While working on a new template for Pligg I was trying to come up with the best way to manage articles that would appear on top of the homepage to feature select stories. I originally was thinking that I could use the "Groups" feature for Pligg, or even create a "Featured" category. Then I thought that those methods would not allow me to appropriately label my news and were not the best way to handle the featured news articles that I wanted on the homepage. That's when I turned to CMStheme's Featurify module, which allows admins to manually set up images that link to news article and rotate those images somewhere in your template. A few hours later I had created a "Featured" module for Pligg.

How it works
The first thing you will need to do is upload and install the module. Then add a snippet of code to the template file where you want the featured news to appear. You can do this by adding the following line to a .tpl file:

{$featured}

I suggest that you place it on your homepage by placing it in index_center.tpl and wrapping it with the following code so that it only shows up on the homepage and not the second, third, etc. pages.

{if $pagename == 'index' && count($templatelite.get) == 0}{$featured}{/if}

The Featured module has a nearly identical admin interface to the Featurify module. Admins can log in to the admin area and then navigate to a page where it displays your current featured news items. If you want to remove a news item you can easily edit or delete it, or if you don't have any you can click on the button to "Add Featured News". See the attached screenshots for examples.

The module is set to only grab the latest 4 news items from your Featured News list. The most recent item will be used to display the first news article with a larger image, while the second, third and fourth most recent article appear with a smaller thumbnail.

The template file used for this module ( /modules/featured/templates/featured.tpl ) has been designed to work with the new Arthemia Pligg template. If you are using another template you will want to customize this file to make it look better in your own template. You can also make some small tweaks to the file to change how many stories you want to appear, how many characters the smaller stories get in their descriptions before being cut off and other cosmetic changes.

Lastly, make sure that you CHMOD 0777 the /modules/featured/phpthumb/cache/ directory to ensure that thumbnails are able to be added to that folder.

Credits
CMStheme for his Featurify module.
phpthumb for generating and caching image thumbnails

[pligg_mz]

Hi,

Do I need to add "{if $pagename == 'index' && count($templatelite.get) == 0}{$featured}{/if}
" in to my index_center.tpl manually if I'm using Arthemia as a template?

thank you =)

[bugman_w]

Hi,
this module looks really nice. I was wondering if it is possible to link this to top stories, so that the most popular 4 would be always displayed automatically?

[Yankidank]

Originally Posted by bugman_w

Hi,
this module looks really nice. I was wondering if it is possible to link this to top stories, so that the most popular 4 would be always displayed automatically?

No, the module is not designed to work that way. You could accomplish that type of feature through the Pligg template itself without any additional modules or hacks. If you look at the source code for this module's template it might give you an idea as to how to accomplish that.

[WareWolf]

thxxxxxxxxxxxxx

[axeladam]

I did just the like image logo like it wants to load on my main page but I also noticed that it is trying to pull the image from a place its not from:

/templates/wistie/images/headline.png

instead of

module.php?module=featured&action=view_image&id=2

Where in the your code does it call up the image to show.. Maybe it is calling on the wrong path. I am not sure.

Thanks!

[lowster11]

Originally Posted by sulong

Who is perfect to use this module? demo link ，thx ！

works 4 me

[zacklk]

i was using this module around 1 month now.. it was working fine.. but now i found a problem when i use it with google chrome. just when i load the site all videos start to play sounds (audio only). i mean even with out clicking the video play button. just the time i load the site. can anyone help me to fix this problem. thank you.

[Yankidank]

I don't think this is related to the Featured News Module, unless you are embedding the videos using that module. Either way you should look at this post which discusses disabling auto play for the Video Plus module.

[oobie11]

I'm having a few problems.

First, it isn't link to the featured css file. Do I have to manually link it in <head>?

Second, there is no featured.png in the images folder. Is there suppose to be?

Thanks

[lowster11]

Originally Posted by oobie11

Second, there is no featured.png in the images folder. Is there suppose to be?

Thanks

Here you go:



you can copy the image from here:

http://916sac.com/twitpics/featured.png