Symphony.

Hi,

I wanna know pls what are THE extensions that anyone should have to use symphony on the best way and the most efficient way.

Why, when and what extensions to use ?

Some few questions :

• What are the best extensions for upload images and resize ?
• Why/when using unique fields, and why/when not ?
• What datasource extension to use and when ?
• What are the list of field extensions that are a MUST.
• How to manipulate html with the best way through xsl ?
• ... add more infos if you can pls that will be for sure welcome and helpfull.

I am making personnally a community website and I need the following features :

• rich text formatters with smileys, BBcode, and special features such as forbidden words excluder.
• members management
• forums with vote options and attachements
• many different uploads
• a tool for chat
• many other features for a gamers community

Any advices ?

N.B: I'm a java/J2EE dev

regards,

Have a look here for a few of your questions:

• Default Extensions
• HTML Ninja Technique

I have read HTML Ninja Technique many times and I still don't find any use for it.

And for the Default Extensions topic, it is outdated (about 2years)

Well, the Ninja Technique is a perfect tool

• for markup changes (adjusting headline hierarchy, replacing HTML elements)
• to create complex interfaces based on textarea output (e. g. inline image galleries)

I use it all the time.

Based on the questions, plan to get your feet wet. Unfortunately, to answer all of your questions you're going to need to do your homework; many are subjective and you know your project best.

We can be more helpful if you have specific questions when it comes to your project and the functionality of Symphony or an extension.

OK, I thought you would like to help all at once.

So here is my first question : what is best way to make rich text formatter with smileys, BBcode, and special features such as forbidden words excluder on the frontend ?

You must have known that things can be done manually, but ppl prefer to use existing things.

For most my questions where I don't find a solution I try reinvent the wheel (because I haven't seen anything that looks like a wheel). Got it ?

So here is my first question : what is best way to make rich text formatter with smileys, BBcode, and special features such as forbidden words excluder on the frontend ?

I don't believe any of the current text formatters have that ability. Here's a great example where the HTML Ninja Technique can be used. You would be able to replace :) with the appropriate smiley image. You could also use the technique to search for bad words and replace them with **** or something.

The indecent filter extension will allow you to prevent users from entering words on a blacklist. You may like to look at forum ensemble, as that's probably closest to what you need. There is no chat extension that I know about, so that'll be up to you.

I don 't see how HTML ninja technique could help while BBcode isn't an XML.

[b] [color=red]text[/color] [/b] ...

Anyway.. I need to create a new entry on a section called Topics and create on the same time an entry on a section called Posts. Is it possible to be done on symphony using same event and same page ? Cos as far as I know, each event can store only data on one section at once.

Actually the only way I see this possible is to use ajax and make as many pages as the sections to save.

@Aliminium, to submit to more than one section with a front-end form, you will want to look into using the EventEx extension.

Wow big tx for this great tip XBleed, it worked very nice :) and knowing that I have 35 related sections, this will save a lot of time.

My next questions concerns uploading images and resizing them. I have seen some extensions but haven't used them, then got lost wondering what to use.

• How to limit just one upload's field's size and not others within the same form in the front-end ?
• How can I resize uploaded images to a maximum width/height (not minimum like I saw in image crop field) and with a fomat (4:3 or 16:9 ...) ?