Hi All.

I just bought into AS and I am finding it very difficult to get things going. I should let you know I am moving a site over from Smart Thinker modules to AS and have a few custom views that need to be created in AS for a clean move.

I was hoping someone could point me in the direction of some straight forward documentation that takes one through the steps to creating new themes, templates and custom view and explain their significance. At the moment I am struggling with the following

1-Templates vs Social View Setting Default View> I see in the designer that there are loads of templates and I can even add my own new ones as well, but when it comes to adding a AS module to a page I can not see all these templates nor my custom templates in the Social View Setting Default View list nor when I select an item like "Profile View" then look in the "Default Template" drop down.

2-Custom Views. Ok I can place them on pages and they work alright but for example if I were to open profileview.ascx then take the content of that and put it in a custom view then add it to a page, the tokens don't render. Which brings me to my question. What is the proper formatting for Custom Views? Where can I find a list of accepted tokens?

3- AS tokens in DNN skin aspx pages. I saw in a forum entry what seemed like a way to get DNN skin pages to render AS token as long as the controls are registered. I tried this using a snippit provided by Will in one of his post but the tokens did not render. Is this a supported feature?

I read in post that there might be a custom view creation guide somewhere but after 3 days of searching the forums I have come up empty handed

Regards,

Mark

I don't think any comprehensive documentation exists covering the entire process from start to finish.

1. A "View" can use one or many templates. For example, the Profile View has a main template (ProfileView) but it also includes items such as ProfileEdit, all the Gallery templates, the Journal, etc. If you make a change to an existing default template, and save it in the portals directory, then Active Social will automatically replace the default templates with your changes. You do not have to select it from the Social View Settings. However, the other option is creating a custom view, which is usually only a single template. This custom view is not automatically assigned to anything by Active Social, and must be selected from the Social View Settings.

2. First off, you can't create another profile view. If you do, Active Social would just redirect the user to the default profile page whenever a user tried to view it. This is a limitation of the module that should be extended in the future. Regarding tokens, they do not all work on all views, as they may require information to be in the query string. The best way to determine if tokens work, is most likely trial and error. We have not tested every token on every page, so even I can not say if it will work without just making a new custom view myself to test it. Also, to further complicate things, there are tokens that seem to server the same purpose but have a different syntax for different views. (e.g. [AS:PROFILE:DISPLAYNAME], [DNN:PROFILE:DISPLAYNAME] and < %# Bind("DisplayName") % >)

3. Skin objects do work, but it is probably better to just make custom views. Skin objects may require that the Active Social module is on the page, so if you are already adding the module, might as well not bother editing the skin. Plus you get the added benefit of module level security.

Thanks for the reply. 

I guess I will play the trial and error game then. But I do have one favour. Could you or anyone else tell me how I can use the add friend button in a custom view? so far no luck

Thanks

Also this works to return a profile pic but when I am logged out or view another user I get a broken link. 

<active:profilepicture id='ctlPicsm' profilepicturefile='&#91;DNN:PROFILE:ProfilePicture&#93;' picsize='md' portalid='&#91;DNN:PORTALSETTINGS:PORTALID&#93;' maxwidth="120" maxheight="120" runat='server' />

What can I use to properly output a users profile pic when I have the asuid being passed in a query string like '/mypage.aspx?asuid=5'

Thanks again

Hi,

Just coming back to this thread. I am still not able to figure out how to use the 'Add Friend' button on a custom template. Could anyone advise on how?

Cheers