Changing the Exhibit Builder 3 summary/start page

[Mike Hagedon]

Hi all,

This is my first post in omeka-dev; I hope I'm in the right place! 

We would like our exhibit creators to be able to choose the start page of an exhibit. We find the default summary page to be a bit too inflexible, especially because whatever description we enter for the exhibit gets displayed both on the Browse Exhibits page and as the first page of the exhibit. Maybe we're using EB3 incorrectly, but that doesn't really work for us -- on Browse Exhibits we'd want a short blurb about the exhibit, and on the summary page we'd want a longer intro. I don't want to do this at the theme layer because I want our users to be able to do it themselves.

I'm thinking of solving this in one of two ways:

1. Create a plugin to map exhibits to their start pages. By default it would use the summary page, but the exhibit creator could choose a different page in the exhibit to start with, effectively hiding the summary page. It would be nice if the UI for this could attach to ExhibitsController::editAction(), but I'm not sure ExhibitBuilder is that flexible. It may have to be another controller linked from the admin nav.
   
2. Fork ExhibitBuilder to do this and submit a pull request.
   

So my question is: would this be something that the EB authors would accept into core if I followed #2? Of course, I realize that would also be dependent on the quality of the code.

Or, alternatively, if there's a better approach I'm open to hearing about it.

Thanks!

Mike

[John Flatness]

Doing this as a change to Exhibit Builder itself seems like the better,
easier, and more useful path.

The easy, 80% solution would just be a simple flag/checkbox for whether
to show the summary page. That flag could be a simple option for the
plugin itself (so it would apply to all exhibits), or with slightly more
complexity an option for each exhibit separately. If you turned the
summary page off, the exhibit "show" link would just go straight to the
first page in the exhibit.

You could extend that by allowing the user to pick any start page, as
you said, but I think the great majority of users would have the "start"
page be the same as the first page.

-John

On 1/13/2015 3:21 PM, Mike Hagedon wrote:
> Hi all,
> This is my first post in omeka-dev; I hope I'm in the right place!
>
> We would like our exhibit creators to be able to choose the start page
> of an exhibit. We find the default summary page to be a bit too
> inflexible, especially because whatever description we enter for the
> exhibit gets displayed both on the Browse Exhibits page and as the first
> page of the exhibit. Maybe we're using EB3 incorrectly, but that doesn't
> really work for us -- on Browse Exhibits we'd want a short blurb about
> the exhibit, and on the summary page we'd want a longer intro. I don't
> want to do this at the theme layer because I want our users to be able
> to do it themselves.
>
> I'm thinking of solving this in one of two ways:
>

> 1. Create a plugin to map exhibits to their start pages. By default it

> would use the summary page, but the exhibit creator could choose a
> different page in the exhibit to start with, effectively hiding the
> summary page. It would be nice if the UI for this could attach to
> ExhibitsController::editAction(), but I'm not sure ExhibitBuilder is
> that flexible. It may have to be another controller linked from the
> admin nav.

> 2. Fork ExhibitBuilder to do this and submit a pull request.

>
> So my question is: would this be something that the EB authors would
> accept into core if I followed #2? Of course, I realize that would also
> be dependent on the quality of the code.
>
> Or, alternatively, if there's a better approach I'm open to hearing
> about it.
>
> Thanks!
> Mike
>

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[Mike Hagedon]

Thanks, John!

Doing this as a change to Exhibit Builder itself seems like the better,
easier, and more useful path.

Unless you say otherwise, I'll take that a potential yes to the question about accepting it into core. :-)

 

The easy, 80% solution would just be a simple flag/checkbox for whether
to show the summary page. That flag could be a simple option for the
plugin itself (so it would apply to all exhibits), or with slightly more
complexity an option for each exhibit separately. If you turned the
summary page off, the exhibit "show" link would just go straight to the
first page in the exhibit.

You could extend that by allowing the user to pick any start page, as
you said, but I think the great majority of users would have the "start"
page be the same as the first page. 

Ah, excellent point. I like the simplicity of that and, yes, in our case (so far) the start page would always be the first page. Seems like most people would be in the same situation.

I'm sure I'll be back with questions -- I've never used Zend Framework, but I have worked with Symfony2, CakePHP, and Drupal.

Thanks again!

Mike

[Mike Hagedon]

Here's a first stab... I'll probably submit a pull request tomorrow. If I've done something way off base, I'm open to suggestions!

https://github.com/ualibraries/plugin-ExhibitBuilder/commit/9cb952441b61cf455304fe597e7b173cdbe068cc

[Mike Hagedon]

Now that the pull request has been accepted (thanks!), a member of my team suggested better wording for the setting, which should probably also affect the database field name and flip the meaning of the boolean. Something like (default off):

Start on the first exhibit page [_] Show the first exhibit page instead of the description and credits.

I like that better, but would submitting another pull request cause too much trouble at this point? Do others think that makes more sense? The setting as it stands in master is (default on):

Use Summary Page? [x] Start the exhibit on the summary page. If unchecked, start on the first exhibit page if it exists.

[John Flatness]

I think the existing text, from the first pull request, is "good enough,
and I'd prefer not to merge another change that just reverses the
polarity of it.

Minor wordsmithing that preserves the checked/unchecked behavior as-is
would be welcome, but I'm not sure it's really needed.

-John

On 01/28/2015 12:33 PM, Mike Hagedon wrote:
> Now that the pull request has been accepted (thanks!), a member of my
> team suggested better wording for the setting, which should probably
> also affect the database field name and flip the meaning of the boolean.
> Something like (default off):
>

> *Start on the first exhibit page* [_] Show the first exhibit page

> instead of the description and credits.
>
> I like that better, but would submitting another pull request cause too
> much trouble at this point? Do others think that makes more sense? The
> setting as it stands in master is (default on):
>

> *Use Summary Page?* [x] Start the exhibit on the summary page. If

[Mike Hagedon]

OK, thanks for considering!