Hi guys. I'm trying to implement my idea of coverting my whole website over to b2evo as a CMS.

That's good!

I have had some success, but I'm running into some problems.

That's bad, lets help you out.

Is there a way to have more than one list of all blogs, so that some blogs could be listed on one list, and some on another? (and some on both)

This would need to be done manually via a php script, not that hard to do.

Is it possible to automatically build a menu linking to all files in a folder? (eg. a folder of pdf files)

If you mean add a drop-down-list/combobox to your post which contains the files of a certain directory, then a renderer plugin would need to be made.

Suppose I have some static pages that I want to appear on my b2evo site. What's the best way to do that? So far I'm making a blog for each page, but I'm not sure if that's the correct approach. It seems like overkill since the content doesn't change and the list of blogs grows and grows.

If you mean where the posts should go, have a static page their instead, then yes it's possible and can be done easily by modifying the skin you are using.

Thanks in advance

No problem.

Btw, how much experience do you have with php?

balupton wrote:

Btw, how much experience do you have with php?

Unfortunately I have none, other than editing files to see what happens. I am able to achieve rudimentary customisation only.

I suppose I am hoping other people might have solved some of these problems before and will be able to point me at scripts :)

b4k4 wrote:

Is there a way to have more than one list of all blogs, so that some blogs could be listed on one list, and some on another? (and some on both)

As balupton said, it'll take some hacking to get this done. Shouldn't be too hard, but let me ask you if you envision having any blog(s) show up in both blog lists.

b4k4 wrote:

Is it possible to automatically build a menu linking to all files in a folder? (eg. a folder of pdf files)

If you mean "I want to add a file to the folder and it magically gets added to a list of links" then you'll have to hack very deeply. If you mean "I'm willing to make a post about each file as I add it to the folder" then you're basically talking about a linkblog. You can, with a minimum of hacking, have multiple linkblogs per blog. I do, and it's not very hard at all.

b4k4 wrote:

Suppose I have some static pages that I want to appear on my b2evo site. What's the best way to do that? So far I'm making a blog for each page, but I'm not sure if that's the correct approach. It seems like overkill since the content doesn't change and the list of blogs grows and grows.

A blog for each page sounds like overkill. Blogs are like major mongo categories with the unique advantage of having their own syndication feed. So these static pages probably can be grouped into themes right? Each theme is either a category OR a blog. Again you can probably use the linkblog approach to link to the stand-alone page OR you can incorporate the content of the page into a "post-like" b2evolution page. I've done both and can help you there, but the help depends on what *exactly* you're thinking works the best for you. First decide if your content is "a blog or a category in a blog", then we'll see what we should do about tweaking code.

EdB wrote:

b4k4 wrote:

Is there a way to have more than one list of all blogs, so that some blogs could be listed on one list, and some on another? (and some on both)

As balupton said, it'll take some hacking to get this done. Shouldn't be too hard, but let me ask you if you envision having any blog(s) show up in both blog lists.

Yes I thought so, but my reason for having two lists was that one of them would in fact be real blogs, and the other list was my idea of getting the menu filled with links to basically static pages, which I will write more about below.
EdB wrote:

If you mean "I want to add a file to the folder and it magically gets added to a list of links" then you'll have to hack very deeply.

This is what I meant, but I agree with you on the linkblog idea. I suppose a link blog can be trimmed to look like a menu, right? I mean with no poster, time, comments, etc.

You can, with a minimum of hacking, have multiple linkblogs per blog. I do, and it's not very hard at all.

This sounds like what I need. Could I make a linkblog populate the navigation tabs of a skin like nautica2l, instead of the list of all blogs?

b4k4 wrote:

Suppose I have some static pages that I want to appear .....

A blog for each page sounds like overkill. Blogs are like major mongo categories with the unique advantage of having their own syndication feed. So these static pages probably can be grouped into themes right?

Right

Each theme is either a category OR a blog.

I'm losing you on this. You mean category as in posts?

Again you can probably use the linkblog approach to link to the stand-alone page

sounds fine. I just write html and use css from the skin, right?

OR you can incorporate the content of the page into a "post-like" b2evolution page.

What do you mean "post-like". Can there be a page in b2evo which is not a post in a blog?

Thanks for the great help. This is an excellent forum. :D

Just to wrap this up.
I ended up using etomite for the static pages and b2evo for the blogs. I just couldn't get it all to work the way I wanted in b2evo with my low ability.
I would recommend etomite to anyone trying to do the same as me. Its a cms, but focused more on static pages than dynamic content. By customising skins, I got the etomite and b2evo pages to look similar. I gave up on the idea of linking the static pages in b2evo, and just put one link back to the home page.