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Dream Portal

Started by Dream Portal Team, October 03, 2012, 03:39:47 AM

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Dream Portal Team

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NOTE: The Dream Portal Team grants permission to redistribute, an unmodified version, of Dream Portal to:  SM and SMF.

Current Version: 1.1
Campatiability: SMF 2.0+
Official Site: http://dream-portal.net
For Support & Extensions: http://dream-portal.net/index.php/board,68.0.html
Additional Info:  This package automatically includes bug fixes from Dream Portal 1.1 Update Packs #1 through #7.
FYI: Some pictures that represent Dream Portal may require certain extensions (templates, and/or modules) in order for you to display your pages in the exact same manner.

What Is Dream Portal?
Dream Portal is a modification for Simple Machines Forum that turns your forum into a full-fledged portal. It comes, fully equipped, with a Homepage, Dream Menu (Menu Manager), Dream Layouts (Layouts Manager), Dream Pages (Page Manager), and an Extensions Manager. The blocks of content are called "Modules" which can be installed/uninstalled at your convenience.  Dream Portal is easy enough for newbies, and advanced enough for experts.

The Core Features Of Dream Portal
At first glance the standard features of Dream Portal may seem the same as other portals, but they are designed differently and managed very differently. The core features include:

  • General: Information section lets you know if you are using the current version of Dream Portal, displays the credits ofcourse, as well as the DP 1.1 License, and DP.net site news.  Configuration section provides the option to remove the Dream Portal copyright from the footer of your SMF Forum for whatever your reasons might be.  In addition, you can disable the Menu Manager (Dream Menu) and Page Manager (Dream Pages) that not only removes the items from user's view, but hides the administration sections as well. This works great in case you ever want to use another Menu Manager or Pages SMF mod instead of Dream Menu and/or Dream Pages.


  • Homepage: as it seems to be the standard nowadays.  Dream Portal offers a "Homepage" that can be disabled at any time, and is managed with the layout manager.


  • Dream Layouts: Utilizing a Drag & Drop feature, you can organize your "Modules" which are blocks of content within sections of the "Layout".  Layouts are not restricted to just certain sections such as a "Top", "Bottom, "Left", and "Right". You can add as many sections as you want to your layout. Each layout can also be specified where it can be shown anywhere on the site, even areas added by other SMF mods.  To fully understand how you can get any URL on your site attached to a layout, and/or to learn how you can create Board Specific Layouts (that show within an entire board, and all of it's topics), please visit the following link where this is discussed:  Getting Your Layout To Only Show Where You Want It


  • Dream Menu: Dream Portal comes with it's own Menu Manager, which allows you to add & remove menu items from your SMF menu. You can even add up to 2 sub-level menu items.  Dream Menu integrates with Dream Pages so that you can even create menu buttons for your Dream Pages.  You have the ability to place Dream Menu in maintenance mode as well in order to build a menu behind the scenes and than just disable maintenance mode when you are ready for the Menu to be live on your site.


  • Dream Pages: Dream Portal also comes with a built-in page manager that can handle BBC, HTML, and PHP output. It features a full permission set such as who can view the page.  It also features a "status" that can be activated and/or deactivated without removing the page.  Ability to place Dream Pages in Maintenance Mode that will allow you to work on the pages behind the scenes and just disable Maintenance Mode when you are ready for the pages to be live on your site.


  • Extend Dream Portal: The Extension Manager is where all extensions to Dream Portal are installed, uninstalled, and/or deleted. These extensions include:


    • Modules: These are blocks of content that are added to a layout. The reason why we call them "Modules" instead of "Blocks" is because they are installed or uninstalled and have settings via module admin that requires no coding skills to operate.  Furthermore, they can take on any shape and blocks refer to a square-looking appearance.  In addition, any module can be "cloned" which means a copy is automatically generated, and the settings can be modified to operate separately from which it was cloned. So for example, if you install the "shoutbox" module, you can clone it, and have as many "shoutbox" modules as you want, with each one having it's own settings.  This applies to all modules.  Many modules offer unique features that support cloning.  For example, a module could be a button, that, when cloned gives you a total Navigation Menu for important areas of your site.  Dream Portal 1.1 now supports Empty Modules, which means that when these modules are enabled, they can break out of the Layout sections and be placed anywhere on your Layouts, anywhere at all!  A good example of an empty module is the Content Flyout Module.


    • Templates: Currently, templates are for modules only.  Adding templates allow you to change the way the module container appears on your forum within your layouts.  Each module has it's own template by default.  Dream Portal comes with only 1 template installed, "Default", but you can add as many as you like that change the way your modules appear within layouts.


    • Languages: Dream Portal translations are packaged up and added through the "Add Languages" sub-section of the Extend Dream Portal DP Admin section.  Uploading a language pack will automatically add in all of the language files needed for Dream Portal to be used in your language.  Module Languages are added within Module Packages separately ofcourse, however, the main Dream Portal language strings will change to reflect the language you are using within SMF if you have that language uploaded via the "Add Languages" section, otherwise, the default, english language will be used.


  • And More: Modules can be collapsed or expanded like other portals, or you can animate the module during collapsing and expanding. Modules can have empty containers, and be displayed "literally" anywhere on the page.  Not to mention that Dream Portal 1.1 has 40+ installable modules, such as: Weather, Blog, Image Galleries, News Sliders, Ad-Manager, Sexy Bookmarks, jQuery animated Calendar Module, Content Flyout, Page Peel, and many many more...

IMPORTANT:  If you have Dream Portal 1.0.x installed, you must fully uninstall it before you upload and install Dream Portal 1.1.  This is because of the vast differences in the database structure between the 2 DP Releases.

Regards,
- The Dream Portal Team
This is the universal account for the Dream Portal Team. All messages sent to this account will be discarded.  Please visit us at:  Dream Portal dot net for support and extensions to Dream Portal.

Shambles

Hmmm... I've been waiting for this to appear. Good work - I'll try this on my localhost when I get home.

I'm particularly keen on trying "Each layout can also be specified where it can be shown anywhere on the site..." as I want to play with my forum header area :)

Dream Portal Team

#2
Thanks, there has been a few reported issues with using XAMMP and Dream Portal.  Dream Portal still needs to be debugged for XAMMP.  Dream Portal has been tested mainly on an actual online environment.  Ok, this was fixed and was due to a reference call not being initiated within the variable for the Dream Portal Admin sections that failed to load up the DP Admin sections for PHP version 5.4+.

For anyone interested in translating this huge mod, you can actually create Language Packs that can be installed directly into the Dream Portal Admin.  There has only been 1 language pack created so far, and it's in Russian, by Bugo located here:  http://dream-portal.net/downloads/area,langpacks/  It's not really that hard to create a language pack at all.  Also, there is a partial Spanish Language Pack that our Spanish Translator was unable to finish, if anyone is interested, located here:  http://dream-portal.net/topic_1209.0.html

Thanks to SMF Customization Team!!  I almost thought that this day would never come!
This is the universal account for the Dream Portal Team. All messages sent to this account will be discarded.  Please visit us at:  Dream Portal dot net for support and extensions to Dream Portal.

Robert.

Congratulations with the approval. :)

JBlaze

Jason Clemons
Former Team Member 2009 - 2012

SoLoGHoST

Thanks Jason and Dr. Deejay!  Feeling like the weight of the world is finally lifted off of my shoulders a bit here!

JBlaze

Quote from: SoLoGHoST on October 03, 2012, 05:16:29 AM
Thanks Jason and Dr. Deejay!  Feeling like the weight of the world is finally lifted off of my shoulders a bit here!
Not so fast. Now comes the daunting task of supporting it >:D
Jason Clemons
Former Team Member 2009 - 2012

SoLoGHoST

lol, yeah, that why I said a bit here!, lol!  Gotta love it and treat it right and supporting it is just another form of loving it :P

Dream Portal Team

#8
For Adding actions/non-actions when Editing Layouts.  The syntax is as follows:

Non-Actions: - Defined as a URL that doesn't have index.php?action= within it.
SYNTAX:[{non-action}]={value}[{sub-action}]={value}
EXAMPLE:
index.php?board=1.0;sort=subject would be inputted into a User-defined Actions setting (when adding/editing a layout) as follows:
[board]=1[sort]=subject
NOTE: The URL syntax can go as deep as it needs to go for the entire URL.  So if you have an actual page linked to:
index.php?page=help;sa=download;area=attachments;images and you would like a layout associated with this page and this page only, than you would type in the following:
[page]=help[sa]=download[area]=attachments[images]

You must start off any NON-ACTIONS within square brackets!

Actions: Defined as a URL that has index.php?action= within it.
SYNTAX:{action value}[{sub-action}]={value}
EXAMPLE:
index.php?action=profile;area=theme;u=1 would be inputted into the User-Defined Actions setting (when editing/adding a layout) as follows:profile[area]=theme[u]=1
NOTE: The URL syntax can go as deep as it needs to go for the entire URL.  If you want to apply that layout to all instances where action=profile is in the url (globally), than it's as simple as typing in the word profile, or selecting it from the list of available actions and adding it to the layout.

You must start off any ACTIONS without square brackets!

The difference between Actions and Non-Actions is that Actions are not enclosed within square brackets (when defining the action), where Non-Actions are, when defining the non-action (page, board, topic, home, etc. etc.).

In short, anything that is not specifically stated as index.php?action={something} needs to be inserted within brackets, whether it has a value or not!

Hope this bit of info helps you all to get your layouts shown anywhere you need them to be!

Cheers :)
This is the universal account for the Dream Portal Team. All messages sent to this account will be discarded.  Please visit us at:  Dream Portal dot net for support and extensions to Dream Portal.

Xarcell


SoLoGHoST

Thanks, unfortunately I don't suspect many people even know that DP 1.1 is out, since it's not even in the list of just released mods on the mod site, since the date of the original submission is used for this instead of the date that it was approved.

Oh well...

live627

Neato! The Dream can finally come true!

SoLoGHoST

Thanks live627.  How's that Envision Portal coming along?

Djehuti

Congrats on the well deserved approval guys.

Your portal is the best of the ones I tried!

Rowe

Easy way to find this in the admin panel?

Doesn't work, when I try to enable the feature and leave the page it goes back to disabled.

Also, I still can't find the panel for it.

Dream Portal Team

Quote from: Rowe on October 09, 2012, 05:40:51 PM
Easy way to find this in the admin panel?

Doesn't work, when I try to enable the feature and leave the page it goes back to disabled.

Also, I still can't find the panel for it.

When you enable the feature, you have to click on the "SAVE" Button at the bottom of the page to save it so that it stays enabled.  You can't just enable Dream Portal in the core features and leave the page without SAVING it!  Please save it, and than you should see the Dream Portal Admin section along with all of it's sub-sections.

@Djehuti - Thank You!  A ton of work and thought went into creating Dream Portal.  Some of the best developers took part in it's creation!
This is the universal account for the Dream Portal Team. All messages sent to this account will be discarded.  Please visit us at:  Dream Portal dot net for support and extensions to Dream Portal.

Rowe

I do save, it just continues to disable.

Dream Portal Team

Strange, are you using a localhost??  XAMMP, perhaps??  You are running SMF 2.0.2 correct?

Also, check your SMF Error Log, and let me know if you see any errors in there, k?
This is the universal account for the Dream Portal Team. All messages sent to this account will be discarded.  Please visit us at:  Dream Portal dot net for support and extensions to Dream Portal.

Rowe

I uninstalled the mod and it kept my home as an open page and my forum as forum..



live627

solo, it works fine on localhost. Remember, there's no place like 127.0.0.1!

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