New Article Listing in the Admin Interface

FIRST DRAFT

The front end options for listing articles in Campsite are among the best (if not THE best) in terms of CMSs. The advanced search options also offer many additional options to sort articles. And yet the backend has only the basic article listing for each section.

Let’s try to develop this on the example of a listing of articles from an entire Publication (let’s say we’ll put it as, possibly default, option on the home page). Then we can see what can be ported to other levels.

Aims:

1. Provide a “super navigation” level – i.e. allow users to bypass the default sorting of articles in the backend (Publication–Issue–Section)
2. Efficient article search
3. Better global overview of article properties (e.g. see all articles with the “On Front Page” switch in the whole issue)
4. Easily perform actions on multiple articles regardless of their location on the Campsite content tree

Proposed new functionality:

1. New navigation header:
   • Breadcrumb navigation consisting of dropdowns for Publication (create default property in Publication settings? Or regulate that in individual user prefs?), Issue (defaults to most recent), Section. All dropdowns include option “All”
   • Filters: Creator, Author, Type, Language, Status, Topic, Date range (Created, Last Modified, Published). Use the logic from the current Section article list screen for default values of the filters (where applicable).
   • Search Box: full-text search based on constraints specified in Breadcrumb navigation and filters
     • Checkbox – ignore navigation and filter constraints (“Search All”)
2. Actions menu: Use the one from the current Section Article list (consider saving space by making a select all/none toggle in the first column of the article list)
3. Add a Date column (togglable header: Created, Last Modified, Published)
4. Clickable column headers for sorting (alphabetical or by number: Name, Author, Creator, Date, Status, Reads, Comments)
5. Activate the following cells in the table
   • Toggle On Front Page
   • Toggle On Section Page
   • Toggle Status
   • Allow Topic modification (on click on the number, invoke the Topic editing AJAX pane)
   • Consider similar functionality for Images
6. Allow for display custom switches, numeric field values (figure out how and when)
7. Change the Images header to allow for other types of multimedia (e.g. Video, Audio, Maps, Slideshows, Attachments) — think of a smart non-geeky name. Or list each category separately???
8. Pagination: standard Campsite list pagination with additional options to display XX items (and show all???? — maybe limit this to something reasonable)

We will also need to create a global configuration interface for this listing, allowing the Campsite administrator to select the columns (ANY OTHER ELEMENTS?) that will be displayed in the article list.

Search / Browse behaviour for the articles

The search / browse behaviour should follow the delicious.com workings. This roughly means: each selection narrows down the search immediately. Given the campsite structure, there are (as described above) different ways of narrowing down the search: article types, keywords, language, author etc. When going to the interface, the first appearance should show *all* articles, similar to the click on delicious to browse tags, where all articles are shown:

http://delicious.com/?view=tags

Then (at delicious) clicking on a tag narrows down the world, e.g.: http://delicious.com/tag/beatles and by tpying more tags, it narows down more and more, like here: http://delicious.com/tag/beatles+digital+remastering

in the case of Campsite, the narrowing down is not done by tags, but by all labels (like author, article type, also full text search etc.) these can be typed into input fields available for each label. Then the list will be narrowed down and possibly clustered like with delicious. i don’t know what this could look like, but some labels might be listed with the results and can be clicked to add to the narrowing down of the search / browse.

FOR DISCUSSION:

• Consider applicability to other levels of navigation…
• Or make it the one and only listing, with the Campsite main navigation menu only offering a customized view of this “Universal listing” (e.g. if you navigate to Publication: The Custodian, Issue 345, Section: Sports via the main menu, you’d get this list where breadcrumb dropdowns would default to those values, i.e. The Custodian–>Issue 345–>Sports. If the “One and Only” option is feasible/makes sense, this would allow for easier writing of possible widgets for a possible widgetized Home (perhaps we should rename it to Dashboard)… or enable us to create alternative UIs to accommodate different types of content structuring (e.g. only one issue forever, single section, topics used for structuring…)

FOR A REMINDER WHERE WE ARE COMING FROM: