Is this possible with articles?

I have 13 static pages each dedicated to a dance style (latin, ballroom, ballet etc).

I would like to be able to have a block on each page that displays a single article, say an article on salsa on the salsa page, an article on ballet on the ballet page etc. I also need for these articles to be written, updated and published by a teacher of the dance style. So, not everyone can publish an article, just 13 people of my choice.

I really need the blocks, is this possible?

Nathan

Hello I seen several commercial mods in market section that allow your site members write own articles or news! Make a search there please!

the problem is that most of them will only have news or articles on the articles or front page. I need to be able to have blocks on all 13 of my static pages.....

if I had the code, could I call an article from the articles mod and display it in a php block? If so, I dont suppose anyone has the code?

You could try an RSS feed in a block.

Thanks stuart...

I have thought about this option. problem is that I would need to be able to generate or controll generation of the RSS. I have no idea how to make one so that someone can update it.

If you have any info on how to create an rss feed I would be interested in hearing it.

Thanks,

Nathan.

Install wordpress into a sub folder of your site have the 13 people you want to sign up there...  have them write what they need to there then pull the rss feeds over to dolphin on your custom pages ....

or have them write what they need on the wordpress blog and copy and past to the custom pages....

or create  a new membership level in dolphin and add the handfull of people you want to that membership and let them create articles or blogs  then get the rss feed per user to add to your custum pages.

or   or   or  ....   :)

Ok... I have a plan! I could be missing a big trick for my site by not using articles.  I may allow anyone of profesional level to make articles and pull the rss feeds of articles I like into a block... but....

I had to remove Blogs from my site because of the great chineese spammer invasion! am I likely to get spam articles and another chineese invasion? I dont want to have to ban an entire country from the site,l but at the same time it is unlikely i will have  the time to approve every article.

Nathan

 Hey Nathan -

Thinking outside the box here, but what if you were to replace the static pages with a dedicated group for each dance style? I have had myself in the same situation as you, and here's what I did:

Got a hold of the free clubs module from the market - it's a duplication of groups with a different name. Big thanks to Audanbal for going through the trouble of providing this!

Rename the clubs module so it was better fitting for my purpose (I can help you with this)

Lock down permissions to the module so only certain member types could create a club (these would be your dance instructors).

Now, instead of a static page with limited content, everything is dynamic and each style has it's own fans, photos, videos, files, forums, sounds, etc. Great way to keep your site socially interactive.This allows the admins complete control over the content, and can either post their instructions within the description box or upload it as a file.

I needed more functionality than that, so I ended up purchasing modzzz's premium groups module to add news, events, sponsors & location maps. This was pretty tricky to rename since its an extension from the built in groups, but I've almost got it.

I believe his mod allows each group to load custom RSS feeds, so that would open up another avenue but I'm not sure what kind of budget you're working with.

wow... that is outside the box and very intuertive.

we have already re-branded clubs into crews so that street dance crews can buy a "crews membership" and form street crews on the site. But i do like the idea, and it is somthing that I will think about next time around. The problem this time is that we have already started to populate and build the static pages with some complex flash applications...

Check out the example at: http://globaldancenetwork.com/page/Salsa

its a multi content block at the tio of the page and is wayyyyyy impressive for a non programmer lol. Its the beta version, but am posting up the alpha later tonight or tomorrow.

Budget wise we have used a very large budget for this site and its still eaing cash, but you have to speculate (with risk assesment of course) to accumulate.

thanks for the advide,

Nathan

Not bad :)

Since a lot of manual effort has already gone into the static pages, what about adding another html block and fashioning up some static links to posted content? This would give you the flexibility of either having the instruction posted as an article or blog, and you can link to whatever permalink is associated with it.

With a little css you can make those links look just like you want them to, I did a static landing page here for my site, the quick links on the left are just  <li> elements with an image and links for each item: community landing page. You can do the same for an article title with a quick description and link to the content?

This would allow you to bring your blogs module back to life and only give posting rights to select members, or expand on the default articles module with modzzz's enhanced version (sorry for plugging his products, if they didn't cater so well to a community site I wouldn't push them though!)

Thanks for the advice. yeah, the intention is to build around the multi content block on each page. We are looking at all the options. One thing we wanted to was a block that could list 6 salsa dancers within 20 miles of the users pastcode.. or... salsa events with 20 miles of the users postcode... etc, but the calculations from the database would probably slow the site to a crawl.

It would make the the static pages almost into an app though which would give it a use.

Will take a look at your site tomorrow and see how it all works.

thanks,

Nathan