createing textbox in group page

[nada saif]

hi,

how i can create a new text box in group page?


thanks

Nada

[Hue And Cry]

Yes, Ning-heads, would really appreciate some tips for this - am trying to 'rebrand' some of the functionalities of groups and forums, and an html text box at the top of groups and forums and videos and music, would really help....

[Fabricio Zuardi]

Hi Nada,

Currently for group home pages the default is to have one html box only, you can use it to paste multiple widgets and other content in html format.

But if you want more boxes, there is an unsupported way to do that using the content manager. Be aware that this is dangerous stuff, it is too easy to break your network by accident using the content manager, so please use a test network to test this before you are comfortable/confident enough to try it on your main network.

Groups home layout are stored in a xml representation inside the content objects of type Group, here is an example of how it looks like:

The content manager interface is available to the network creator only, at yournetworkname.ning.com/admin/index/manage
, again, be extra careful because you will be dealing with the raw content data of your network, and deleting something by accident can break the network or lead to irreversible dataloss.

By clicking on the "Edit this object" link you will go to a page where you can manually edit the values for any content, you can then copy the xml and get an idea of how it works. Each <module> node represents a box, the one with widgetName=html is the one you look for, you can duplicate that node and change the content and embedInstanceId to have an extra box.

We might have a easier way to do this (without requiring extra-dangerous manual intervention) in the future. But if you are feeling lucky you might want to give this technique a shot.

Here is an example of the original layout xml:
http://pastie.textmate.org/private/lete2s2yv18orwycnnocsw

And here one with an extra box:
http://pastie.textmate.org/private/djj8hpkxnewxyhft399lw

[]s

[Fabricio Zuardi]

sorry, http://pastie.textmate.org/144693 and http://pastie.textmate.org/144694

[nada saif]

Hi Fabricio,

i will try that , of course in a test network.

Thanka alot for this new info ,

wishes,
Nada

[Hue And Cry]

Ooh scary... but I wonder if the process is the same for "Forums", which seems to have no provision for a text box - and I'd really like one there. I have a big role for the 'Forums' pages on my site http://hueandcry.ning.com, now titled 'History City', and I want an html introduction to what people need to do on it. Can you advise, Fabricio?

[Fabricio Zuardi]

Hi Hue,

For forums you need to have access to the source code to change that, which means it is not possible to do it on a centralized network. If you are ok with that, here is the page to ask for the code, the template files for the main forum pages are: /widgets/forum/templates/topic/list.php and /widgets/forum/templates/category/list.php.

[Hue And Cry]

Hi Fab

Hmmm.... I'm really pushing for this as a new feature add, rather than wanting to tamper with the source code, and remove myself from updates. Is there any possibility/dateline for this? It seems a bit perverse NOT to have an html box sitting on top of the forums, while each group can easily have at least one...

[[e-mail]]

I tired this, but it ONLY changed the layout of the one group I edited. When I added more groups, it went back to the original design???

[Mike Nicholson]

Hello!

To apply it to all newly created groups you just have to modify the default XML document. You can find this in /widgets/groups/lib/XG_Layout_groups.php.

Cheers!
Mike

[vg]

Hi Mike,

It didn't give any change in my site. But the above post which tells us to use the content manager helped me. But the textbox is present only for that particular group. All others have only one text box. Also, I would like to add text box along with the forum, on the right side of each post. IT is just to include the rating code.

Thanks,
Vg.