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A Warm Welcome to Our Newest Member, Mateo Tibaquirá Palacios   (News)

Welcome Mateo, tell us a little about yourself. Who are you,
where are you from, and what do you do?
My complete name is Néstor Mateo Tibaquirá Palacios, but I prefer to be called Mateo. I'm from Colombia, a very beautiful country with some horrible problems; balanced, eh? I live in Popayán, where I'm finishing Electronic & Telecommunications Engineer Studies with an emphasis in Telematics (Information and Communications Technology). I chose Telematics because I like to program. Growing up, I did not have a computer, and from the distance I hated the idea of using a command line console. Now, it's different; I love my Ubuntu with the Yakuake console; and Eclipse PDT rocks!
At the University, I discovered that I had sufficient skills to write software. I began programming in C++ and Java some time ag

Generated on January 26, 2008.

RosterMaster(PostNuke) 0.97 and TaskMaster(PostNuke)x .xx   (News)

only that, but the same guild or clan can also have different rosters for the different servers of the different games they play.

You will also be able to create rosters from either single user groups, or groups of user groups, as well as rosters of the entire user base (for controlled sites). If all works as I would like it to, you will be able to have a roster of user groups that acts like (using the above gaming environment example) another roster of that particular guild.

As should be obvious by now, roster objects will not be limited to any one 'Guild' as the last RosterMaster was and one can build many different roster objects based on many different roster needs.

The current architecture (NOT final) looks like this (I won't claim this is the best setup, but it works with my current aspirations):

ObjectTable MemberTable User(assoc.)Table
ObjectID(prime) ---------- ObectjID(idx) rmUID(prime)
ObjClass MemberID(prime) --------- MemberID(idx)
Name Name pnUserID
etc... etc. etc.

The ObjClass field of the Object Table is a suffix for the module object class called. In the case of Everquest II I used 'EQ2' as the value and named my classes PNRosterMasterEQII and PNRosterMasterEQIIArray calling them with a combination of DBUtil::selectFieldByID([ObjectClass by ObjID) and Loader::loadClasFromModule() with a derived php string as the 'base_obj_type'.

Along with this is a vars table with API functions that work identical to PostNukes' pMod[Get|Set|Del]Var() but requires an ObjID instead of modname so that different sets of vars can be associated to each roster object.

The logging functionality will also be ObjID oriented, and as such care must be taken when setting up logging as to avoid unnecessarily bloated log tables. Accordingly all loging will be set by default to 'off' except in the case of an upgrade from RosterMaster(PostNuke)0.96.

RosterMasters current status is a working upgrade script along with all the functionality of the 'main' RosterMaster display (although the func is now display (ya I'm learning)) for Everquest II. This includes table header reverse sort as well as advanced sort allowing two fields to be sorted in individual directions. The rest is forms and options. Once the EQII class is fully functional I'll begin to set up the other classes and refine the API.

My vision here is to have RosterMaster act as an extensible roster module suitable to organizing and maintaining roster and roster member profiles in association with, or indifferent to, the user base with consideration of user groups.

TaskMaster has the same goals but with reference to levels of accomplished tasks,

All of this has been made possible via PostNukes' 'adambaum' pre-release... this module will not work with anything prior and WILL BE COMPLETELY UNSOPPORTED until the adambaum release (other than beta testing).

Once the EQII class has been made fully functional I'll commit the project to the current PostNuke NOC project SVN for beta testing.

RosterMaster(PostNuke)0.97 and TaskMaster(PostNuke)x.xx naming policy will be dependent on the official release name of the adambaum

Generated on September 25, 2007.

How to build a distribution   (News)

You are able to point and click your own package - select some modules, chose a theme and there you have your very own package.

The easy distribution system will become part of pn.com and directly access the module database here. So that you are always up-to-date when you download your package. (BTW: They are not up-to-date now - it's only a beta!)

That is pretty cool, if you know what you need and if you know how to tie these modules together properly.

Become a Distributor
If you want to build a package that contains preconfigured modules with custom templates aso you should look into the wiki. There you find a description of a file that contains 2 functions. One function defines the modules that are to be installed and the other function can be used to call modules API function or any PHP function you like.

I this manner you can install your modules, configure them and fill them with demo content.

Finally you can replace the standard themes with some nice custom themes.

These distributions can then be included in Easydist as "Scenarios" or be distributed via your homepage or whatever you like.

Any questions? Comments? Critique

Generated on September 23, 2007.

ScoutSite Project Looking for Volunteers   (News)

for Scout Troops. By using the security of Postnuke, the flexibility of it's modules, and a variety of pre-made themes we could build a tool that could help Scouts all around the world.

What Troop couldn't use a calender that tells the Scouts and parents when the next camp out is. Forums where the Scouts can talk about their favorite merit badges. A photo gallery of the canoe trip down the river. Newsletters telling families about the most recent ranks the Scouts have earned. Meanwhile also providing a public webpage that can tell others about your Troop. By focusing on communication, organization, co-operation, and program integration we can address many of the problems that Troops face every day.

With Scouts being a global movement, this project too will be global. By localizing tools for Scouting organizations around the world many more scouts will benefit from our work. This can be an opportunity for current and past Scouts and Scouters to work together to help Troops around the world. Those that have never been involved in Scouting are always welcome to help as well.

Ease of use will be the key to this being successful. By making it easy to use we can help Troops that do not have very tech savvy leaders to administer the site. Meanwhile, by keeping the Postnuke core in tact, more advanced admins can add any Postnuke module they may need. Documentation will pay off for end users as well as any developers that build upon our work.

Privacy and security will be very important. For the safety of the Scouts, and everyone's piece of mind, a strict standard of what information is available to the public will be enforced.

Releasing this as Open Source software is also a way that the work that we do can be helpful even beyond the Scouting community. Many of the same tools may be used by other groups, such as sports teams, clubs, or even keeping an extended family in contact.

If you would be interested in helping with this project please contact me at oik2 -at- hideyhole.org. Please include your name,

Generated on September 23, 2007.

pnMeeting 2007: Albert Perez Monfort introduces the "Intraweb" project   (News)

their school websites. The Department of Education offers a Postnuke sites to every school in Catalonia and some 500 of them use it.

Besides Postnuke Moodle and MyScrapBook are in use for the project. MyScrapBook is an easy content solution that the schools use to produce book-style web sites.

As a first step the projects main site has been migrated from Joomla to Postnuke - a point that was criticized last year ;-) But more importantly during the last year 450 teacher were trained in the use of PostNuke. Theses courses are repeated this year with another 400 teachers.

Albert Monfort and his collegues for their project integrated Postnuke with the eLearning system Moodle very comfortably. Moreover they imporved some of the old core modules so that they can handle massive numbers of users. For their special requirements Albert Monfort and his collegues programmed several modules. For example "Agendas" handles Agendas for single users or groups of users. Teachers can even handle presence lists with Postnuke. All modules are available via their homepage only most of they are currently Catalan only.

They even build up an internal FAQ system for common problems with Postnuke. It's in Catalan - so if you are able to speak Catalan feel free to translate it for the wiki. ;-)

For the future the Catalanian Deparment of Educations plans to at once move to .8 and run it only with one installation. That will reduce the maintainance work and the risk of problems with hundereds of installations.

The project "Intraweb" can be found at http://phobos.xtec.cat/intraweb/web/

Generated on September 8, 2007.

pnMeeting 2007: Frank Schummertz ports a module to .8 style   (News)

presented the way the result of the SELECT gets filtered through the permissions which is also done in a few standard lines of code.

Of course Formicula 2.0 makes use of pnForms. This reduces for example the edit function for the contacts to 3 lines of code plus the few lines that build the form and automatically validate the inputs. The programmer doesn't have to handle all kinds of wrong inputs - that is all done by the the forms API. The module will only receive validated values.

In a general overview Frank picked out single lines of code from Formicula and pointed out the differences to .7 - Among others were the use of the LogUtil with takes care of occurring errors and the fact that the pnRender object now has a parameter for disabling the caching.

Frank emphasized the fact that the correct use of all .8 APIs reduce the size of a module by 30-50%

Generated on September 8, 2007.

pnMeeting 2007: Mark West: Porting an Open Source Template to Postnuke .8   (News)

There are several sites that offer open source web-templates - you can take them and build your own site on them.

You choose one of their templates and turn them into a theme in 20-30 minutes with some experience. So if you watch the recorded presentation you will be able to follow Mark explanations step by step. We will put them online within the next few days.

Additionally there is already a lot of information in the development wiki.

In Mark's presentation you will also learn about the need to still provide table style sheets and how to correctly implement them.

Also a theme isn't only the template for the general layout - with for example the RSS theme you can generate RSS from every templated module. Of course it is also possible to generate other kinds of XML or other ways of displaying content.

One major advantage of the new theme engine is the possibility to completely port a theme with all settings from a sandbox site to the live site as all variables are stored in Smarty compatible .ini files.

We hope that this presentation sparks a new wave of themes and inspires new people to design their own layouts as these steps do not only apply to open Source web templates but also for your own designs created in Dreamweaver, NVU and so on. Mark already converted more than 100 free web templates that are available for .8 in the NOC or on Mark West's homepage.

BTW: Some more photos

Generated on September 8, 2007.

What's going on?   (News)

kinds of modules and so on. We couldn't do that without you. So a special kudo from the development team to everybody who's testing.

2. We are all looking forward to the International Postnuke Developer Meeting in Osnabrück, Germany in September. You are still invited and we will be happy to get to know you. The focus of this year's meeting will the the .8 technologies. We have to spread the knowledge about all the great libraries inside .8 to the community. Thus we will have several presentations and workshops dealing with that. You can still register http://support.pn-cms.de/index.php?module=formicula&form=6 and book a room: http://www.kulmbacher-hof.de

3. There are currently some reorganizations going on within the teams and Postnuke Foundation is working on a nice little surprise - we will have seperate announcements about this within the next weeks.

4. We need your help to build a good documentation. Please look into the wiki and see if you can't improve it: Pick out one of the .8 modules and describe how it works. Look through the articles and improve the descriptions. Remove typos. Find paragraphs that are not clearly enough written and make them clearer.

We could also use some good best practices - if you think you found a clever way to combine this and that module or you have some other special solution - write an article. People will love it.

There is so much you can do. And it's not too complicated. Postnuke lives through it's community. And you are part of that community, no matter how small your input is. Small pieces accumulate to a bigger picture.

Generated on August 25, 2007.

3 Bugs to go: Postnuke .8 close to Release Candidate   (News)

nother. Until yesterday there was only one remaining, which Robert Gasch promised to close. But now Jørn found 2 new ones: Bugtracker

Performance
While waiting for Robert to finalize the debugging of the categories module, Jørn and Mark checked .8 for its performance and found only few major flaws which have been removed in the meantime. As far as I understood Jørn's tests a blank Postnuke .8 doesn't contain more SQL-statements as inevitably needed and though calling a load of PHP functions performs quite well.

If you are able to test Postnuke on different environments - please do so and report your findings.

Language Files
David Nelson had to take a break from overhauling the English language files. But AFAIK he picked up work again and will be done soon.

After finishing the language files and closing all remaining major bugs the team will release a first release candidate.

The Wiki needs input!
If you want to help and you are neither a coder nor a templater you can help us with the documentation! Not everything in .8 is all new - install the current nightly build of .8 and the Value Addons and start writing manuals for all modules. The basic functions of all modules are the same as in .

Generated on June 6, 2007.

New tools for postnuke community interaction   (News)

german speaking bikers. Because of the need of programming some new functions I decided not to re-program one new powerful module.
I decided to program some compact, little modules that can be linked together and be used in any kind of community. So perhaps the modules can alo be interesting for your postnuke community.
As I wrote already - the idea of all modules is to increase the communication and interaction between the community members.

Graphical member search
Whenever community members want to get new contacts they can write personal Messages to other community members. So I first programmed pnMap, a graphical based user search engine. This is not a free module but all other modules are free and open source.

See how active a user ist (last login)
But very often there are many peoples members of a community but not everybody is very active. Perhaps someone has logged in the last time some months ago? If this is the case you do not really need to write an personal mail to these members - you better write mails to the more active members.
So I released pnLastLogin, that loggs the last login of a user. These information can be integrated in a member search as a sort criteria with pnMap or in the profile page of a community member. So you can see who is really actice.

Do you want to know who has visited your profile page?
Did you ever think about the question who visited your profile page? I think this might be an interesting gimmick for all community members. So I released pnClickedMe. This little program loggs who clicks whoose profile page. You can install a little block afterwards on your page that shows a user who has visited his profile page. So many people get interested and want to see who is that person that clicked me? Perhaps this can create new contacts!

Manage friends in a little addressbook
If you have created new contacts, you might be interested to store a list of "friends" with additional information to the contacts. For this you can use pnUserinfo. This is like a little addressbook.

Give your community the possibillity to publish content in weblogs!
If you want to publish some things about yourself, blogging is the keyword. Weblogs can be a really great tool in a web community. pnWebLog for example is a weblog module for postnuke. You also can integrate the newest postings of a weblog owner in his profile etc.

We need faces not nicknames!
Web communities are full of nicknames. But who is the person behind the nic? Mostly user's can upload an avatar but avatars are mostly used for funny pictures etc. But I think in a community that was build up to create real contacts you should be able to see who is the person behind a nicname.
To reach this goal I release pnUserPictures. Using this module you can define picture templates that can be integrated in a user's profile page for example and you can also allow it that users can manage their own gallery. There is not only a category managment possible, usernames can be assigned to the uploaded pictures. So it is not only possible to see the picture, you know who is on the picture. You now can integrate a link in the user's profile that shows with how many other pictures a user is associated. This increases interaction in the community. For all pictures there are thumbnail galleries available. You can install a block that shows the newest pictures and so on.

Give the users the possibillity to delete themselfs - if they want it
Sometimes a user wants to leave a community. Did you ever notice that there is no possibillity in the postnuke core yet for a member so that a member can delete its account with a click? If a user can delete his account himself, the administrator even has less work with such things. To make this possible, I released pnUserDeletion. But before you use this module test the deletion process on an offline backup installation. Some modules might have problems if a user is not found any more in the database.

Invite guests to get registered!
OK - loosing members is not really great but sometimes you can't avoid it. It's better so see the community growing. To invite people to get registered I programmed pnRegisterNow. This module displays a nice javascript popup (no nerving popup...) after a specified number of pageviews. So if a guest surfs in your forum and he opens the 20th page for example, he'll see a popup with an register link and a login form.

The advanced postnuke profile links most of the modules automatically
Now you have seen various modules that can be usefull in a community. But you now say that linking these modules is hard work? No, not really.
Take a look at pnProfile. This is an advanced profile module for postnuke. All modules listed above that are linkable are automatically

Generated on May 21, 2007.

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