Hello,

I've just been playing with DNN, and it looks very powerful. However, I have a few basic questions I would like answered before I commit myself to using it.

I'm developing a web site for a charity that helps people with Down's Syndrome. The web site is to contain the content that features in their magazine, as well as extras. What I would like to know is...

1. Can I add pages without them all appearing in the main links section? Suppose I add a main category for articles. At the moment, the only way I can see to add pages under this would add them to the drop-down that appears when you click the articles link. This is fine when you only have a few, but when the content grows to hundreds of articles, this is going to be unusable. I guess I would like to click the articles link, and go to a page that shows the titles and summaries of the latest articles, with links to older ones. How can this be done?
2. Can I allow people to leave comments on the articles, like you can on blog posts? I would need these comments to be moderated before being displayed.
3. Can I have the main articles page show a list of links to the articles, without me having to manually update it eveyr time I add a new article? I guess this would include all pages under the articles category, ordered by date (most recent first), showing the article title, author and a short summary.
4. Can I have a section where people can submit their own letters, which would need approval before being displayed? I don't want them adding content to other areas of the site (other than the comments to articles mentioned above).

Thanks very much for any advice you can give. I like what I have seen of DNN, but I need to know that it can do what I need for this site.

Alan

...adding to Digital Man's response...

1. You most likely will want to have a closer look at the LINKS, DOCUMENTS and REPOSITORY modules for three different solutions as follows:
    
   LINKS:  Create a list of hyperlinks you can use to link to individual hidden DNN pages (as mentioned by Digital Man) or directy to actual file copies of articles (PDF files, for example).  You can set your links to open in a new window which is useful if linking directly to a file.  LINKS allows you to track the number of "clicks" for each link.
    
   DOCUMENTS:  Similar in use to LINKS module but with additional features.  Creates links to documents (or to URLs so you can link to web pages, documents on other websites, etc).  Unlike LINKS, this module allows you to specify and sort by additional information about each link (title, owner, size, category, creatd date, created by, modified date, author, description, etc.).  A very straightforward way to link to a lot of documents, though the list displays all at once (so hundreds of articles = very long list).  DOCUMENTS allows you to track the number of "clicks" for each link.
    
   REPOSITORY:  This is the module to use if you want one module to handle everything.  Unfortunately, this is also the most complex of the three and will take more effort to master before you can effectively use it for large numbers of files.  Supports "skins" so you can customize the look of the module and presentation of data.  Also supports paging of results so a large list gets broken into multiple pages of results.  Powerful but somewhat complex for the first-time DNN admin.
    
2. Probably the best core module for this is the REPOSITORY module which allows both comments and ratings for individual articles/files/links.
    
   DNN's BLOG module supports comments but you'd need to use the BLOG module as your article-posting module.  That is, each article would be a BLOG entry.  While this would work there is a limitation:  each BLOG can only have one author (i.e., multiple people cannot post to the same BLOG).  If you have one person/account posting articles then this is ok, but if you have people with multiple accounts posting articles you'd need to split your article list into separate BLOGs based on the person adding the article.
    
3. See my response for (1) -- all of those modules support such a list (in fact, they ARE lists).
    
4. Digital Man is right on the money on this one, I think:  the FORUM module is probably one of the two best methods for allowing moderated, rich-text posts.  The other option is the REPOSITORY module -but- this only allows uploading of files (moderated), not the creation of articles on-screen via a rich text editor as in the FORUMS module.  Also REPOSITORY shows a list of articles (files/web pages/etc) but not the actual articles -- you have to click a link to see/read an article.
    
   There is also a very simple FEEDBACK module that allows basic text submission but not rich-text as you'd probably prefer for articles.  There are also a number of third-party forums modules if you find the core DNN module lacking in features.  ActiveForums has been a popular choice but is hardly the only one in this category.  Check SnowCovered.com for other offerings.

 
A Better Third-Party Solution: Engage Publish
Now, once you've looked at and played with all the free core modules you will have a better appreciation for this one:  Engage Publish.  This module lets you enter and present articles in a number of different ways and it supports both moderated user comments and article ratings (user votes) in the method you'd expect -- at the bottom of each article.  At $300 it's hardly free but in the end it may be well worth its price for the time you save.   NOTE: I am not affiliated with Engage in any way (though I'd happily do in-depth reviews of any modules they care to send me for free...)

Check out a working demo of "Publish" here:  http://demo.engagemodules.com/Modules/EngagePublish/tabid/54/Default.aspx

-mamlin

Mr Yossu

From what I've read of your requirements, you need to get the Ventrian News Articles module.  This will do most of what you need to do, including moderation, creation of links, categorization and more.  I wouldn't recommend using the Blog module as it is designed to create blogs, not articles as you wish to do.

The News Articles module is provided (along with some other great modules) via a subscription service for $25.  This is less than I spend on a decent meal and I can guarantee you that even if you earn $5 a day you'll get your money's worth in saved time by using the right tools for the job rather than trying to come up with a satisfactory solution any other way.

You'll also get access to the child links module, which will handle the creation of links for pages that aren't in the 'main' index.  This will be faster and easier than trying to manually create links for new pages.

You can view the News Articles module at http://www.ventrian.com/

-Bruce