TownCrier v2

TownCrier Upgrades - November 16, 2007

Those of you logging in to TownCrier today will notice that a number of changes have taken place. One of the first things you will notice is that, when logged in, the right sidebar has changed significantly, breaking the links into more logical groupings.

The top grouping provides general information on TownCrier that all users, including those not logged in can view.
The second grouping is devoted to basic area management. Here's you'll find the links to add and manage areas, along with the ability to post a new event.
The third group provides more personal options such as the ability to view and control the more personalized options of TownCrier, such as your events and subscriptions.
A fourth area highlights TownCrier add-ons, such as the old Calendar Customizer and the new TownCrier Writer functionality that will be explained further later.
The fifth area is just a quick division to allow you to view development notes such as these.

TownCrier Writer functionality is the largest improvement in this round of TownCrier updates. TownCrier Writer is, basically, added functionality that allows you to use the desktop blogging software, Windows Live Writer, to post news entries to TownCrier. TownCrier Writer will also allow you to include pictures, videos, and maps into your posts with ease. For more information on TownCrier Writer, please read our TownCrier Writer page at http://www.wolftech.ncsu.edu/towncrier/tcwriter.php

Many of the other changes you'll see are aesthetic and text changes meant to make TownCrier a bit more user friendly. For example, the Manage Areas page is a little more descriptive about the purpose of the approved and unapproved columns, and the configuration options have moved to their own column.

On the event editing pages, we've made it a bit clearer what the current status of the event you've viewing is, along with fixing an issue some of you may have see with areas duplicating on the bottom of the page. The editing interface has been spruced up a bit, with new instructional text and color-coding in hopes of making the process less confusing.

Other changes include the fact that the default End Date for news postings has been pushed up to a year, rather than a day. From the feedback we received, it seemed as though very few users were actually using the End Date function, but we weren't prepared to fully kill it off just yet. Hopefully this will make it easier for those of you who just want to post news articles and not worry about them expiring.

Those are the major changes that have taken place in TownCrier for this series of updates. If you have any questions, issues, or feedback using any of the new features, please let us know at wolftech-webmaster@ncsu.edu

Updates To TownCrier Posting Interface - September 20, 2007

The next time you go to post a calendar event in TownCrier, you'll notice that a number of small changes have been made to the posting interface, in hopes of making it both easier to use, while at the same time bringing to light some of the functionality that TownCrier has that many users may not have been aware existed.

In past versions of TownCrier, certain entry fields have been hidden until prompted by user input. For example, if you weren't posting a seminar, the two seminar-specific TownCrier data fields would be hidden from your few. The same is true if you were creating an event that was non-repeating. These fields would remain hidden from your few in order to cut down on the size of the event entry form. Doing this, however, led to some confusion in how to perform certain tasks in TownCrier since many users had never thought to select the option to toggle the display of the additional fields. For this reason, all fields that were once hidden are now visible to the user when they start to enter in a new calendar event. Though disabled at first, these fields specially marked with a different colored background color can be activated and then filled out, ensuring that you're able to enter in as much information as possible on your event.

Another small change is that when creating a repeating event, a small frame to the right side of the repeating event options will house the dates that your event is scheduled to take place. Many of you will find the functionality of the Repeating Events portion of TownCrier familiar since it is modeled off how Oracle Calendar handles repeating dates.

Also, we have a few questions for our TownCrier userbase:

1) When we first wrote TownCrier we were thinking that giving news the ability to expire would be useful, but we're starting to find that we rarely use that functionality anymore. This prompts the question: how do you use the End Date functionality of TownCrier news posts? Do you use it to ensure that a post stops appearing on your news page after a certain date? Do you just enter a date far in the future because you never want the article to disappear? Or do you use it in some other way?

2) How often do you find yourself using the "This Event Is Open To The Public" / "This Event Is Private" options of the TownCrier? Are there many events that you're all posting that have to be marked as private? Or do most of you just let your area submissions imply whether or not something is private?

Any feedback on these things would be appreciated. Please send it in to wolftech-webmaster@ncsu.edu

Also, if you have any problems or questions using the new interface, please let us know.

Andrew Stein
Web Developer
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Updated Edit Pages - September 18, 2007

To cut down on some of the confusion caused by the "edit" pages of TownCrier, we've changed their layout a bit.

The biggest change is an easier way to tell where the event you're editing has been posted to along with improved color coding and selection ability when selecting new areas to submit your event to.

Futhermore, let me just reiterate that, when using TownCrier edit pages, there are two separate unconnected forms. The form at the top of the page allows you to edit the text of your event, along with the dates and times. The second form is the listing of available TownCrier areas to post your event to. Since this wasn't particularly clear, some design elements have been added to the page (new horizontal rules being added, mainly) in hopes of clarifying the unique functionality of each form and submit button.

TownCrier v2 Headline Code - February 06, 2006

I sent this out in an e-mail the other day. Figured it might be useful if anyone wants to just put TC headlines on their web page.

If you would like to make news headlines appear on your webpage as we have them on ECE, download the latest version of display_news.inc.php from the TownCrier main page ( http://www.wolftech.ncsu.edu/towncrier/ ) and insert the following code into your page:

<?php
$TClook = '<p><a href="news.php?tcID=5497">###EVENT_TITLE#20##</a></p>';
$News = new News(55,'Yes','','R');
$News->setPerPage(3);
$News->doQuery();
?>

To explain what's going on:

The line that begins with $TClook is a template line for how you want your news to appear. In this case, the template with create a paragraph, create a link to the page news.php that will take you directly to the news article you clicked on and then display 20 characters of the title of the news article.
The line containing "new News" is a bit different from usual. If your area ID is not 55, you'll want to change that number. You will want to leave the word 'Yes', however. If you want your front page news to display random, active announcements, leave the 'R' as well. Otherwise, change it to an 'N'.
The line containing "setPerPage" sets how many news articles you'd like to have appear.
The final line displays the news headlines.

Using TownCrier display engine from: 2006-04-20