Module development and code questions

I've created a module (my first) that I have started using called "mypage". Every user can select the taxonomy terms he/she reads, and then they are combined into one page which can be accessed at "?q=mypage/view". This lets you provide users with a "personal" page.

Under the covers, all the module does is create a "taxonomy/view/or/1,3,7,16" page. However, the user's subscriptions are saved in the database and therefore get persisted.

Additionally, the simpler URL makes sense to unsophisticated users who don't know anything about taxonomies.

There are two pages total... "build my page" and "view my page". The "build" page displays all taxonomies and terms in a tree, with a checkbox next to each. The user simply checks the ones he/she wants and the selections get saved. The "view" page looks up the chosen terms and creates a customized page.

The module also allows customized RSS feeds. Since feeds are requested by users who aren't logged in, getting a feed requires a username in the URL: "?q=mypage/feed/jsmith"

It seems this would work best for intranet sites or sites with mostly internal users. A marketing employee in Los Angeles wants to see nodes related to marketing and Los Angeles, but does not want to see all the nodes directed to the finance department, or the Chicago sales staff. This person may also want to receive info about the company's softball team but not its wine-tasting club. This module makes that type of filtering very easy.

I'm in the process of working on a module which requires some additional information within xtemplate. In order to do this I created some additional functions within xtemplate which grab information from the database. From there I added the information to xtemplate using the assign( ) and parse( ) functions (read about this here). As a result I'm able to view the page as an administrator, but when I view the page as an anonymous user I get and error message that says, "You are not authorized to access this page." Here is my code.

I would really appreciate your help in figuring this out. Below are a few questions and observations that I've made about Xtemplate.

Questions:

1. Can xtemplate make calls to the database without running into permission errors?
2. How is it that xtemplate can use variable_get( ) to pull information from the variable table without generating any errors?
3. What initiates xtemplate and provides the functions within xtemplate with the necessary parameters (variables, and objects)?

In other words, is it possible for an anonymous user to view a page using xtemplate, when xtemplate has been modified to include additional calls to the database? I have made such changes to the xtemplate.theme file and I'm running into permission errors. I'm wondering if it's due to the fact that anonymous users may not have access to the database and therefore access is being denied.

I've customised my own version of the story module and want to restrict read access to this module depending on their role. I've looked in /admin/user/permission and am unable to restrict read access to this module, is there anything that i could do to get around this please?

Cheers
Kam

I've uploaded a preview release of my Email Newsletter module to my sandbox.

WARNING: This is a work in progress, it should not be used except for testing purposes, don't use this on an active site.

This module creates email newsletters based on selected terms from the site's taxonomy. Subscribers can then filter which of these terms they would like to receive news about. On send out, the module personalises the email and includes only nodes that the Admin has allowed, and the subscriber has selected.

Once you've installed the module, and run the SQL to create the database tables that it uses, you will need some test users:

1.) Create a new role
2.) Give the new role permission to subscribe to newsletters
3.) Create new test users, with email addresses that will come back to you, assign these users with the new role you just created.

OK, now you're ready to create a newsletter, under Administration, look for the "Email Newsletters" menu.

Create a new newsletter.

Log in as each of your test users, under "My Account", "Email Newsletter", subscribe to the newsletter(s), edit which content you would like to receive.

As Administrator you are now ready to send....

Make sure you have a few nodes in the taxonomy terms you've selected for your newsletter(s).

Go to the newsletter you want to send, click "send now", enter a date range for the nodes you want to send (their creation dates), click 'Send".

Hi,

I'm new at all this and I'm working on the navigation module from release 4.4.1

I'd like to have the links displayed in a table like here (this is the hand coded site, nothing dynamic) AIESME.org rather than as a tab separated list as here Dev site

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

see the title