MC Two category columns code complete

Ultimate goal; two columns on front page which show the two categories side by side.

Present changes; This was an involved process that was constructed with several separate coding processes.

Two css files were altered;

- style.css has been adjusted with a new leftcoltwo and stories_two value, allowing the pages to fit together.

templates/oioioi/pligg.tpl was altered with the following code, to create a loop that constructed as many columns as categories.

{if $pagename eq "submit"}

{elseif $pagename eq "index" } if index page

{section name=thecat loop=$cat_array start=$start} starts a loop; one loop for each catagory

[div id="leftcoltwo"] uses the leftcoltwo values for thinner columns

{if $pagename eq "group_story"}

[div id="group_navbar"][/div]

{/if}

{checkActionsTpl location="tpl_pligg_content_start"}

{checkActionsTpl location="tpl_pligg_above_center"}

{include file="wistie/index_center_index.tpl"}

{checkActionsTpl location="tpl_pligg_below_center"}

{checkActionsTpl location="tpl_pligg_content_end"}

[/div]

{/section}

A series of if-else loops were added to index_center.tpl to connect to different link summary output functions to link to different link_summery.tpl files

{if $cat_array[thecat].name eq 'News'}

{$news_link_summary_output}

{else}

{if $cat_array[thecat].name eq 'Opinion'}

{$opinion_link_summary_output}

{else}

{$link_summary_output}

{/if}

{/if}

From here, I had to modify libs/link_summary.php, libs/link.php and templates/oioioi/link_summery.tpl to individualize the index page columns without altering the rest of the site.

I added new functions to libs/link_summary.php to call separate functions from libs/link.php

$news_link_summary_output .= $link-> print_news_summary('summary', true);

$opinion_link_summary_output .= $link-> print_opinion_summary('summary', true);

and added control functions to allow feedback from the index.php file

if(isset($fetch_news_link_summary) && $fetch_news_link_summary == true){

$main_smarty->assign('news_link_summary_output', $news_link_summary_output);

} else {

echo $news_link_summary_output;

}

if(isset($fetch_opinion_link_summary) && $fetch_opinion_link_summary == true){

$main_smarty->assign('opinion_link_summary_output', $opinion_link_summary_output);

} else {

echo $opinion_link_summary_output;

}

In libs/link.php I copied the function print_summary which calls templates/oioioi/link_summery.tpl. These were;

print_news_summary altered to link to link_summary_news.tpl

print_opinion_summary altered to link to link_summary_opinion.tpl

To allow feedback from index.php, I had to adding new code

$fetch_news_link_summary = true;

$fetch_opinion_link_summary = true;

Finally, two copies of templates/oioioi/link_summery.tpl were created; link_summary_opinion.tpl and link_summary_news.tpl. These two new files had if-else loops added at the start of the file and the div class was changed to stories_two for the thinner columns;

{if $link_category eq "News"} Inserted code that activates if link_category is News

This resulted in three files;

link_summary.tpl -standard

link_summary_news.tpl -news only

link_summary_opinion.tpl -opinion only