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Force Category Selections
In Article Dashboard

In my own mind, the most important selection for any article placements is to put the article into the correct categories. This workaround is designed to help you help your article submitting authors make the right choices.

This is more of a tutorial than it is a software add-on.

There are three steps that you will need to take to implement this tweak.

  1. submitarticles.tpl - Requires 3 changes:

    1. You need to give people a head's up as to what is going on so that they may take corrective action.

      Include the following code in your submitarticles.tpl, directly before the text that reads: {ERROR_MESSAGES}

      <!-- Added Warnings -->
      <hr size="1" noshade width=95% align=center>
      <table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
      <tr>
      <td valign="top"><img src="images/redinfo.gif" width="16" height="16" border="0" hspace="8"></td>
      <td valign="top" class="articletext"><ul> <li>Select a Category - If you don't select a category, we will blank out your Title, so that you can do it right.
      </li></ul></td>
      </tr></table>
      <!-- End Added Warnings -->

    2. Highlight where the category selection is made. Find the following text in your submitarticles.tpl:

      <td width="100%">Select a Category:</td>

      Change it to:

      <td width="100%"><B><font color=#B00000>Select a Category:</font></B></td>

    3. Directly in front of the text that reads {LISTCATEGORIES}, insert the following:

      <option value="select">~ Select Category ~</option>


  2. submitarticles.php - Change the name of this file to: submitarticles2.php


  3. Create a blank file called, submitarticles.php - Insert the following code into the new submitarticles.php file:

    <?php


    if ($_POST['f_categoryid'] == "select")
    {
    $_POST['f_arttitle']="";
    }

    include ("submitarticles2.php");


    ?>


Since the dashboard article directory software will not force a category selection, these changes will enable you to force a category selection, by blanking out the Title selection which will force submitters back to the Submit Articles page.


I hope you find this useful.


Bill Platt, President of Platt Services, Inc.
Owner of:






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Owned by Platt Services, Inc.


Last Update: 2007-05-06
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