTML on that site to the HTML on this site, and it looks like he's running SimplePortal wrapped in something else.
He is using SimplePortal blocks, but I can also see there is a lot of customization going on.
 
The section at the bottom, with the articles, looks like it might be a SimplePortal blog block. Except that it is displaying article text and nicely-resized images, whereas the version of sp_block I've got doesn't do the body of a blog article.
 
I really like many features there.  I think you will need to contact the forum owner to find out more about the custom coding required to make that blog articles block work.
 
That site really is nicely done.
 
 

[fl4pj4ck]

nope. its 100% SimplePortal

[ccbtimewiz]

That's DSv4, a premium DzinerStudio theme.

[AngelinaBelle]

I'm not very familiar with the DS themes.  That's why it looked like a custom wrapper to me, I guess.
 
Does sp_blog do blog/blog article contents?  I just had a look at the code, and it looks to me like it only does the title.  So I think there has been some customization there...