Here is poster I produced for a bank holiday launch party we held for the (at the time) new Absolut Pears vodka.  The idea was to make up the bottle from a mosaic of photos taken of people in the nightclub I worked in.

The poster was printed quite large (2.5m x 3m) and then placed at the entrance to the club.  Because of the stupendous resolution this poster was produced and printed at, the clientele were then encouraged to find themselves within the bottle.

Beneath the main image is a zoomed in crop section to show the photos.

Even though I’ve been using photoshop for many years (since I was about 15), I only really knew enough to tinker with it. I had nowhere near enough knowledge about the program to use it for practical project.

After I finished studying at University for my Aerospace Engineering degree, I decided to take a year out to raise a bit of cash to figure out what to do next.  Naturally a bar job followed (luckily as a Bar Manager, not pint pourer) at a nightclub, where I worked for a couple of weeks shy of a full year.

During my time working there at  I began digging out my Photoshop skills since we needed flyers and event posters made and I refused to pay out for a graphic designer.  Part of this was due to arrogance on my part in thinking I could do just as well as them, but also I really enjoyed graphic designing.

Looking back now I cringe at some of the designs I produced when I first started out, but as the year went on I started to produce better and better work as I got more and more experienced.  Not only did my design skills improve, but so did my knowledge of photoshop.  Another benefit of having worked in an environment producing flyers and posters for a nightclub is that you learn a lot about paper.  To this day, the majority of my practical knowledge about the printing process and the various paper & finish options were learnt whilst cranking out flyers and poster.

So whilst going through some old files the other day I came across this gem of a poster I had produced for the nightclub.  I got a call from the nightclub I used to manage, asking me to produce a poster for an upcoming New Years party.  The theme was a James Bond casino night and the poster had to translate this.

Below is what I came up with. Hope you enjoy.

The video follows my development process of taking a flat jpg (original mockup was in Fireworks, hence no .psd) and converting it to a pixel perfect HTML & CSS page that is fully valid and accessible.  The development time for this first html page of the project took around five and a half hours, but I’ve condensed the video down to 30 mins.

Hope you all enjoy.

Now I’m not suggesting that EllisLab have got it wrong by not allowing the templates to be used in the Communicate panel, but for some of my projects I like to at least have the option.  Using the templates allows you to really get some nice looking emails stacked with all your site’s content.

So to remedy my frustration I came up with a method of adding a drop down list to the ExpressionEngine 2.0 communicate panel that lists your sites templates by template group. You can send plain emails as normal but selecting a template from the list will fill the message text area with the rendered template. Since the template is fully rendered, you can send this very easily to your mailing lists and the unsubscribe links will be appended to the bottom of the email automatically.

Here is a screenshot:

On a serious note, the code below is to be considered a hack. It requires modifying core system files, and as such it will have to be reapplied after each ExpressionEngine update. There may also be a future update that breaks it all together.

Modifying the communicate controller

The first step is inserting some code into the communicate controller.  The file you want is:

system/expressionengine/controllers/cp/tools_communicate.php

This file controls the rendering of the Communicate panel.  We dont need to do anything very complicated in the backend, since all we want to do is add a list of the templates to the control panel and then have this added to the message textarea when its selected.

Add this at around line 274:

		$this->javascript->output('$("select#template").change(function(){
										$.get($(this).val(), function(data){
												$("#message").val(data);
										});});');
		$q = $this->template_model->get_templates();
		$qa = $q->result_array();
		$tmpl = array(" " => array(" " => "None"));
		for($i = 0; $i < sizeof($qa); $i++){
				$tmpl[$qa[$i]['group_name']][site_url($qa[$i]['group_name']."/".$qa[$i]['template_name'])] = $qa[$i]['template_name'];
		}
		$vars['templates']	= 	$tmpl;

Modifying the communicate view

Since ExpressionEngine 2.0 is now based on the MVC pattern, we need to modify the view file that is used to render the communicate control panel. The file you want is:

themes/cp_themes/default/tools/communicate.php

All you need to do is add the following at around line 59:

		<h3>Template</h3>
				<ul class="shun">
						<li class="odd">
						<?php echo form_dropdown('template', $templates, '0', 'id="template"')?>
						</li>
				</ul>

You should now have a drop down list on your communicate panel that will allow you send your templates via email.

Using non-standard site index name

If you are using a non-standard site index name (ie: not index.php) then you may hit a problem where the template is not inserted into the message text area.  To fix this, find the config file:

system/expressionengine/config/config.php

And then change the index page name at around line 49 to whatever you have named your index file:

$config['index_page'] = 'index.php';

If you have any problems let me know in the comments below.

As an exercise for myself in figuring out the new Custom Field API, I have produced a custom field type that adds a list of your current site members to your publish forms. It also allows you to display different aspects of the selected member’s data in your templates such as email, screen name, group title.

I thought I might as well share it in case someone finds it useful.

There are things that aren’t supported yet which I will be implementing such as restricting to member groups and returning custom member fields.

Tip of the hat goes to Leevi Graham’s Member List field type for EE 1.6.x which I have been using for a while now, and inspired the creation of this field type for EE2.0

		{exp:channel:entries channel="blog"}
			<p>You selected member ID {member_list}</p>
		{/exp:channel:entries}

	<p>You selected member ID 3</p>

		{exp:channel:entries channel="blog"}
			<p>You selected member email is {member_list get="email"}</p>
		{/exp:channel:entries}

	<p>Your selected member email is john@smith.com</p>

		{exp:channel:entries channel="blog"}
			{member_list}
				<p>Name: {screen_name}</p>
				<p>Email: {email}</p>
				<p>Member of: {group_title}</p>
			{/member_list}
		{/exp:channel:entries}

		<p>Name: John Smith</p>
		<p>Email: john@smith.com</p>
		<p>Member of: Super Admin</p>

	get="screen_name"

Using some simple filters in your templates, (eg query module) you can grab channel entries and filter by the custom field you have setup.

The fieldtype records the site short name in the database, but this can be converted to the site label, id or description via the display parameter.

Download ft.cki_sitelist.ee_addon

Github repository

Requirements

• ExpressionEngine 2.0

Installation

• Copy ft.cki_sitelist.php to your system/expressionengine/fieldtypes/ folder.
• Select CKI Site List as the field type when creating a new custom field type

How to use

The field type supports single tags only. Use the tag on its own to return the selected site short_name_

Simple Example

Lets say you have defined a custom field with a field label of Site list and field name site_list and through the publish form selected a site with an short_name of “default_site”. You can produce the site short name of the selected site by simply calling the field name tag on its own:

		{exp:channel:entries channel="blog"}
			<p>You selected site short name is {site_list}</p>
		{/exp:channel:entries}

Returns:

			<p>You selected site short name is {site_list}</p>

Parameter Example

Using the same site you have selected in the above example, we can retrieve different site attributes by using the display parameter:

		{exp:channel:entries channel="blog"}
			<p>You selected site ID is {site_list display="id"}</p>
		{/exp:channel:entries}

Returns:

			<p>You selected site ID is 1</p>

Parameters

Display

	display="label"

Allows you to specify what site attribute to return. This parameter is optional, and if not used, the tag will return the site short name by default.

Accepts the following variables:

• id – Return the site id
• label – Returns the site label
• short_name – Returns the site short name
• description – Returns the site description

Changelog

1.0

• Initial Commit

There are several situations where this is very useful even if you know ExpressionEngine’s module and extension development API’s like the back of your hand.  More often than not it’s just easier to use the Metaweblog API since it ships with the system.

In my case I had a page that included a form with some validation functionality that required, among other things, to have the user confirm via email as well as store some custom data in a database for other uses.  As the rest of the website was being run on ExpressionEngine,  I wanted the users data posted into the ExpressionEngine system once all the validation and custom scripts had been executed so that it could be managed via the control panel.

However well you know ExpressionEngine, inserting directly into the ExpressionEngine database is always a bad idea, since EllisLab may update the database structure and then your custom script could end up wreaking havoc on the database.  So I decided very early on that the Metaweblog API was the way to go.

After looking around on the net, I couldn’t find any good tutorials on how to get CodeIgniter to talk to the Metaweblog API so I figured I’d write my own.

XML -RPC

The Metaweblog API works over what is known as XML -RPC.  Its a pretty common data interchange format that is designed to be simpler than methods such as SOAP.  It works by sending data encoded in a certain XML structure to a server that then processes the data.

If you’re like me, you’ll find reading the official xml-rpc specification to be a little dry and tricky to put into practice in terms of coding a solution from scratch.  Luckily for us, CodeIgniter has a built in XML-RPC server and client library that can get us up and running quickly.

CodeIgniter’s XML-RPC Class

This isn’t a tutorial on how to use CodeIgniter, so if you need a primer on that then check out the official user documentation.  I still believe its the best written user documentation out there.

The CodeIgniter XML-RPC documentation is a great resource on how to use the the client library, however, its not exactly easy to apply it to the Metaweblog API.  After a bit of trial and error I figured it out and although it is very simple I discovered that there are some restrictions to using it.

Setting up ExpressionEngine

Firstly, you’ll have to install the Metaweblog API module in your ExpressionEngine install.  You’ll find this, obviously, under the Modules tab of the control panel.  Once installed you can click on the Metaweblog API to change the settings. Once installed you’ll see something like this:

Make a note of the URL on the configuration page since you will need it later

When using the Metaweblog API  each script or weblog you want to interface with will need its own configuration.  The reason for this is that xml-rpc can only carry so much information, and it is designed for interfacing with simpler blogging systems such as Blogger or Wordpress, where there is one blog made up of the following fields:

• Excerpt
• Content
• More Content
• Keywords

If you’re an ExpressionEngine developer though, you’ll know that the beauty of EE is that you don’t need to follow this pattern and you can choose your own. So when using the Metaweblog API, you need to map the incoming excerpt, content, more & keyword fields to your own fields.  You dont need to map them all, you just need to choose what incoming data is going where.

When you click on the name of the configuration you want to edit, you’ll be presented with the following options:

Now although it looks like there are several input data fields you can use, the many here are actually for the MoveableType API which is also part of this module ( though its not really written anywhere).  So for incoming data, you can only use the Content field.

Configuration Name

Enter the name of this configuration. You can leave this as Default, unless you are using more than one interface configuration.

Text Formatting Preference

Choose whether you want ExpressionEngine to parse any EE tags in the incoming data

Entry Status

You can choose what status to apply to the incoming data when it is inserted into the database, or allow it to be specified by the incoming data (more on this later).

Channel Field Group

Select the ExpressionEngine field group you want data inserted into. You must keep in mind that when you are sending data from CodeIgniter, you can specify the weblog to be posted into, however, make sure that you select the corresponding field group for that weblog here.

Excerpt Field

MoveableType API  only - Select what field you want the incoming excerpt data inserted into. The field must be a textarea.

Content Field

Select what field you want the incoming content data inserted into. The field must be a textarea.

More Field

MoveableType API  only - Select what field you want the incoming more data inserted into. The field must be a textarea.

Keywords Field

MoveableType API  only - Select what field you want the incoming keyword data inserted into. The field must be a textarea.

Upload directory for file uploading

If you are uploading files (although not covered here) you can specify where you want those files to be delivered.

So keep in mind that since we are using the Metaweblog API we can only use the Content area for incoming data, and also that the field it gets mapped to must be a textarea.

Setting up CodeIgniter

The code needed in order get the xml-rpc class talking to ExpressionEngine is pretty simple.  All you need to do is load the library in your controller.  Here i am loading the library in the controller constructor.

class Metaweblog extends Controller {

	function Metaweblog()
	{
		parent::Controller();

		//load the library
		$this->load->library('xmlrpc');
	}
}

Once the library is loaded, you need to specify the server address.

class Metaweblog extends Controller {

	function Metaweblog()
	{
		parent::Controller();

		//load the library
		$this->load->library('xmlrpc');

		//specify the server address
		$this->xmlrpc->server($this->config->item('metaweblog_url'));

	}
}

The Metaweblog API has various methods that can be used (eg: Editing, Deleting etc) but in this case we want to post a new item.  So we need to specify the method:

class Metaweblog extends Controller {

	function Metaweblog()
	{
		parent::Controller();

		//load the library
		$this->load->library('xmlrpc');

		//specify the server address
		$this->xmlrpc->server($this->config->item('metaweblog_url'));

		//Choose the metaWeblog API method
		$this->xmlrpc->method('metaWeblog.newPost');
	}
}

So now our configurations are in, we just have to format the xml to the correct structure.  Using the library in CodeIgniter, we set the structure of the resulting xml by creating an array():

		//Setup paramaters for posting
		$data = array(
			//Param[0]: Weblog ID
			"weblog ID",
			//Param[1]: Username
			"username",
			//Param[2]:Password
			"password",
			//Param[3]:Data
			array(
					array(
						'title' 		=>	"Title of the weblog",
						'description'	=>	"Content of the weblog data being posted"
						//This is needed for the array to be recognized
						), "struct"
				),
			//Param[4]:Status
			1
			);

I’ve commented the code above, so its pretty self explanatory.  As you can see, you specify the title and description data.  Whatever is in the description will be inserted into the field you chose to map the “Content field” to in the ExpressionEngine Metaweblog API module settings.

Once we’ve set this array up, we then add the array to the xml-rpc library and send the request.  So once this is all put together, the full controller looks like so:

class Metaweblog extends Controller {

	function Metaweblog()
	{
		parent::Controller();

		//load the library
		$this->load->library('xmlrpc');

		//specify the server address
		$this->xmlrpc->server($this->config->item('metaweblog_url'));

		//Choose the metaWeblog API method
		$this->xmlrpc->method('metaWeblog.newPost');
	}

 	function publish()
	{
		//Setup paramaters for posting
		$data = array(
			//Param[0]: Weblog ID
			"weblog ID",
			//Param[1]: Username
			"username",
			//Param[2]:Password
			"password",
			//Param[3]:Data
			array(
					array(
						'title' 		=>	"Title of the weblog",
						'description'	=>	"Content of the weblog data being posted"
						//This is needed for the array to be recognized
						), "struct"
				),
			//Param[4]:Status
			1
			);

			//Add the array to the xml-rpc library
			$this->xmlrpc->request($data);

			//Make the request
			$this->xmlrpc->send_request();
}
}

And thats it!

If you are having trouble with the data, and want to know what is going on, you can turn on the debug mode by adding the following line in the contructor of your controller:

		$this->xmlrpc->set_debug(TRUE);

Hope this is of help to anyone. If you have any questions, make your voice heard below.