I'm stumped trying to put our TimeBank event pictures into a picture carousel on our welcome page.
I found that Rotor Banner allows for multiple images and/or ad text to be displayed one at a time in a single window (block) and you can apply different transition effects and timings to the rotating displays. I downloaded and installed the Drupal Rotor Banner module (6.x-2.8) and its dependent modules.
I have the rotor block placed where I would like it on our welcome page at “content bottom”. The module comes with default settings that do not display pictures properly. Views can be used to tweak those settings and I have tried that numerous times. I'm having problems with Views saving my configuration changes for the rotor content type. Views works normally on other content types, so I suspect there is some problem with Rotor Banner.
When I go in and change the rotor style settings using the ajax icon, do the update, then change the image cache to medium, saving all the updates as I go, the changes revert to standard rotor banner defaults, which trash the display of my pictures. I’ve tried making one change at a time and doing all the saves incrementally, but the changes still won’t save. I even logged in as user 1, made the changes, and the changes would not save under user1 either.
I have followed instructions from the developer http://www.kirkdesigns.co.uk/docs/drupal-rotor-banner-module which says I should be able to save my changes.
Can someone please provide some advice on how I might solve my problem? Any and all suggestions would be welcome!
Thank you very much,
Jim Tate
Site Admin
Our Time Bank
PS - I left the block enabled at www.ourtimebank.com for review and ease of troubleshooting, but it will confuse our members until I can get it working and restructure our welcome page accordingly.
Comments
A guess
Hi Jim,
I've never used Rotor Banner, but it's strange that Views isn't saving your settings. It sounds like there might be a subtle problem with the structure of the View you're editing. Maybe you're editing a views display that isn't the one being used for that block, for example. It's pretty hard to know without being able to see the configuration myself — looking at the source of your page, I don't see anything really obvious that tells me what's wrong.
The only other thing I can think of is if there are multiple people editing the view at the same time, your settings could be clobbering each other. That seems pretty unlikely, though.
Joe
Hi Jim, I can only provided
Hi Jim,
I can only provided very limited help because I only really deal with Drupal 7 right now and I've never been granted admin access for and CW2 sites (despite requesting it for 3 sites), but...
I don't know what the set up is for admin access on CW2 sites and what people are permitted to change, but it doesn't seem impossible that there could be a lock on the database tables that deal with configurations of views. By no means do I actually KNOW that this is true, but it's not inconceivable.
You also might want to try Views Slideshow (http://drupal.org/project/views_slideshow) and related modules. I haven't used either slideshow or rotor, but slideshow has a far larger user base and seems more actively developed.
Finally, this could be an issue relating to image styles, and defining an image style explicitly to be used with this view might help resolve it.
Sorry I can't be of more direct help.
Best,
Marc
Marc
buildFTW.org
timeFTW.org
Error Messages?
Thank you Marc and Joe for your valuable inputs!
I'm getting the following error message when trying to overide, change, and update the Rotor Banner views: "Unknown column 'view_php' in 'field list' query: INSERT INTO views_view (name, description, tag, view_php, base_table, is_cacheable) VALUES ('rotor', 'Default view for the Rotor Banner module - A block that rotates through all Rotor Items', '', '', 'node', 0) in /srv/www/drupal/cw2.1/public/sites/all/modules/views/includes/view.inc on line 1722."
Does this tell you anything about why my updates don't get saved? It looks to me like the view is somehow hard coded via PHP and I don't do PHP.
Interpretation of the error is my last hope because all the other things I've looked up [downloading views 6x-2.16 (CW is running 2.14), using views update #600 in updatePHP, or upgrading to views 6x-3.0] could cause other complications that I do not want to risk. If there is no simple fix, I'm going to try Marc's suggestion and install views slideshow to replace rotor banner.
Thanks for your help.
Jim
views_php?
Hey Jim,
That views_php column isn't, as far as I know, native to Views module. Have you looked at your site's status report (admin/reports/status) to make sure your site's database doesn't have any pending updates? If you've been experimenting with different modules, some stuff might be left over, or need to be updated, before everything will work together well.
Sticking with Views 6.x-2.16 (I assume you have that version -- if you don't, you should upgrade to it), the latest release on the 2.x branch, is probably fine, and not the problem here.
Joe
Picture Carousel Problem Discovered
Joe - you were right on!
The problem I had with Rotor Banner not working was the result of the Views module being out of date. It took the rollout of CW2.1 Features to discover and confirm the problem. TBUSA updated the Views module to 6.x-2.16 last week and Rotor Banner now works! You can see it in use at www.ourtimebank.com at the bottom of our welcome page. Soon to be added to our Repair Café page too (sponsor advertising and event photos).
TB Site Admins will find Rotor Banner much simpler to setup and use than Views Slideshow. I spent hours on the very complicated setup for Views Slideshow without success. Yes, it is much more sophisticated, flexible, and used on many more Drupal sites. The documentation for it is hard to follow and, in my opinion, written for developers, not Site Admins. In contrast, Rotor Banner documentation is some of the best I’ve found for Drupal modules. You can see it here: http://www.kirkdesigns.co.uk/docs/drupal-rotor-banner-module .
If anyone is interested in using Rotor Banner for their TimeBank, please drop me an email and I would be happy to provide some pointers so you can get it up and running fast.
Jim Tate