Kassetra Stevenson wrote:

> First -- I made Topics for each of the kinds of articles I wanted to
> create, and then created a couple of sample articles.
>
> If I understand correctly, I can have one page that pulls the articles
> work for all of my Topics.  I simply specify what Topic I'm trying to go
> to when I link from the front page out to my content-specific page.
> Correct?

More or less. Generally people will use separate pages to display topics
and articles, but it's entirely possible to have one page do both.

> So then on my single page, I design any html to display the content
> however I wish, and then pull the content, Correct?

Correct.

> but I'm a little lost here when I'm trying to pull the content.  I know
> you (ALL) have explained this in probably painstaking detail, but I'm
> not getting it.  Here's how I think it works - (I don't think I'm
> understanding midgard's functions very well)
>
> Main Page -- Contains a link off to another page, with specific content
> on it, say, Member Services.  so in the link to the new page, how do I
> tell midgard *which* topic I want articles from?

Depends. You can do it the 'regular PHP' way by appending params at the
end of the URL:

http://yourhost/somepage/?articletodisplay=5
which will have the value 5 available in the variable $articletodisplay

The 'midgard way' (not better or worse than above, just a preference
thing) is to mark the page as 'active' and append the props straight to
the URL:

http://yourhost/somepage/5
which will have the value 5 available in the variable $argv[0]

Personally, I prefer the latter for the looks (as I said, just a
preference thing); it could be that some indexers will like 'plain
looking' URLs more than URLs with params. Although in this day and age,
I'd find that pretty stupid.

> Then on the new page that displays the specific content, how do I make
> it look nice?

Hire a designer :)

> do I make a loop that contains html code and php code to
> pull the articles?

That's one option, yes.

> What happens if I need a table to display all of our
> products?  how do I put our products into an article?  or do I put them
> in many articles?

That's what I'd do.

> This is why I tend to think that I might need separate pages for some of
> the content.  The layout for products will not be the same as the layout
> for general news.

Then I would indeed use separate pages.

> And most of our services pages will contain both news
> and products types of contents.  And I'm not the greatest php coder
> (yet).  So maybe I just need more help with midgard's functions and
> php...?

Without a bit of PHP knowledge I'm afraid it will be tough going. There
are several good (and affordable, from me anyway) books around on the
subject, and tutorials abound for free.

> Also, I have a kind of big question -- I'm using Asgard because that's
> what came with Midgard.  But I've read things about nadmin, and I've
> looked at the site, and I like the way it looks/works.  How hard is it
> to change from Asgard to nadmin, and can I just install nadmin on top of
> my current midgard installation, or do I need to start over?  Will the
> nadmin installation kill my database?  Is nadmin easier to use than
> Asgard?

You can install nadmin alongside asgard without problems. I personally
find Nadmin easier to use, but Asgard is more comprehensive. I use both,
depends on which hat I wear at the time.

> (I've noticed that Asgard doesn't always give the correct tree
> information when you're working, and you can't upload attachments unless
> you are sg0 root.)

Those would be bugs. Unfortunately, Asgard has no current maintainer to
take care of them.

> At the end of the web site change over, we would like to be able to have
> our members log in, get their webmail, read about our new services,
> signup & pay for new services, pay their bill, see a schedule of
> classes, read more info on those classes, register & pay for classes,
> read the news, see a calendar of events, download new software, etc. Are
> all of these things possible with midgard?  (I think they are) -- and
> would nadmin help me to do these things faster than Asgard?

Possible, yes, but get ready to do some PHP coding. Would nadmin be
faster? I don't know. For content providers, definately. For PHP coding
I use oldadmin because it's faster.

Emile


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