Forum OpenACS Q&A: How to implement a magazine like thing?

Hi. I'm not sure if this question is better for aD forums, so if it
is, please tell me and i'll do it.

I'm trying to implement the next idea:

The thing works more or less like a magazine: people submits
articles, and we publish them. Some of the articles are complete
responsability of users, others are carefully edited and 'published'
by a editorial staff, and can be multi-page. All the articles are in
the same "index" (in the magazine sense).

I'm a bit overwhelmed and don't know well where to start (i'm working
on this after returning from my 'real' job programming bloatware on
Visual Basic and Access, so my thinkig is a bit erratic :). I see 2
alternatives:

1. Build it around a moderated forum, somehow. Some of the articles
are as-submitted, others are posted by the editors. I' dont know how
to deal with very long/multipage articles in this case.

2. Each user upload his article to his own disk space, and then
submits a link to it to the index module. I don't know if there is
already something like that working.

3. The already made module that automatically builds indexes i
overlooked. :)

Any help/ideas/pointers would be great.

Saludos,

Jorge

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Posted by Adam Farkas on
Sounds like you need a content management system ("CMS"). aD is implementing a very powerful open-source CMS solution, built by Karl Goldstein. You can go to arsdigita.com forums to learn more about CMS.

Alternatively, there are a number of other open-source content management systems [if you're going the inexpensive route.] such as e-grail that might meet your needs.

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Posted by Mike Clark on
I have modified the News module to build a site for a weekly local business news publication. I introduced the time based "edition" concept, so each article is linked to a specific edition. The News module allows you to upload and edit articles until you are ready to approve. With the "edition" enhancement, the articles are not available until you "publish" a particular edition.

You can check out the site and see if it is close to what you are looking for - http://www.triadbusiness.com

Mike

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Posted by Anton Bajri on
Thanks, Adam and Mike.

I checked the aDs CMS and it looks impressive... Intimidating I would say... Sadly, i'm the classical proletary: i only own my own work force, so i must be very carefull in how i invest it. :)

I think News + File-management combo can do what i want. I wouldn't need the 'edition' concept, but may be i'll have to adapt news to add an Author and Date fields...

As i want to keep 'normal' news also, is the next alternative reasonable?

1. add author and date fields to the news table. the news module will ignore them.

2. clone the news directoryes and edit the displaying pages and submitting forms to deal with the new fields.

Is this the normal way ACS is extended?

Thanks a lot and sorry for my english,

Jorge