News Box Manager — for Zen Cart v1.5.8a and Later

Version 3.2.1

Current Support Thread at Zen Cart Forums: News Box Manager v3.0.0 [Support Thread]

GitHub repository: https://github.com/lat9/news_box_manager_v3

This plugin represents a restructuring of the News Box Manager -- v2.x.x for Zen Cart v1.5.x, enabling the plugin to support current Zen Cart and PHP versions.

For additional information (including integration with Sitemap XML), please refer to the plugin's online documentation.

Purpose

This plugin enables you to write news-related content for your Zen Cart store, displaying the most recent articles in sideboxes for your customers to view.

The plugin provides two side-boxes and an optional home-page center-box with an admin-level news editor to your Zen Cart. You create news articles using the tools provided, e.g. Tools :: News Box Manager [All Types], which are displayed in the side- and center-boxes (based on your chosen configuration).

Note: To include the optional center-box to your home-page, refer to this Wiki article on the plugin's GitHub repository.

News articles you write have a Start Date and End Date (which can be set to "--none--"), which determine whether or not the article is displayed to your customers. Articles are displayed if the article's status is Enabled, the Start Date is on or after the current date and the End Date is either "--none--" or on or before the current date. That way, you can write an article today that isn't displayed to your customers until sometime next week.

You can define article-specific metatags using the plugin's admin tool. Your customizations appear in an article's storefront rendering on the article page.

Admin Interfaces

Once you have copied the admin-level files to your cart's file system, you will see two new menu items:

  1. Configuration :: News Box Manager [All Types], where you control the plugin's settings.
  2. Tools :: News Box Manager, where you write and manage your store's news articles. If you have an HTML editor installed in your admin, you can use that editor to edit/create your news articles. If you have multiple languages in your store, you can write language-specific content, too.

    Note: For previous versions, this tool was located under the "Localization" menu.

Customer Interfaces

On your store-side, once you have installed and enabled the plugin there are various new elements to be shown to your customers:

  1. Two Latest [News Type] sideboxes. Displays the titles of the most-recent news articles, if enabled by your admin's Tools->Layout Box Controller.
  2. The Latest News [News Type] centerbox on your home page. Displays the release date and title of the most-recent news articles, if enabled by the setting in Configuration->News Box Manager [All Types].
  3. The All Articles page. Displays the full list of all active news articles.
  4. The Article page. Displays the contents of a selected news article.

Note: If you have defined metatags for a news-article, those entries (if not empty) will be used instead of the Zen Cart defaults when the article is viewed on the article page.

Installation

This plugin has no core-file overwrite; you should always backup your cart's database and files prior to making any changes.

  1. Unzip the plugin's package file, which you've most likely already done if you're reading this!
  2. Rename the /YOUR_ADMIN directory to match your Zen Cart's secret admin-folder name.
  3. If you want to display a centerbox of news-articles on your storefront home-page, follow the instructions in this GitHub Wiki article.
  4. Log into your Zen Cart's admin-console.
  5. Copy the plugin's files to your store's file system.
    1. /includes/classes/observers/auto.news_box_manager_metatags.php (Added in v2.2.0)
    2. /includes/extra_datafiles/news_box_file_database_names.php
    3. /includes/languages/english/lang.all_articles.php
    4. /includes/languages/english/lang.article.php
    5. /includes/languages/english/extra_definitions/lang.news_box_manager_defines.php
    6. /includes/modules/news_box_format.php
    7. /includes/modules/pages/all_articles/header_php.php
    8. /includes/modules/pages/article/header_php.php
    9. /includes/modules/pages/more_news/header_php.php
    10. /includes/modules/pages/news_archive/header_php.php
    11. /includes/modules/pages/sitemapxml/sitemapxml_boxnews3.php (Added in v3.1.0)
    12. /includes/modules/sideboxes/news_box_sidebox.php
    13. /includes/modules/sideboxes/news_box_sidebox2.php
    14. /includes/templates/template_default/sideboxes/tpl_news_box_sidebox.php
    15. /includes/templates/template_default/templates/tpl_modules_news_box_format.php
    16. /includes/templates/template_default/templates/tpl_all_articles_default.php
    17. /includes/templates/template_default/templates/tpl_article_default.php
    18. /includes/templates/YOUR_TEMPLATE/css/stylesheet_news_box_manager.css
    19. /YOUR_ADMIN/news_box_manager.php
    20. /YOUR_ADMIN/news_box_manager1.php
    21. /YOUR_ADMIN/news_box_manager2.php
    22. /YOUR_ADMIN/news_box_manager3.php
    23. /YOUR_ADMIN/news_box_manager4.php
    24. /YOUR_ADMIN/includes/auto_loaders/config.news_box_manager.php
    25. /YOUR_ADMIN/includes/classes/observers/NewsBoxManagerAdminObserver.php
    26. /YOUR_ADMIN/includes/extra_datafiles/news_box_manager_file_database_names.php
    27. /YOUR_ADMIN/includes/extra_datafiles/news_box_manager_sanitization.php (Added in v2.1.1)
    28. /YOUR_ADMIN/includes/functions/news_box_manager_functions.php
    29. /YOUR_ADMIN/includes/init_includes/init_news_box_manager_admin.php
    30. /YOUR_ADMIN/includes/init_includes/news_box_manager_install.php
    31. /YOUR_ADMIN/includes/init_includes/news_box_manager_update.php
    32. /YOUR_ADMIN/includes/languages/english/lang.news_box_manager.php
    33. /YOUR_ADMIN/includes/languages/english/extra_definitions/lang.news_box_manager_menu_name.php
  6. Click the "Admin Home" link in the admin header; that will cause this plugin's initialization script to run, creating the necessary database tables and configuration items.
  • Go to your admin's Configuration :: News Box Manager [All Types] to view and change any settings, then to to Tools :: News Box Manager [All Types] to start writing!

    • Follow the instructions above if you are upgrading, too. If you've made template-override versions of the plugin's template-files, you'll need to merge your changes with any updates provided by the plugin itself.

    Un-Installing

    To un-install this plugin, first remove all the new files introduced by this plugin and restore the template-override file. Then open the plugin's /uninstall_news_box_manager.sql, copy and paste the file's contents into your admin's Tools :: Install SQL Patches and click "Send". That will remove all configuration settings and plugin-specific tables from your database.

    Version History