Problem with menu items displaying

[john22]

Hi,

I am using Phoca Restaurant Menu 1.0.2 lite with Joomla 1.5.11.

I was wondering if there were any limitations with the lite version that would put a limit to the amount of data that I could display on the Joomla Menu page that the phoca daily menu links to.

When setting up my individual menu items in the daily menu, I have been including bbcode within the title. For example, one of my items looks like this. Crispy Tofu[br]Deep fried tofu served with sweet and sour sauce, topped with peanut.

I can add these bbcode tags to several items, and they display just fine in Joomla. However, once I reach a certain amount of items with descriptions, nothing will display on my Joomla menu page. I have already investigated a possible syntax error within my bbcode, but my syntax is consistent. In fact, I can unpublish some menu items and add more bbcode tags to items. Once I reach a certain amount of menu items with bbcode, I end up with the same problem.

Can you tell me if this is a cause to some limitation in the lite version? If so, will I be able to resolve this issue by purchasing the professional version?

Thanks in advance.

[willson]

How many items do you have? BB code can be processor intensive and using a lot of it will consume resources. Perhaps your system is running out of enough memory (in the system's php settings, not the memory of your own machine).

I have a simple menu with lots of bb code and about 20 items; it works - no problem.

On the other hand, I don't think there's any limit in the number of items because it's the simple/lite version. I just looked at the php code (hurray! open source) and there's no limit built into the SQL query.

Summary: since you have detected an apparent BBcode limit I would suspect system processing problems or timeouts of some sort. Is there any clue in your php/apache error logs?

[willson]

I can confirm the symptom that the entire menu does not display when there are "too many" BBcodes. My server configuration was changed by my hosting provider and one of my menus stopped displaying - - until I removed one group that had two items in it (this is a Bill of Fare menu so it's not just Daily Menu that has this symptom). Deselecting BBcode processing also allows the complete menu to display (but then, of course, it displays the raw BBcode).

I am on shared hosting so have a little less control over system configuration than is ideal but I have tried doubling memory_limit and max_execution_time without eliminating the symptom.
The error log shows no message at the time of failure - - which indicates to me that it's being stopped by PHP or Apache at the system level.

I will mess around some more with configuration and see what it gets me.
I'll also ask my hosting provider what they changed in the system configuration but it's not likely that I will get a useful answer out of them.

For now my workaround is to not publish that one Group until I get this figured out.

[Jan]

Hi, yes, the bb code function (preg replace callback) needs a lot of memory if there are a lot of bb codes.

Maybe I will paste new parameters there:

- no html code
- bb code (check for correct html output) - needs a lot of memory
- html code (will not check html output)

Jan

[john22]

I resolved my issue with menu items not displaying properly. It involved a workaround, and eliminated the need to use BBcode, which is resource intensive anyhow.

I was able to modify one of the php forms by adding an additional input field for the items administration form. I called this input field "Description", and I used it to add descriptions to each individual menu food item. By doing this, I now had a field for naming my menu items, and an additional field for adding a description to those menu items. This eliminated the need to add a break line with BBcode. Anything that I entered in the description field would display right below the item name.

Secondly, I edited the css files in order to add "bold" to the item name, and added additional formatting to indent the item descriptions properly.

After all this, All I have to do to add a new menu food item is to enter in the item name, item description, and item price. The css handles all of the formatting, and my menu loads much faster then with BBcode. There are no issues with the menu items displaying properly, and believe me, I have a lot of menu items on the page.

Here is an example of what one of my menu items looks like after adding it to the menu. (formatted with css not bbcode)

Egg Rolls
Pork and rice noodles wrapped in a crispy shell, and served with a sweet Thai sauce.


John

[Jan]

Hi, for the next version, I am planning to add description field into all menu types (not only in wine list - see: https://www.phoca.cz/restaurantmenudemo/en/wine-list ) I hope this will solve the problem.

Jan