Christo's dashboard

Hey Guys,

It's a pleasure. It's quite difficult to implement, but at least you can see that it can be done :).

UK Duke, some answers to your questions:
1.) While this is acceptable practice, It is probably not best practice. The reason is precisely as you point out in question 2 - using JavaScript for your main navigation will likely negatively affect your SEO (because crawlers have a more difficult time following JavaScript links).

A thought on question 2, is that you could probably use the code I posted above to attach drop-down menu's to The main navigation generated by Yola.

.. If I get a moment I'll try and whip up an example doing that – Christo, on November 23, 2009 11:37

hey papa. You want to rename your file from Multi-Menu.txt to Multi-Menu.js (and update the html including appropriately).

The browser needs to know that the file you are loading up is JavaScript. – Christo, on November 23, 2009 11:23

Hi Randy.

What you want to do is use JavaScript to create the content on your menu.

I've put together a little example for you here:
http://www.toast38coza.com/creating-a...

In a nutshell, what you do is:
1.) Store your menu configuration in JavaScript .. it will looks something like:


var aSubmenuData = [

{
id: "communication",
itemdata: [
{ text: "360", url: "http://360.yahoo.com" },
{ text: "Alerts", url: "http://alerts.yahoo.com" },
{ text: "Avatars", url: "http://avatars.yahoo.com" },
{ text: "Groups", url: "http://groups.yahoo.com " },
{ text: "Internet Access", url: "http://promo.yahoo.com/broadband" },
{
text: "PIM",
submenu: {
id: "pim",
itemdata: [
{ text: "Yahoo! Mail", url: "http://mail.yahoo.com" },
{ text: "Yahoo! Address Book", url: "http://addressbook.yahoo.com" },
{ text: "Yahoo! Calendar", url: "http://calendar.yahoo.com" },
{ text: "Yahoo! Notepad", url: "http://notepad.yahoo.com" }
]
}

},
{ text: "Member Directory", url: "http://members.yahoo.com" },
{ text: "Messenger", url: "http://messenger.yahoo.com" },
{ text: "Mobile", url: "http://mobile.yahoo.com" },
{ text: "Flickr Photo Sharing", url: "http://www.flickr.com" },
]
},

{
id: "shopping",
itemdata: [
{ text: "Auctions", url: "http://auctions.shopping.yahoo.com" },
{ text: "Autos", url: "http://autos.yahoo.com" },
{ text: "Classifieds", url: "http://classifieds.yahoo.com" },
{ text: "Flowers & Gifts", url: "http://shopping.yahoo.com/b:Flowers%2..." },
{ text: "Real Estate", url: "http://realestate.yahoo.com" },
{ text: "Travel", url: "http://travel.yahoo.com" },
{ text: "Wallet", url: "http://wallet.yahoo.com" },
{ text: "Yellow Pages", url: "http://yp.yahoo.com" }
]
},

{
id: "entertainment",
itemdata: [
{ text: "Fantasy Sports", url: "http://fantasysports.yahoo.com" },
{ text: "Games", url: "http://games.yahoo.com" },
{ text: "Kids", url: "http://www.yahooligans.com" },
{ text: "Music", url: "http://music.yahoo.com" },
{ text: "Movies", url: "http://movies.yahoo.com" },
{ text: "Radio", url: "http://music.yahoo.com/launchcast" },
{ text: "Travel", url: "http://travel.yahoo.com" },
{ text: "TV", url: "http://tv.yahoo.com" }
]
},

{
id: "information",
itemdata: [
{ text: "Downloads", url: "http://downloads.yahoo.com" },
{ text: "Finance", url: "http://finance.yahoo.com" },
{ text: "Health", url: "http://health.yahoo.com" },
{ text: "Local", url: "http://local.yahoo.com" },
{ text: "Maps & Directions", url: "http://maps.yahoo.com" },
{ text: "My Yahoo!", url: "http://my.yahoo.com" },
{ text: "News", url: "http://news.yahoo.com" },
{ text: "Search", url: "http://search.yahoo.com" },
{ text: "Small Business", url: "http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com" },
{ text: "Weather", url: "http://weather.yahoo.com" }
]
}
];



.. you store this javascript file on your server (or if you have Yola pro, you can just upload it with the file manager), and link to it from your Yola site like so:


<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.yourserver.com/path/to/you..."> </script>


.. this is a little advanced .. but hopefully should point you in the right direction ...

Donald, it might help if you provided a little more information about what you are trying to do. As Sister correctly points out, in many cases it would depend on the widget.

One solution would be attach an event to the div containing the widget, then use JavaScript to prevent the default action of the click and open a url. However, this is not really a great way to do it, and i'm not sure if I would recommend this. Thing is, by "making an entire widget" into a link, you will likely mess with the functionality of the widget, so .. again, this is only a viable solution for a very limited subset of widgets ..

Hi Donald.

It sounds like you might be looking for something like OpenX.
http://www.openx.org/products

OpenX is an adserver. Basically it lets you run (track and administer) ads. I see on their products page (above), they have a hosted solution. This would be suitable for your needs.

What you do is:
1.) Set up an ad campaign on openX.
2.) Grab the code provided by openX (similar to what you paste in your site with google adsense)
3.) Paste the code in your YolaSite.

You ad will then show on your site, and it will be tracked/managed from your openX account (views, clicks .. etc)

OpenX can be a little difficult to wrap your head around (it was when i tried it, but that was quite a while back), but it does sound a lot like the solution you are looking for

tip: you can add a list of updated sites to your YolaSite from the twitter #yolasite search page.

Here's a quick tutorial:
http://www.toast38coza.com/add-update...

And here's a screenshot:

Hi Shailesh

You can definitely use YUI, but sometimes when copy-pasting there can be some formatting issues with the html editor.

When you are copy-pasting from the YUI sample code, are you sure that you are copying from the "view plain" pop-up?

Sometimes when you copy code off a website the html editor can add some invisible markup which it gets from the the source that you copy from (these are the &nsbp;'s that you are seeing.

If that doesnt work, try pasting into a plain text editor like notepad (not wordpad) first and then into the html editor

Hope that helps!

Hi Donald.

Google analytics is pretty much an industry standard and is a very powerful statistics tool. To really squeeze the most out of it, there is quite a high learning curve, but if you are really interested in gathering this information, it might be worth your while. I personally have only scratched the surface of what is possible.

In particular, with regards to seeing what users are clicking on, you might be interested in the site overlay view (see image attached). This will tell you what links users have clicked on on a page.

To view the site overlay, in google analytics, go:
content -> site overlay

What method are you using to show your adverts? You should not need to rely on a 3rd party statistics tool to track clicks on your ads. Most ad servers will track that for you. Furthermore, if you use something like google adsense, they have quite nice integration with google analytics - providing optimization tools to help improve your ad-click conversions.

Hi Shailesh

You can indeed use YUI from Yola. In fact, it's even easier because you can reliably load up the JavaScript files from their content servers.

To embed JavaScript using YUI, simply drag an html widget onto the page and place your code in the widget.

Tip: it is a good idea to edit your html on a test page first. Then copy the page to your real page after you are happy that it is working properly because incorrect JavaScript can cause issues with Yola.

Are you wanting to use YUI 2 or YUI 3 ?

+1 for Jira/Confluence – Christo, on October 21, 2009 12:56

Glad I could help! :) – Christo, on October 14, 2009 15:20

Hi herrington

Your custom styles are not auto-loaded for you. You will need to add them with the html widget.

e.g.:


<link href="resources/your-custom-style.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" />


So, in summary:
1.) You manually add your files with the html editor (the advantage is that you can use the same stylesheet across a bunch of pages - edit the one file, and your changes reflect on all the pages)
2.) As such, yes, your files will be included after the default template files and as such will over-ride those. (in the same was that your inline styles have in the example above)

Hope that helps?

John and Monique's points above are pertinent. Further, you don't *have* to use the HTML editor ... what I often do when i need to work on more complicated JavaScript or CSS is use the editor on my own machine, then paste into the html editor.
Creating a good code editor inside the browser is not something trivial, and as far as I know there isn't really anything very good out there at the moment. I would argue that our HTML editor is better than a plain text editor, especially in that it allows code formatting and shows line numbers. However, if you are writing serious JavaScript, I would advise you to write it on your local machine and either copy-paste into the html editor, or, if you have a premium account, upload the JavaScript or CSS files to the resource store and load it up from there. – Christo, on October 09, 2009 07:19

Hey Kevin

I'm not quite sure why your text is getting scrunched up. Admittedly, sometimes the HTML editor tries to be a little too smart. However, once you manually add the spacing it should be ok .. – Christo, on October 08, 2009 13:56

Hi Kevin

Looking at the source code on your website, I think what might have happened is that you have lost some formatting in your adsense code (it has put everything on 1 line).

The fix should be pretty simple. Basically, all you need to do is put all the javascript statements on new lines.

I tested it out on my YolaSite, and it seemed to work fine:
http://www.toast38coza.com/adsense.php
(I included the code in there so you can see what I changed)

Well ... basically, you need an app in order to be able to do what facebook is talking about there (which is, incidentally the code you have pasted into your Yola site ;) ).

How it works is that you register an app with Facebook. When the user clicks on the connect button, Facebook asks the user if they are ok with your app accessing their facebook stuff (Facebook requires that applications are explicitly authenticated by the user). Once the user has granted your application access to their facebook ('connected' it so to say), then you can do stuff like retrieving their profile pictures, friends .. etc.

So basically the application you just set up is your registed identity with Facebook as a developer.

... hope that makes sense!

ah ... here's the problem:

Get Satisfaction truncated my url in my paste above:

src="http://static.ak.connect.facebook.com..."


.. I added a code block on my yola site ... copy that code instead and it should work i think.

Red Pencil is one of the new templates that was released with the premium styles (it's a free template though) .. the quality on the new templates is pretty good i think :)

Hi Nick

Off the top of my head, here are some thoughts on why it would be useful to be able to upload html/css/js.

* Common files:
Often you have elements that you want to apply to a number of pages. Say for example, you want to tweak the CSS of your page slightly. Now, you could paste the CSS code into everypage you want to apply the tweak on. Or ... you could create a css file and upload it to your website, then simply include that file in your pages like such:


<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="resources/my-custom-css.css" />


This way, if you want to change some style aspect on your site, you can simply make the change in your css file and the change will cascade across all your pages (instead of needing to manually go and make the change on every page).

Similarly, it may be useful to have include files for scripts etc which can do common things like render your google adsense or analytics code etc.

* Standalone files:
With HTML uploads, you can upload separate HTML files should you need pages in your site which do not inherit your template look and feel.

* Advanced JavaScript.

** JavaScript libraries:
Although most good libraries these days can be hosted off a 3rd party Content Delivery Network like Yahoo or Google, it might be useful to host your files on your own website.

** Writing JavaScript:
You can do quite a lot with JavaScript these days .. but if you are writing a lot of it ... it makes a lot more sense to write it in an editor on your computer and upload the file to your Yola site rather than simply writing it directly in the html editor.

.. These are just some of the things that I would personally use the advanced upload capability for.

Like Lisa mentioned; before we imposed the upload limit, there were a lot of users abusing these uploads for phishing purposes. However, since we removed the option, it has become evident that there are users who would like the service. Including this in the Yola pro package is our way of not limiting our advanced users, but still deterring abusive users from breaking our terms and conditions (and the law).

My argument for private sections or access management would be the following:

In most companies there are may be two dialogs: The external one (e.g.: the company with the public - this is the dialog that Get Satisfaction handles) and the internal dialog *within* the company (e.g.: between employees).

We have found Get Satisfaction an extremely useful tool in providing support to our customers - it would be great to be able to offer the same type of support and discussion internally using the same tool (that we have tried and tested and are happy with).

Obviously such internal conversations (perhaps about technical issues, or new features etc) cannot be public on the internet - however; providing the kind of openness and accountability that a system like get satisfaction provides *within* our company would be a big win.

Furthermore, if we were able to facilitate our internal employee dialog in the same place that we communicate with our external users, this would go a long way in aligning internal decisions with external feedback as well as improving employee activity in the public forum.

I know there are plenty of tools out there that we *could* use, however, Get Satisfaction is a tool that *is* working for us, and *could* work for us internally without us needing to add *Yet Another Tool* to our already dauntingly large list of tools ...

Finally: surely it wouldn't be *that* hard to simply allow a private area with access limited to users of certain roles (e.g.: Employee or maybe Champ). You already have implemented Roles as it is :^)

Is it possible to add a company/product but not public? I want to add a company/product just for the employees. We have a product and we want just the employees to give us some feedback about this.

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
Is it possible to add a private product?.