My CMS Wish List

Hi Glasairmell,

Thanks for the suggestions. Can you give me more details on what you want to do with some of these features?

>1. Create and delete directories within the admin panel.

Just any directory or for some purpose? What would you use this form?

>2. Be able to assign sections/pages to directories.

There's a few ways to change how the urls are displayed. Can you give me an example of what you want to do here?

>3 Physically create an editable page using a chosen template (drop down Menu) that saves to a specified location like Article Manager does. A template editor would be great.

Would this be for more like a website builder application? You could use a pulldown to let the user select a css file to use or even include headers and footers based on it.

>4. Specify file extentions like .html or .php at the end of each url.

I've added that one to the feature request list. We'll add it in a future release.

Thanks for the details!

Hi Dave,

I understand how to change the way the URLs are displayed when creating dynamically created pages and urls.

One limitation to your cms system are the dynamically created links from the List Viewer. If you want to place the list viewer code generated links on the same page as the page viewer code, the only place it seems to work is at the very bottom of the content. That does not lend to flexible page layout.

Another problem is if you make another section, now you have two list viewer codes to deal with that do not interact with each other. So you have to make your own menu links template and use your "list" option to call it from another table to place it on each section page viewer. However every time you make a new section, you have to manually update that menu links template. Then because all pages in a section do not update the changes to a particular "list" mysql call, you have to go back to each page in a section and reselect the list to update the data from the mysql table.

The list function is very powerful and does let you work with mysql table calls and templates across all sections, however the updating is a real drawback and tedious for a customer.

Article manager seems to handle the links menu much more efficiently with the placement of the "categoryMenu.html" template. Also in AM, being able to select and work with templates is a real plus. If you change a template, you just republish with one button push and all content is updated. You can also generate your own categories that automatically become physical directories for specific pages when published.

I am doing my best to think outside the box, since I have worked so many years with AM. Having physically created pages placed in physically created directories just seems very clean and manageable to me. Very SEO friendly too and easier on mysql resources when you are crawled.

However I have a huge 100+ MB mysql db from a cms system that the search engines have no problem indexing. It produces dynamically created links and pages with no problem and I use Mod rewrite to fix up the URLs.

So far I have been able to figure out work around for things I want to do with your CMS.

On a side note may I suggest you place the alt= "" statement in your gallery image code so one can place a field there after the code is generated. I can do it manually, however it should not be necessary for me to do so.

As far as the extensions go, I made a field "page_name" that is put at the end of the URL. It was easy to do by modifying your code. So if you put in "anypage.php" that is what you get as an extension at the end of the URL. I suppose I can come up with a way for the customer to chose directory names for sections too that show in the url.

One thing I have been very carefull with is to not create duplicate field names when creating new sections. That way it keeps the list calls clean.

Thanks for all your hard efforts!

Thanks for the feedback. I appreciate it.

I've added the alt="" tags to the default image tags as suggested. That will be in the next release.

I want to make it simpler to use multiple list viewers on one page. The way to do it now is to use different variable names so they don't conflict ($articlesRows instead of $listRows, $articles instead of $records, etc) but it's a bit of a hassle. I think what we'll do moving forward is have more options on the code generator so you can just point and click the options you want for the viewer (including extension on the urls) and not have to know how to adjust the options to get what you want.

That said, if you have a project now where you want one list viewer to do something different from the rest (such as ignore the record number in the url, etc) let me know and I can tell you how to adjust those settings. I do want to make it more automated in the future though.

Thanks for the feedback!

Super, thank you for telling me how to get the list viewer to work with the page viewer without conflict.

Could you attach a file or be a bit more specific on what to change please? Thanks!

If you like you can just email me your viewer file at dave@interactivetools.com and I'll take a look, make some edits and send it back. Either that or attach it to your post here.

Thanks, I emailed the file I think you wanted, if that is not the one please let me know. I bet you are getting really excited about the CMS Builder 1.10. When it comes out I am sure everyone will be thrilled with it.

This seemed to do the trick, thanks. Was this the correct thing to do?

I changed this:

list($listRows, $listDetails) = getListRows($options);
?>

<?php foreach ($listRows as $record): ?>

<a href="<?php echo $record['_link'] ?>"><?php echo $['link_name'] ?></a><br/>
<?php endforeach ?></td>


To this:

list($linkRows, $linkDetails) = getListRows($options);
?>
<!-- /STEP1: Load Record List -->
<!-- Links Viewer -->

<?php foreach ($linkRows as $link): ?>
<a href="<?php echo $link['_link'] ?>"><?php echo $link['link_name'] ?></a><br/>

Thank you for you time!

Yes, that's exactly it. Just change all the variables of the same name to something else. Glad it's working for you now!