*************************************************** RUMBLE v 1.02 Copyright © 2001 Brian Donovan rumble-related@monokromatik.com All Rights Reserved. *************************************************** Changelog =================================================== * Dec 7 2001 : Minor modifications to classes/class-editXML.php and config.php to fix errors in the RSS feed. * Jan 27 2002 : Changed the dc:title value for items in the RSS feed to the itemname What is it? =================================================== RUMBLE is a simple menu system built in PHP acting on XML. XHTML, RSS, and Flash views of the data in the menu.xml file are provided. While I originally built RUMBLE for use on my own site, I thought that it might be useful to others. RUMBLE runs from an XML file, not a database, which makes it potentially useful in situations where a database would be overkill and or using a database is not an option. As the XML file grows larger, it will take longer to parse. This effec will be most noticable in the Flash view. RUMBLE, including all of the views (with the exception of the Flash view) can be customized in a simple text editor. To edit the Flash view, you will need to have a copy of the Macromedia Flash 5 (or later) authoring application. Also, an XHTMLchunk.htm file is produced - it can be iframed or used as an include in other pages. Remember to use absolute urls for the location values if you expect yourself or others to use the XHTMLchunk or the RSS view. The Latest Version =================================================== The latest version of RUMBLE can be found at : http://dev.monokromatik.com/rumble/ Documentation =================================================== At present, the documentation for RUMBLE consists of what you find in this README file and in comments in the source. While I cannot provide support, especially for system/os-specific problems, I will gladly accept bug reports and entertain suggestions for enhancement and feature requests. Customization and Installation =================================================== Unzipping the rumble.zip archive will create a rumble folder, containing all of the files necessary for your rumble install. CUSTOMIZATION ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Many aspects of your rumble install can be controlled via the config.php file. Paths to the install, filenames, the username and password that you'll use to log into th editXML.php script, etc. are set there. If you are interested in using/making available the RSS view, you should probably produce a "logo" - check the comments in the config.php file for details. The images dubdirectory only contains one image - the gradient background gif referenced by the stylesheet used across RUMBLE. The "default view" is assumed to be the index.htm file with the embedded flash movie. The 2 files in the actionscript subdirectory contain the classes that are used to load and parse the XML file and then build the representation of the menu inside the flash movie. They are brought into the movie via #include directives when the swf is compiled. It's not necessary to place the actionscript subdirectory on your server. (1.) Open the .fla file and make whatever changes you like to the movie. (2.) Export a new movie via File > Export Movie Note 1: If you are going to use a different name for the menu.xml file, remember to change the file name in the loadandcleanXML.as file in the actionscript subdirectory (part of the value assigned to the menuXMLlocation var that's passed to the loadXMLObj constructor function) as well as in the index.htm. If you change other filenames referenced in the default view file, you will need to make these changes both in the config.php file and the default view file itself. Note 2 : The query string appended to the menuXMLlocation is there to prevent a cached copy of the xml file from being called when someone returns to your site. If you will rarely be modifying the contents of menu.xml or for any other reason don't care whether visitors see the latest information, you can replace the line : newXML1 = new loadXMLObj(menuXMLlocation, "menu"); with newXML1 = new loadXMLObj("menu.xml", "menu"); INSTALLATION ------------------------------------------------------------------------ (1.) Put everything (except the .fla and the actionscript subdirectory) into a directory on your server. (2.) Set the permissions on the menu.xml, rumble.htm, XHTMLchunk.htm, and rss.xml files so that they're readable/writable on your system. [Initially, all of these files (except for menu.xml) are empy. The menu.xml file contains some dummy groups and items to get you started. Once you make changes to the menu.xml file through the editXML.php script, new versions of the other files will be published and their contents will reflect the contents of menu.xml] (3.) Navigate to editXML.php in your browser, log in, and use the add group, edit group, add item, and edit item links to modify the contents of the menu.xml file. Licensing --------- GPL - please read gpl.txt in this archive.