An elgg plugin for the index page

Purpose

From the excellent Custom Index plugin, this one provides you an easy way to customise your index with a widget drag and drop interface.

I included the widget relevant to the latests entries :

• news,
  
• member,
  
• blog,
  
• files,
  
• bookmarks,
  
• pages,
  
• tidypics,
  
• wire posts,
  
• events,
  
• rich media content, (new in 1.5)
  
• free content, (new in 1.5)
  
• Rss (you need to activate the simplepie plugin).
• tasks (new in 1.7)
• River activity (new in 1.7)
• Generic widget based on the subtypes you could have new in( 1.7)
• Izap_video widget (new in 1.8, thanks to Anna Bitanga)
• tag_cloud widget (new in 1.8)
• Box Style (new in 2.2)
• Guest Only display(new in 2.2)
• Social NetWork Share (new in 2.2)

You can customise the datas get by the wdidgets in several ways:

• Access: Common to Elgg philosophy. The datas will be displayed according to their access level needed and the user current status.
• Categories: Using the wide category pluggin, for contents concerned. The datas will be displayed in their tagging correspond to the ones set for the widget.
• Number of items displayed: No comment.
• Style of display: You can either display the list style or a more detailled view.
• Group: For contents which can be correctly brought by group. The datas displayed will be those attached to the selected group.
• Widget title: Replace on the main page the default generic widget title.

Since version 1.3, th plugin doesn't use no more the ajax calls, so the page is built on the server side and all things will be visible for any search engines. Even Rss ...

I prepared differents layouts, based upon a simple combination of three areas. Each layouts is used both for the configuration of the widgets you want in your page and the rendering of the pages. The names follow a simple scheme convention explained here:

• index_2rmsb : 2 rows, [Medium, Small] - [Big]
• index_2rsmb : 2 rows, [Small, Medium] - [Big]
• index_2rhhb  : 2 rows, [Half, Half] - [Big]
• index_1rsss   : 1 row, [Small, Small, Small]
• index_2rbms : 2 rows, [Big] - [Medium, Small]  -- Added in 1.2
  
• index_2rsbm : 2 rows, [Big] - [Small, Medium] -- Added in 1.2
• index_2rbhh  : 2 rows, [Big] - [Half, Half] -- Added in 1.2

I prepared this plugin for two reasons:

• Be more nicely visible for Search engine, and do just not put a loggin box on the index.
• Be abble to deal with elgg datas on the main page without any line of code needed.
  

To use,

1. Deactivate the Custom index, if it was activated
2. Activate the Custom index widgets under the admin tools, choose a layout in the settings, save.
3. Go to the admin menu (Customize index), drag and drop you widgets on the areas, save.
4. Under the edit zone, click on the customises button of the widget, and take care to make the access public for which you want to be seen by anyone not logged. That's it.

May be you will need to delete the view cached files under your elgg data directory.

French, English and German Translation given.

New in version 2.2

Added a GuestOnly Option to Widgets:

• Combined with the "Public" access, "GuestOnly" widgets will appear only for non logged user.

Added a Box Style option:

• Collapsable
• No Collapsable
• Plain, ie just borders
• Plain and Collapsable

Improved display of Events:

• Events are displayed by day,week,month and according to the current date

Added a Social Network sharing widget:

• Using the "AddToAny" service, simple but strong.

Small bugfixes:

• Dashboard option display
• Languages missing items

BugFixes in 2.1:

• The Free Html Widget was causing some deletions of all the widget config while updating it. The reason was the conjunction of use with the TinyMce Plugin with the Custom Index Widget plugin. As there were some Textareas in the edit view, there were converted by the tinymce plugin. I changed these texteras to basics input.
• I made the plugin compatible with 1.7.1 in the manifest too.

What's new in 2.0

Essentially minor adjustements to make the pluggin compatible with the new elgg functions, and the 1.7 release.

1. I had the capability to choose wether the latests members should be displayed with or without the avatar.
2. I changed the wire widget in order to display the latests wires even the user is not logged in.

To install this release on a previous one, just overwrite your previous folder with the new one.

Once installed, don't forget to go in your Administration panel and run the Index Customisation menu. It will help ;)

The plugin seems to be very stable now, so if you encounter some troubles:

1. check first the Elgg compatibility version (here 1.7),
2. check you are making the index customisation under the real admin account,
3. check for all yours widgets you put the right visibility.

Fixes in 1.9.1

1. German translation corrected
2. Spanish translation added
3. TopBar tag bug corrected
4. 1.7a compliance made.

Bugfixes in 1.9

1. German translation added
2. Correction of 'custom_index_widgets:nogroups'
3. Correction of izap folder name

Enhancements & fixes in 1.8

1. Free html content, tried to fix it with simply rename it.
   
2. The widgets seems also no more disapear with this previous fix.
   
3. Tag cloud widget, highly customisable
4. Fix Latest Group widget bug (sorry, sorry, sorry, it was a bad copy/paste, thanks Mark Bridges)
   
5. Added Izap_video plugin (thanks anna bitanga again, i don't have izap_video, but the recipe was looking good, so...)
   
6. Some stuffs in translation file

Enhancements & fixes in 1.7

1. Add the ability to include the dashboard in the bottom of the page when user is connected.
2. Add the river latest activity widget
3. Add the task widget
4. Add a generci widget, based on the subtypes you could host on your elgg.
5. Css improvments, as i seen that the buddytalk thme didn't render correctly my page.
6. Code factorization, in the index construction.
7. Pages, blogs and file now take categories, list types and group into account.
8. Remeoved the "Accueil" mention in the page title.
9. Some fixes

Enhancements & fixes in 1.6

1. Fix: correct the issue with the wrong admin password who make disapear widgets. Arf, it is still here :(
   
2. Enhancement: Add group filter option for blogs, pages, albums, photos, events and files. Available in the edit section of thos widgets.
   

Enhancements in 1.5

1. Administration, you can choose wether the login box will appear in the layout or the topbar.
2. Widgets : you can now set a replacement title which will be shown on the index instead of the widget name by default.
   
3. Widgets : for some, you can choose de display th list format or detail format. Usefull for the news
4. Added a free html content widgets. Well known functionnality.
   
5. Added a simple rich media content based upon jquery media. Very very simple.

Fixes in 1.4  (You know...)

1. Better handling of loginbox positionning depending the layouts.
2. Fix login box size depending the layouts.
   

The login box is still unavailable as a widget form, this is volontary.

Fixes in 1.3  (Again,Thanks to all)

1. Fix some css issues with the layouts index_2rmsb and index 2rsmb
2. Remove the index_box wrapper on the widgets.
3. Added the server side construction of the main page (SEO)
4. Removed the modify link on the main page's boxes.
5. Added for some widget who can use it a customisable filter on the categories: news, pages, files, and another one i don't remember.
   
6. Filter available widget to the custom_index, no more confusion.
7. Adde a widget for wire posts. Must be connected to see them, hmmm.
8. Add a Reset button to clear all the widget zones.
9. Some code fixes.

 

Fixes in 1.2(Thanks to all)

1. Fix the bookmark and page widgets
   
2. Fix the init procedure to set a default layout when none given.
3. Added the tidypics latest photos widget
4. Added the tidypics album widget
5. Added the Event Calendar widget
6. Added 3 more layouts:  index_2rbms : 2 rows, [Big] - [Medium, Small], index_2rsbm : 2 rows, [Big] - [Small, Medium],  index_2rbhh  : 2 rows, [Big] - [Half, Half]

Fixes in 1.1:

1. Fix the mismatch between area2 and area3 when saving
   
2. Fix the size of headers in half size areas on edit zone
   

Enjoy.

 

Downloads & link

• Custom Index plugin, v2.2
• Reach me on the elgg community

You would like to thanks ?