I’m working on a couple new Conversant sites for a client these days. In the process, I’m learning more about some of Conversant’s features that I’ve not used much, and appreciating again how cool Conversant is. Here are some of the interesting things I’m doing:
On a couple sites, I’m using an Advanced Query Page to create list pages for a particular type of information on the site. However, instead of listing all messages of that type that are in the message database (Conversant’s content store), I’m using an option on the AQP that only returns messages that are bound to URLs. This means that when the user posts, say, a Case Study, it won’t show up in the Case Study list page until it’s finished and ready and the user publishes the page to a URL in the <site>/CaseStudies/<type>/ hierarchy.
Custom New Thread forms are cool. Conversant has a page, at <site>/NewThread that allows a user or editor to post a new message to the site (as well as set a number of options). Well, using conditional macros I can check things like “is the user a member of the editors group?” or even the value of custom message attributes like “messageType” (for example), then display different message fields for the user to edit. With this I can have a user enter data for various message types (Case Study, Portfolio Piece, Song) without being distracted by non-related message fields.
