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TILING CONFIGURATION VARIABLES
There are more configuration variables that deal with tiling than one might at first suspect.
This is due to the fact that there are 3 main branches to format in the public pages, and there are several different components in each that might be tiled (latest reviews, featured items, and so on). I find that even I cannot remember which configuration variables do what half the time. That being the case, the creation of this tutorial became pretty much a necessity for those hoping to make use of the tiling options.
If you decide to change any of the values associated with the configuration variables discussed on this page, you must also re-publish the CSS style sheets for Red Queen, once you have saved the new configuration valies. The re-publishing of the style sheets is performed each time you save variables from the Configure > Skin Style / Colors control panel.
Latest Reviews
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There is an option to include latest reviews on the top-most page of categories, teams, and yellowpages. Until Red Queen version 2.04 this option allowed you to include latest reviews formatted as a vertical column that lived on the left or right side of the page. As of version 2.04 you can present these latest reviews in an alternative tiled format. In this case they appear in the middle of the page in one or more rows.
An example of latest reviews in the tiled format is shown to the right. The configuration variables to effect the appearance of latest reviews in the filed format are to be found in the General Layout Settings section of the Configure > Build / Browse control panel. To start with, if you do NOT want latest reviews to appear at all, use the following configuration values to disable latest reviews in all 3 branches: Category, Team, and Yellowpage (note the use of a zero-length list): |
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To enable the appearance of latest reviews as a vertically-formatted side panel, just use a non-zero length for the list. To enable tiled latest reviews, use the following configuration:
Note that in order to have tiled latest reviews you MUST select the compact format for presenting latest reviews (the detailed is a wide format that is not appropriate for tiling). When these configuration settings are selected, tiled latest reviews are available for all 3 branches.
The last variable shown here controls the number of rows of latest review tiles.Next, we consider the available options to change the appearance of the tiles. These configuration variables affect all 3 branches and apply whether we are talking about latest reviews, featured things (items, members, or suppliers), or latest things:
We can see here that the rounded corners option has been selected. In this case a small image is placed at each of the 4 corners of the tile. There are 2 alternative sets of images that might be used here, and the set that is selected depends solely on the value of the variable browse_tiled_border_width. If the border width is the thicker value of 2, the set of corner images with the thicker curved border is used. Otherwise the images with the thin curved border will be used. You will find more information about these corner images later in this tutorial.
Because the number of tiles that are to be used in a row might need to differ, depending on whether the row appears on the top-most category, team, or yellowpages (as opposed to the pages these link to), there are 2 variables here that control the number of tiles per row for tiled latest reviews (likewise for tiled latest items, and so on).
As of 2.04 it is also possible to place latest reviews on a per category/team/yellowpage basis. Currently these are the options, one for each of the 3 branches (in this case the tiled format must have also been selected for latest reviews). These variables are found, respectively, in the Category Item Layout Settings, Team Member Layout Settings, and Yellowpage Supplier Layout Settings sections:
Another pair of important variables controlling the appearance of tiles are these 2:
These 2 variables, controlling the physical size of tiles, and the spacing between them, should be carefully set. Likely you will need to experiment a little to get the optimal values. Too wide and a row of tiles will stretch beyond the expected boundaries of the page and upset the formatting of the entire page. Too small, and you will be left with excess white space on either side of your tiled rows.
These 2 variables are generic and apply to ALL tiled records, regardless of the type of record, or where it appears on the public pages.
Scope
If you enable Latest Reviews in the tiled mode, each successive page in the container will display the next N latest reviews, until the list of reviews is exhausted for that container. Ultimately, when you have enough reviews collected, every page will have Latest Reviews displayed on it.
Latest ThingsAt the risk of being repetitive, I will spell out the configuration variables that relate to tiling for latest items, latest members, and latest suppliers. These are analogous to the corresponding variables for latest reviews. An example of the tiled latest thing format is shown to the right. Once again, the relevant configuration variables are found in the General Layout Settings section of the Configure > Build / Browse control panel. As was the case for latest reviews, if you do NOT want latest items, members, or suppliers, to appear at all, use the following configuration values to disable these in all 3 branches: |
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Of course, you wouldn't be reading this section if you didn't want to enable tiling for latest things, so here's the setup you are looking for:
As of 2.04 it is also possible to place latest things on a per category/team/yellowpage basis. Currently these are the options, one for each of the 3 branches (in this case the tiled format must have also been selected for latest things). These variables are found, respectively, in the Category Item Layout Settings, Team Member Layout Settings, and Yellowpage Supplier Layout Settings sections:
Scope
If you enable Latest Things in the tiled mode, each successive page in the container will display the next N latest things, until the list of things is exhausted for that container. But this exhausting of Latest Things can only happen if you present more Latest Things per page than the default number of things that normally appear on any one page in the container. But you're not likely to set things up that way, so you can expect to see unique Latest Things on every page.
Latest Members Joined
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A variation on the latest things option, is the option to add latest members joined. This differs from the latest members option in that the latter case applies to members of who have been placed into one or more teams. This is not the case for latest members joined, where the members who appear are simply the most recently registered members. Usually webmasters do not activate teams, so this teamless option was added in response to requests to show the latest members to join the site.
Here is the configuration to disable latest members joined: |
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And here is the configuration to add latest members joined in the tiled format:
Scope
Note that latest members joined appear ONLY on the top-most page of teams. This is because the focus for team pages is members of the current team.
Featured ThingsFeatured things are just like latest things, except that the condition for selection is that the stickiness column of the Item, Member, or Supplier table needs to be populated. The higher the stickiness value, the higher the thing appears in the list of featured things.Thus if the Item.stickiness value is 53 for Item A, 16 for Item B, and 88 for Item C, then these three items would appear in the Featured Items list in the order: C, A, B. An example of a tiled featured thing is shown on the right. In practice you might have several of these tiles appearing on the page. Things are featured when you want to draw attention to them. Maybe you run an affiliate site and want to promote the best-selling items. Once again, if you do NOT want featured items, members, or suppliers, to appear at all, use the following configuration values to disable these in all 3 branches: |
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To enable tiling for featured things:
As of 2.04 it is also possible to place featured things on a per category/team/yellowpage basis. Currently these are the options, one for each of the 3 branches (in this case the tiled format must have also been selected for featured things). These variables are found, respectively, in the Category Item Layout Settings, Team Member Layout Settings, and Yellowpage Supplier Layout Settings sections:
Scope
When you enable Featured Things in the tiled mode, each successive page in a container will display the next N featured things, until that list of things is exhausted for that container. Because normally you will only feature a fraction of the available things in any given container, you can expect the list of Featured Things to exhaust fairly quickly. If you don't want that to happen, you will have to assign a stickiness value to M things in a given container, where M is the product of P = the number of pages in a container, and F = the number of displayed Featured Things per page. If you keep F low, like 2, it isn't too hard to ensure you have enough featured things to span all pages in your container. If the list is exhausted by the time a particular page is displayed, the list simply won't appear.
Top Rated Things
One popular request I have received is the option to display the top rated items, members, or suppliers from a given category, team, or yellowpage. These records are analogous to the featured things of the previous section in that they are formatted the same way, but instead of being ordered by the stickiness column, the records are ordered by the average rating, as determined by averaging the rating attributes for a given category, team, or yellowpage.
Don't expect to see top rated things displayed on the topmost page of a given item, member, or yellowpage branch, where there is no specified category, team, or yellowpage. You'll have to visit a particular category, team, or yellowpage in order to see top rated things on display.
Configuration variables for these top rated things are entirely analogous to the variables for i>featured things. If you do NOT want top rated items, members, or suppliers, to appear at all, use the following configuration values to disable these in all 3 branches:
To enable tiling for top rated things:
As mentioned before, and as of 2.04, top rated things appear exclusively on a per category/team/yellowpage basis. As for featured things, you are free to switch off top rated things. Currently these are the options, one for each of the 3 branches (in this case the tiled format must have also been selected for top rated things). These variables are found, respectively, in the Category Item Layout Settings, Team Member Layout Settings, and Yellowpage Supplier Layout Settings sections:
Scope
When you enable Top Rated Things in the tiled mode, each successive page in a container will display the next N top rated things.
Things In Containers
It is easy to imagine that there might be subject types for which it is preferrable to present the category, team, or yellowpage listings in tiled format rather than the standard vertical listing. For example, the team pages, when tiled present something of a facebook type presentation. The default setup is to present avatars here, but it is an easy adjustment to show member images instead.
Likewise, any subject that revolves around an image may be suitable to the tiled format, where the thumbnailed image gives life to the tiles and utilizes the real estate of the page in a rather efficient manner.
Here's an example where we look at Escher's work in the area of regular division of the plane, known as tessellation:
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The configuration variables that control the tiling in each of the 3 container types--category, team, and yellowpage--are exactly analogous to one another and differ only in the container type and thing type that appears in the variable names. Therefore the options which control tiling in categories only will be spelled out in detail here.
The configuration variables discussed here for categories are found in the Category Item Layout Settings section of the Configure > Build / Browse control panel.
To disable tiling altogether in categories, use the following configuration:
To switch it on, use something like the following, which selects tiling with 6 rows of tiles per page, 3 records to a row:
Overriding The Default Tiles Per Row
You can override the specified number of tiles per row on a per-container basis if you need to. For instance, if your items are locations, say, you might have zipcodes associated with most of them and your categories might be geographically based, so that all items in a category are close to one another. In that case you might be adding a Google Map to those category pages (see the relevant tutorial on the subject:
How To Add Google Maps To Your Review Site). But you might have some categories for which you are not adding zipcodes, and no Google Map is appearing on the page. In those categories you might want to add more tiles per row, say 4 rather than 3. You can specify the number of tiles per row for a particular category, team, or yellowpage, by assigning a value to the tiles_per_rows column in the Category, Team, or Yellowpage table. Unless this column has a non-zero integer value it will be ignored, and the relevant configuration value will be used instead.
Things Ordered Alphabetically
In the case of members, or suppliers, as opposed to items for which it is not available, an alphabetic listing is also possible. In this case, where members or suppliers are grouped by the first character of the name by which they are known, there is a specific configuration variable that specifies the number of alphabetically ordered records per row. These 2 extra variables (one for each of the 2 branches) are necessary because, for example, there may be more room to position records which are not part of any geographically based team or yellowpage (which might have to squeeze onto the page, to the right of the records, a Google Map which slides up and down the page). You might, therefore, wish to display more records per row on an alphabetically ordered page.
The variables controlling the number of tiles per row for members and for suppliers are shown below:
Things In Search Results
Just as you can tiled records in categories, teams, and yellowpages, you can also elect to tile the records of an item, member, or supplier search. Separate variables control tiling for each of the 3 search types. Here are the configuration variables that pertain to tiling records obtained from an Item search:
Note that to find these variables you need to pull up the Configure > Search control panel. The formatted records look almost identical to the corresponding tiled records seen when browsing categories, teams, or yellowpages.
Next Section: TILING IN SSI CALLS
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