Hi,

I am trying to get Announcment to optionally link to an external URL, a Page within this site or to a File within this site. Article does not jump to external page/link it just continues it just shows the detail page with same summary of article - despite link to setting being made. Could you please assist?

Cheers
Brian Mann
Melbourne. Australia

I have seen a previous post try and do a similar thing and link to a file and just receive the detail page. The answer there was to use [READMORELINK] instead of default template [DETAILLINK] - does this mean the module does not dynamically accept both and I can't have mixed articles with detaillink and external file/web links? Is there a generic [LINK] token that can allows for both methods in the one display?

Brian Mann
Melbourne. Australia

Brian,

[READMORE] link is the link to the attached file, or external link which you supplied when you enter the article information. (in your case, it is dynamically link to either file or an external link)

[DETAILLINK] is the link to the article detail page, which renders data according to the Detail template.

It maybe a little misleading, we will try to enhance the tokens in the future release..

Thanks for the quick reply. So you are effectively saying I have to choose between ether showing all articles that are detail links or all articles that are external link/page - because I can only use one template/layouy? I that correct?. Its just a bit hard to have a normal user/adminstrator understand this if they are maintaining a combination of articles that are both their own press releases (detaillink) and "ëxternal media" stories that are readmore links.

Cheers
Brian Mann

No, in this case. you always use a DETAILLINK, to view the details of the article.

In the detail template, you provide the link such as READMORE to link to external site, or internal attachments.

It is transparent to the user once you configured the template.

If I'm using the [READMORE] token and I'm linking to a file on my site (PDF), how can I make it open in a new browser window? Right now it is linking to the PDF file but in the same window. I tried to change the options and wrote:

[READMORE|<a target='_blank' href="{0}">read more...</a>| ]

- but it doesn't work. Target='_blank' is not even generated in the code of the page if i click the 'view source'.

Please advice. Thanks!

Hi, you can use it this way instead:

[READMORELINK|<a target='_blank' href="{0}">read more...</a>]

I found adding some javascript in the header and then calling it in the item template works good to:


In the Header:

<script type="text/javascript">
function GoToURL(j) {
window.location.href = j;
}
function linkMaker(link1,link2)
{
if (link1 != '') {
GoToURL(link1);
}
else
{
GoToURL(link2);
}
}
</script>

In the Item Template:

<TR >
<TD valign="top" width="100%">
<div>[EDIT]<b>
<a href="javascript:linkMaker('[READMORELINK]','[DETAILLINK2]');">[TITLE]</a>
</b></div>
</TD>
</tr>

Ben,

Great to see you are fully exploiting the flexibility of the Template based view options!

Just to recap then, it is not possible to have the titles or "read more..." links in the summary page link directly to an external URL? The user will have to click "read more..." to view the detail, and then click another link on the detail page to go the the external address?

I don't see the point of the "Link" option if this is the case. I can easily put my own link in the description of the article.

You can try to put the token in your template at View Options: [READMORE]

Right, but as Brian already pointed out, you don't have the option to use different templates for different articles. So if I change my template, all my articles which don't link to an external URL will be broken.

Ben's javascript workaround provides a nifty solution to the problem, of course, but I was surprised that this was necessary, that's all.

OK, we shall take care of that.