in progress creating an unlisted admin Page

Say (for example) I want to create a web page/url for an item I personally want to sell on Ebay, but i don't want my site members to see it-- it has nothing to do with my site. I just want a page on the web to park some info about the item and a dozen photos of it... I would then link to the page in my Ebay auction or on Craigslist- buyers would be able to go to the link and see the info and photos, but my site members would not be able to see the page or stumble onto it unless they had the link. After I sell the item I could then edit the page for a new item or just delete the page.

Is creating a Page the best way to do this? Or perhaps creating a private Blog post somehow? Or a hidden member/profile with pages they create?
BTW I have other Admin blog posts that need to remain public on my site. Also, currently only Admins can create either blogs or pages on my site, and that's how I want it.

It's pretty simple, but I'm not sure what would be the easiest method for this use.


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015
updated by @strumelia: 12/18/18 01:07:17AM

Use SiteBuilder to create a page with an unlinked URL -
HTTP://mysite.com/stuff-i-want-to-sell


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Paul Asher - JR Developer and System Import Specialist

Paul thanks- but I don't have SiteBuilder installed, and never opted to learn to use it. Is there a way i can do this without SB?
I have created Admin pages already in the past, as in here: https://fotmd.com/strumelia/page ...but that's not a private page and I don't see a setting to make it private.


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015
updated by @strumelia: 07/22/18 02:47:10PM

...can this have something to do with the 'show page header' checkbox available to me (not in SB, but when creating a normal Page), with the help reading:
"If checked, the page title and breadcrumb navigation will be added above the page content." .... I'm not sure what that actually means... ?


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

You could create a skin template called ‘my_ebay_stuff.tpl’ then access as http://Mysore.com/my_ebay_stuff
Hth


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Paul Asher - JR Developer and System Import Specialist

There is no way to set some of my pages to be private (or rather 'unlisted') and my other pages to be public?

Skin template?... I'd have to figure out how to do that and what to put in it.

(mysore.com ...ew! lol)


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015
updated by @strumelia: 07/22/18 02:52:10PM

if you make a file and call it my_ebay_stuff.tpl and upload it to:/
/skins/(YOUR ACTIVE SKIN)/my_ebay_stuff.tpl

Then put this in it
it will display on your site at http://yoursite.com/my_ebay_stuff

Site builder would give you access to all the editors and stuff too though, so that probably would be easier if you didnt want to muck around with code.

Thanks Michael for that explanation.
You mean make a text file in say Wordpad and call it ___.tpl ?

Wouldn't SB then change my site's current index page and menus if I activated it though? Would it make unwanted changes to my site if all I did was use it to make some new pages?


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

nope, turn it on and all that happens is you get a couple of extra buttons show up on your home page. From there you can choose to override the page or not. And if you do decide to override the page, you can delete the page and go back to what you had.

There's no cost to turning it on.

As for the text fie, yes, call it whatever you want the url to be. so if you call it elephants.tpl you will find it at yoursite.com/elephants

Try out SiteBuilder - By far the easiest way to do this. Docs here - https://www.jamroom.net/the-jamroom-network/documentation/site-builder/2634/what-is-site-builder

Just goto yoursite.com/my_ebay_stuff (or whatever) then click 'yes' to build the page.
Site Builder (bottom left) => Page Config
Move sliders to create a single 12 wide row then add it
Delete the 4-4-4 row
Save Page Layout
Site Builder => Add Widget => HTML Editor
Start building your page

Easy


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Paul Asher - JR Developer and System Import Specialist

I will try this SB method Paul and Michael. Sounds like the simplest way. Thank you!
I'll post again here if I get stumped along the way.


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

You'll be fine
Of course, you don't have to create a single 12 wide row. You could do a 4-8, say and add an image list widget to the left and a description (html editor) widget on the right.
The possibilities are endless


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Paul Asher - JR Developer and System Import Specialist

Why not set everything up on eBay, if that is where the item is being sold?

I am not familiar with selling on eBay. Is there an advantage to having the information located outside eBay?


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PJ Matthews, Kyoto
Migrated from Ning 2.0. Now at Jamroom 6 beta and using Jamroom Hosting for The Research Cooperative (researchcooperative.org)

PJ, I may be selling things on other sites, or Craigslist, etc. With a high cost item, I can easily exceed the limits for attachments on various sites. Last year I sold a valuable mandolin on a Mandolin social network, and I had to create a separate page with many photos, a video, attached original receipts/documentation, and descriptions. Even my own ForSale forum on my JR music site does not allow that many attachments... lol.
Thus I need to occasionally create some temporary pages just for such disposable page use. In the past I've done this on my (non-JR) hosted domain/web package, but I'm giving that space up since for my purposes it's not worth the premium cost they charge me.


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015
updated by @strumelia: 07/28/18 09:22:19AM

How did you go getting Site Builder turned on? any issues?

Michael, sorry for the delays.
I've had sitebuilder installed on my inactive pennywhistle site for a while now, but not activated. That's where I'll be doing this testing.
Unfortunately BOTH my drives inside my main work desktop computer started dying this morning and my computer was unbootable...its in for repairs right now and perhaps tomorrow I can get back in action. Not sure why. Both the main SSD and ALSO the daily backup drive... ugh!
Right now I'm just on my little laptop which is not set up to do much except browse and check email. Horrible feeling to have all my (dayjob) work from the past two weeks hanging by a thread. (my latest externa backup is 2 wks old) Keeping my fingers crossed they can clone from one of the two internal drives. All this happened right after I applied the newest Windows updates this morning... but impossible to tell if that was a coincidence or not. GRRR
Anyhoo, I'm currently grounded.


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

OUCH.

....... applied updates.... bad things happened....

might be coincidence. Hope it all goes well. Give us an update when you're back at it.

Whew! I'm back up and better than ever. 24 hours later... two new internal drives and they were able to clone Everything from the old ones to the new ones. Things are now exactly as they were, but on brand new drives.
At this point, though it was tempting, I no longer suspect the Win updates per se. One drive was 'almost' dead (and rendered the computer unbootable) and the other drive was headed towards failing, but was not a boot drive, just for daily data backups. We've had quite a few sudden power outages lately, which may have speeded the demise.

Things are good now, but will need tomorrow to catch up with work before I get back to this thread. Needless to say, will delay those win updates for a couple weeks now and meanwhile am running lots of external backups as well (like I usually do).
Thanks!


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

Glad to see you're up and running again. I've been using site builder since migrating from Ning and it helps a non-techy person like me play around with messing stuff too much. LOL

Deb

Highly recommended:

https://www.backblaze.com/


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Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

Thanks Brian, I looked into that and Backblaze looks very good, but I didn't want to use cloud storage.

I've been using Casper for years, but it doesn't back up to a network drive location, so now I'm testing Retrospect, which does and has many other options. Looks good so far, will be duplicating/cloning to BOTH an external (weekly) and an internal (nightly) backup drive, and also now have set up nightly auto-backups to our network drive. Retrospect can restore from there too.
I also update a monthly external drive clone which gets put in our bank safety deposit box, in case the house burns down. Hard to imagine I'd need any more than all that, I'm not some secret critical financial spy site or anything. !
After I make sure all this is working I'll get back to the subject of this thread (whew!) and do the SiteBuilder testing as you all suggested, for making unlisted pages on my JR site... sorry to get off topic.


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

To manage my JR site, I have an entire archive of stuff that is unlisted and offsite.... it's in a Dropbox cloud account, along with much else from work and home. All my day to day activities are accessible from anywhere. This helps as I travel a lot for work.

To minimize cloud storage expenses all my photographic archives are NOT in cloud storage, but are in two different hard-drives, in two different locations, and each of those hard-drives has automatic mirroring to an attached double. The travelling generates a lot of photographs!


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PJ Matthews, Kyoto
Migrated from Ning 2.0. Now at Jamroom 6 beta and using Jamroom Hosting for The Research Cooperative (researchcooperative.org)

Ok I've been fooling with trying to make a little page using Sitebuilder to sell some pinback buttons.

As soon as I activated the SB module, most of the top menu links on my site's Home page disappeared...even to non logged in people and to regular members. Yet I had not even created any pages yet! (hmm...I thought you said the only thing that would change is getting the new two SB buttons at bottom of home page?)

So I figured I could use SB to build the new page, then turn it off (to get my menu links back) once I had the new page and its URL in place.
But no such luck- after successfully creating the new button-selling page, I turned off SB again and the new page is no longer accessible or visible when going to its url. The new page reappears if I turn SB back on, but then... I have to look at those new big yellow SB buttons in my face all the time and I have to apparently rebuild all the header menu links one by one. Is this correct?
Does this mean the only way I can keep (and use) new pages that were built in SB is to keep SB turned on ...forever? Probably I'm naive, but it strikes me as odd- like the pages I make ONLY actually exist in a SB 'alternate universe' that has an open/close portal people have to go through in order to see things there? =8-\

Right now I have SB activated, and the new page (which I don't need to link to in the header menu) is here:
https://pennywhistleclub.com/fotmdbuttons

So my BIG question is this:
If I want to point people from any other location to that new page using a link, will they NOT be able to see/use the page UNLESS I always keep SiteBuilder module ENABLED on my site ?

My lesser secondary question is concerning when i'm (now) trying to rebuild the now missing header menu links on my Home page from within SB. I've added most of the links already and they function, but I can't see where/how to create a header link drop down, where the only clickable links comes as dropdown choices once you hover over the main link, like in the following screenshot from my other site (without SB enabled):


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

#1) ah, yes, you'll need to recreate the menu in the SB menu editor, sorry I forgot about that.
#2) You can turn the yellow buttons off from view via ACP ->MODULES -> SITE -> SITE BUILDER ->GLOBAL CONFIG -> show site builder buttons -> UNCHECK.
#3) To make a sub menu from the menu editor, drag it to the right. You can have up to 3 levels of menu.

#1- done, new header menu links made... ok!
#2- Great!- giant yellow buttons nicely hidden until I need them again.
#3- Oooh... ok I got the 'drag to right to create a sub link' thing down now. Yay!

Looks like I got this thing figured out and can create my page of (whatever) info, and I can keep it unlisted with no links or link to it anyplace, as per my various needs.

Thank you !
I guess once you understand a couple unfamiliar things within the initial premise, the SiteBuilder thing is handy to create some pages. I still don't quite get why SB-created pages 'disappear' when SB module is disabled though, while the rest of the site remains the same. Why wouldn't the pages be permanently there to be seen after being created/saved/published ...regardless of the SB module being activated? That's the only aspect that seems kind of a bummer... but I must be missing some reason why that's desirable.


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015
updated by @strumelia: 08/19/18 07:14:55PM

Not desirable, unavoidable.

SiteBuilder pages are stored in the database instead of the filesystem. For someone who likes to work with file system files Site builder storing them in the database means another place to look for stuff, so for those type of people they would not use site builder.

The flip side is with Site Builder you can make pages without needing to SFTP into the site, so that works better for some.

Thanks for the explanation Michael.
Help me understand a bit more please-
if I were to connect via FTP and go look on my JR server for this SB page I just made... I would maybe find the uploaded images in the page there (where?) but I not find say the html file of that page code? (and I would NOT be able to edit the html by downloading that file and then replacing it after making changes on my own computer...instead I'd HAVE to edit the page's html only through the SB module..?) ?

I do get that the main reason for SB was/is to enable people to create their jr site without having to work with templates, css files, or ftp. If I were to have a wish, it'd be that pages one created using SB 'could' be ftp'd to the server to reside there once they were created, so their existence would no longer depend on having SB activated. To a developer such as yourself however, I'm sure that makes no sense at all. ;D


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015
updated by @strumelia: 08/20/18 06:10:57AM

Based on what you're looking for, why not just use a template?


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Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

--
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Education, learning resources, TEL, AR/VR/MR, CC licensed content, panoramas, interactive narrative, sectional modules (like jrDocs), lunch at Uni of Bristol. Get in touch if you share my current interests or can suggest better :)

Great question. ...Because I still haven't figured out how to do that: create templates and then get them to work etc.
I've tried twice over the past couple of years, but I can't seem to understand & follow the directions given for making/using templates and creating codes for them. Though I have tweaked my JR templates many a time to get results I want. Tweaking a previously made template is way different from creating one from scratch and creating the code for it. The directions for making a template are never such that I can understand them and make the process work. Sorry! =8-\

Steve... =8-}

p.s. I seem to be better at replacing watch batteries... right now I'm working my way through 8 really old Casio wristwatches I used to love... tiny screws and gaskets all over my desk. Mostly it's coming out successfully. Baby-G Jelly 'Whale' wristwatches... I'll be the envy of all the hipsters when I go get latte! lolol


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015
updated by @strumelia: 08/20/18 05:31:20PM

Way I make a new template.
* open the /skins/YOUR SKIN/index.tpl save it as /skins/YOUR SKIN/url-you-want-here.tpl
* empty out all the innards of it and just leave the jrCore_include HEADER and FOOTER lines.
* add what you want into the middle bit.
* upload to your server

Your new page is visible at your-site.com/url-you-want-here

Let me understand this. I could then add say simple html into the template middle part to create a page with text and images? --> but... where on my server would I need to put the IMAGE FILES referenced in the resultant webpage? (becuase without SB, I wouldnt be able to use the SB "html editor" to add pictures, hardrules, etc...right?) With SB deactivated, I'd need to make any changes to the page by tweaking the template code, right?


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

Take a browse through the templates that exist in your skin currently, you'll find lots of useful examples. What you're talking about here is the traditional way to do things. It has the most flexibility out of all the methods.

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If you're absolutely stuck for how to add the HTML code in that would be the same as what the editor would produce, make it in the editor, then click on the CODE VIEW button and copy the code from the editor to your template

Yes I was thinking of doing that- copying the code from the SB page into a template. If I did that, would the template also know where to go get the SB's "uploaded' images?
Would all images used in a page template I make be just stored in my custom skin's "img" folder as they are, or would they need to be put into specific locations or sub folders within the img folder in my skin on the server?
(thank you for bearing with me on this!)


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

yes.

The thing the editor does not do well is allow for portability. it puts in http://your-site.com/module_url/...../..../... but does not allow for things like the module url being changed by the admin or the url changing.

You'll see in the skin templates things like {$jamroom_url} which is much better than typing in the url itself, because if it changes there's nothing to do.

But it will work.

No sub folders are necessary if you're using the {jrCore_image} function, or you can put them in subfolders if you like and link to them like

Thanks Michael!
I found some time to work on this today, and got some progress.
I uploaded some jpgs to my FOTMD skin IMG folder, in their own folder, and I made a template called fotmdbuttons.tpl ...using my skin's Index tpl as a skeleton as you suggested, removing the whole middle part and putting in the code from my whistle site's sitebuilder page, but of course with the img references changed.
It looks fine, but I seem to have just a couple of small issues with the new page:
https://fotmd.com/fotmdbuttons

The first issue is that although the URL works fine, I notice when I'm there that the url displays correctly in my browser's location window, but on my browser's TAB the page title appears as: Home | fotmd.com This does not behave this way on other site pages... the browser tab always correctly reflects where I am.
What am i doing wrong in the tpl I made?- or do I need to adjust something eleswhere to make the browser tab reflect the page?

Here is my skin's new fotmdbuttons.tpl code (with all the blah blah blah stuff in the middle removed, so you can better see the beginning and end of the template code:

BTW I tried replacing that value="home" in the first line to "fotmdbuttons", but that didn't seem to do anything, so I put it back.


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015
updated by @strumelia: 09/16/18 01:17:00PM

For the tab text,
WHY: because if you look inside the file you're including header.tpl you'll see that it includes meta.tpl and in meta.tpl it has a line that looks like this:
the TITLE meta tag is what sets that browser tab value. This is not jamroom, its just a regular HTML rule.