Getting the dashboard to work.... [#43038]

I came across the Dashboard module after talking to a colleague about the way I want to design my front page, and have started trying it out, but have run into a few problems. I'd be grateful for some help.

I'm using Drupal 4.6.2, the phptemplate engine, and a slightly modified version of the box_grey theme (though I've also tried on the box_grey theme itself and get the same problem as described below). I have blocks on both left and right of the theme.

I'm trying to achieve a similar effect to the front page of http://www.assignblame.com as follows:
- top section: articles that are sticky and promoted
- left and right section: articles that are not sticky and are promoted; the articles will be sorted by user (ie the publisher) with a title for each publisher

Each article will appear on the dashboard as the Title only, the Title linking to the node page.

If there are no "sticky" articles then the top section does not appear at all.

I have done a very basic dashboard, using the "Placing a list of node teasers in a panel" example (by the way, there seems to be an error in this example: the "right section" should include "global $rightList;" or it will not work).

I have not included a "dashboard name", nor have I modified the default dashboard CSS in any way.

Here are my problems:

1) In Firefox, this displays correctly in two columns. In IE6 however, the right section appears to the left, below the left one.

2) To put the dashboard on the front page, I used the site "settings" to set the dashboard node as the front page. But how do I get rid of the node title and breadcrumbs in this case? Do I need to alter my theme?

Thanks for the help

Comments

Comment #1

Vidarls CreditAttribution: Vidarls commented 2 January 2006 at 15:16

Priority:

Critical

» Normal

1. This is a css issue, you need to adjust the width of the two coloumns so that they are small enough for them to be besides each other. Somehow 1px in Firefox is not the same as 1px in M$ IE.. So you have to eperiment with your css until you find some settings that work on both browsers. An alternativie is to use tables.

2. In the dashboard.module look for a function named dashboard_menu.
find the $item for the frontpage page, and set $item[]['name'] = '' (nothing / empty)
as for breadcrumbs, you'll have to hope someone else has the solution.

-olegu
http://www.zbz5.net/

Comment #2

merlinofchaos CreditAttribution: merlinofchaos commented 2 January 2006 at 17:23

Assigned:

Unassigned

» merlinofchaos

1) In Firefox, this displays correctly in two columns. In IE6 however, the right section appears to the left, below the left one.

Fun! The answer is to look in the modules directory at dashboard.css. You'll see entries for 'left', 'middle', and 'right.'. In your style.css, you can override these entries. You can change the 'width' entries all you like. I would most likely just drop the middle by 1%, which will give a little extra room so that IE won't wrap the silly boxes.

2) To put the dashboard on the front page, I used the site "settings" to set the dashboard node as the front page. But how do I get rid of the node title and breadcrumbs in this case? Do I need to alter my theme?

My usual solution is to copy node.tpl.php to node-dashboard.tpl.php.

Edit this file and remove everything except the content. You might put an 'if' statement before the breadcrumb--sometimes you'll want the breadcrumb, just not on the front page. It would look something like this:

if (!arg(0)) print $breadcrumb;

Comment #3

icenogle CreditAttribution: icenogle commented 2 January 2006 at 22:01

Version:

4.6.x-1.x-dev

» 4.7.x-1.x-dev

I had the dashboard working for me in 4.6, and I'm trying now to get it to work in 4.7.

For some reason, I'm unable to get the content to save. That is, when I type any kind of content into one of the dashboard panels, I can preview it, but I can't see it after I submit it. When I go back to edit the dashboard, the content isn't there (either PHP or html.)

It seems like I had this problem at one point with 4.6, but I can't for the life of me remember what the answer was.

Suggestions?

Comment #4

merlinofchaos CreditAttribution: merlinofchaos commented 2 January 2006 at 22:07

Version:

4.7.x-1.x-dev

» 4.6.x-1.x-dev

Create new support requests rather than taking over other ones, please. =)

As for what's wrong: I'm not sure. I'm running dashboard in current 4.7 out of CVS and it's working okay.

The first thing you should do is look in your HTTP error log and see if it had a problem writing the SQL to the database.

Comment #5

merlinofchaos CreditAttribution: merlinofchaos commented 19 January 2006 at 19:14

Status:

Active

» Fixed

I think this can be marked fixed now that it's been muddled and confused =)

Comment #6

(not verified) CreditAttribution: commented 2 February 2006 at 19:31

Status:

Fixed

» Closed (fixed)

Comment #7

thall CreditAttribution: thall commented 31 May 2006 at 11:44

Version:	4.6.x-1.x-dev	» 4.7.x-1.x-dev
Status:	Closed (fixed)	» Active

I'm still pretty new to Drupal and the Dashboard Module. Could you please clarify in detail how to get rid of the node title and breadcrumbs? Any additional help you can provide will be greatly appreciated.