Pro_News is a fully templated, article based news module with links to the Forum, using the Discuss_This module, for article comments and discussion.

In addition Pro News directly supports the upload of an image as part of the article, including the automatic creation of a thumbnail, and display of both the thumb and the original. It also introduces the structure of Sections as well as Categories (Sections hold Categories which hold Articles), with options for viewing and administrating individual Sections selectable at the Group level. A 'Headline' view option is also provided.

This module was originally created by Kuragari as a 1.0.0.1BETA, and this release forms a logical progression of that prior release, completes some of the functionality, adding a few new ones, and resolving several issues.

Pro_News provides a great deal of flexibility, because of which, some thought needs to be applied during implementation, as all features won't suit in all cases.

The "Classic" News module in CPG-Nuke Dragonfly is ideally suited to reporting a single stream of news, with the ability to flag each news item with a Category. But there are cases when I really needed more of an "article" based system, rather than a pure news one. As an example, imagine a website focussed on cars: You'd want articles on Engines, Bodywork, Audio, Performance, etc., each with it's own sub-categories. Until Kuragari's Pro_News BETA module came along the only real choice was the Content module - but HTML gets old quick! When I first saw Pro_News, I envisioned Pro_News not as a replacement for the "Classic" News, but as an Article-based system alongside "Classic" News. Going back to the Car website analogy, "Classic" News can cover the "short-lived" Industry news stories, and Pro_News can handle the "long lived" specific articles.   more ...

There are 3 ways to display Pro_News Articles, but you select between them if you don't not want to offer all 3:

- Pro_News Headlines;
- Pro_News Home Page;
- Pro_News Menu Link.

Dealing with each in reverse order...   more ...

Articles have built in support for an associated image. The image can be uploaded along with the Article submission. A thumbnail is built on-the-fly to be used in the Article, without any requirements from the user.

When the Article is displayed an automatic link is provided from the thumbnail to the full-sized image, which is displayed in a created-to-size pop-up window. Supported image types are limited to, and checked to be, GIF, jpg and PNG.

Pro_News is full templated, allow the appearance of Pro_News to be adjust by a Theme just like every other part of CPG-Nuke Dragonfly.

In addition the Pro_News article structure is templated, allowing webmasters to change the display form of Articles without resorting to code changes. Many parts of the Article display can be turned on/off from the Administration > Pro_News > Config screen, but in addition items in the template can often be suppressed by simply removing the relevant code from the template. Pro_News is structured so that you can create new templates by copying, and switch between templates during testing, or live production use.