Not sure how to accomplish...

I know what I want to do, but not sure how to accomplish it. I'm a Super Suite owner so I imagine I have some, if not all of the right tools to get it done. Just not sure about the right combination.

I'd like to build a client's ‘News Articles’ page that will show a predetermined amount of excerpts (headline and a few lines from article) that will link to the full article on another page. I'd also like navigable first page, previous, next, and last page buttons to get to additional pages of excerpts. To me, this is very similar to the construction of the ‘results.php’ page that I've create in the past using the Yahoo Search for BOSS extension.

On top of that, the client would also like it tied into a CMS so they could add articles at will. I anticipate employing PowerCMS Builder because I'm using it for other areas of the site.

So, I'm not asking to take up anyone's time and map out the entire process, but just a starting point or some direction to get going and what tools from the Super Suite would be beneficial in my case. My first thoughts were to break down the code that Search for Boss uses with repeating regions and try to apply it to my situation. Then I was wondering if Data Assist would help. As for the CMS, I'm not sure if I should worry about that now or after I get the initial functionality working that I'm trying to accomplish.

I know I could always google search the topic, but I figured I'd start here since I'm using WA tools.

Thanks to anyone for some insight.

you could do this with data assist, html editor and security assist.


use data assist to create the pages to add the new articles to the database, security assist to protect those pages and HTML editor to add advanced editing capabilities.


to display the news articles to the web user, create a results and detail page in the data assist wizard.

set the results page to only show one record at a time.

you will need to add your own code to limit the text out put on the results page.

Thanks Jason. I appreciate the info.

no worries.

Jason, I'm going to start working on a prototype version and wanted to confirm that I'll need to setup appropriate tables in my database prior to using DataAssist. DataAssist will not auto-create tables for me (like PowerCMS Builder) since they'll need to be specific to my project's needs, correct?

Sorry if that sounds naive - just want to cover my bases.

that is correct, data assist will not create tables for you, you need to create them to suite your projects needs.

Jason, thanks again. Building what I set out to accomplish was actually pretty easy with DataAssist and HTML editor. I'm going to include Security Assist as soon as I upgrade to v2 this week. However, I have a new question concerning that.

I have PowerCMS Builder built into this site prototype as well for other content updates. Is there a way to utilize the already installed Security Assist login page to gain access to the administrator-only DataAssist pages? Or am I better off just doing two separate login pages?

sure, apply the Super Administrator page access restriction to your data assist pages, that will restrict them to the same admin login details as the power cms pages.

Excellent, thank you.

you're welcome.