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Allow users to display all/best/none stories of each section
By caseyscrib , Section Wishlist [] Posted on Sat Jan 29, 2005 at 12:00:00 PM PST

I would like to be able to allow users to display only sections that are relevant/important to them. In their preferences, next to each section they would be able to select "all", "best/Front Page", or "none". Only stories in these sections would then be displayed on the homepage.

Slashdot currently uses a system like this and you can see it here. The reason I want to do this is because I have a political website with sections for each state (NY, NH, NJ, Etc) and general categories (Technology, Economy, Etc). Somebody from NH probably doesn't want to see discussions related to NY, so it would be nice if they could check "none", and never see any of those stories. Likewise, somebody that doesn't care about environmental issues could choose "none", environmental nuts could choose "all" and moderates could chose "Front Page" stories only. Of course, anyone would still be able to see all the stories of that section by simply going to it's section page.

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Allow users to display all/best/none stories of each section | 2 comments (2 topical, 0 hidden)

How would you like to hide them (none / 0) (#1)
by hillct on Tue Feb 01, 2005 at 07:39:29 AM PST

Sections could be relatively easy or it could be difficult. It depends how exactly you want to them to be hidden.

You could simply remove them from the menu at the top of your site, based on user preference settings. User Prefs are highly customizable in that you can crete new preference items and evaluate them at display time to decide what the content of your sections menu will be. This I think would be the easiest approach but it would simply remove the menu links to the section, rather than restrict access to the section.

Alternatively, sections have access permissions based on user groups. You could create multiple user groups and write a box (small piece of perl) that would allow users to chance their own group where they would be able to choose only among the groups you specify and setup as sort of 'interest groups' each with access to certain sections. In this way they could completely remove access to certain sections. This, on it's face seems undesirable and inconsistant with your stated goal though.

As for being able ot display only the best stories within a section, this would require a new OP to be written (which can be done as a box based extension to Scoop) which would select and display only the 'best' stories from within a section, based on whatever criteria you specify. As I write this, I'm not clear on what that criteria might be... higest ration of positive ot negative votes in the moderation queue? Highest adverage comment rating? Most comments? I'm really not sure what would be a good measure of the 'best' stories.

If you would like these features developed specifically for your site, please shoot me an email and we'll see what we can do for you.

-- hillct

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homepage only by caseyscrib, 02/01/2005 01:20:11 PM PST (none / 0)

Allow users to display all/best/none stories of each section | 2 comments (2 topical, 0 hidden)

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