SyntaxCMS Blog - Entries from October 2004

Detail templates for Content Types

Tuesday, October 26. 2004

Detail pages display a particular record on a site. If you have datatype specific modules, you might be tempted to have a detail.php capability within it - usually by just copying the detail.php file from the general module. Unless you'll be implementing a lot of custom code on the detail page, say to hook in to a third party shopping cart app, you're probably safer just re-using the general detail script.

Let's assume you have Press Releases to display and have put the related code in modules/press_release. Your user.conf.php file would have at least the following lines to register the module:

// The Abstract Documents Module
Modules::addModule('press_release', 'Press Releases');	
Modules::setAttribute('press_release', 'content_label', 'Press Release');	
Modules::setAttribute('press_release', 'datatype', array(  DATATYPE_DOCUMENT ));
Modules::setAttribute('press_release', 'public_exposure', true);
Moduels::setCapability('press_release', 'list' );

By NOT specifying a detail capability above, Syntax will route requests to /content/press_releases/detail/444 through modules/general/detail.php. This gains you a few things:

Fetching the record is done using collections, so that record privileges will be checked and enforced. If a record is restricted to a specific group or user, then it will only be displayed to them.
Will check if the datatype is in the exposed content datatypes list.
Breadcrumb to the detail page will be automatically built depending on if user's came to the page from a section or another module.
Less time coding or copying this code and one less file to manage.

Detail.php is smart enough to look for a custom detail.tpl file to use to display the matching record. It will look in the first module that works with the specified datatype. So, in this case it would look for modules/press_release/templates/detail.tpl and use that file if it exists. In your custom template, you have to use the $Record variable to get information out for display.

Posted by omerida in Under the Hood at 22:10 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

What Syntax CMS Is and Is Not

Sunday, October 24. 2004

I thought I'd comment on what we are trying to do with Syntax CMS and help potential users decide if it's right for them.

What Syntax CMS Is

Syntax CMS is a result of our custom development for Non Profit clients. Syntax CMS is the platform most of the sites that Forum One Communications has developed were built upon, either in its current form or one of the intermediate predecessors. Accordingly, you'll find it suited to people who have to build out a lot of custom features but don't want to reinvent the wheel each time. Syntax CMS and its ancestors have been used for everything from five or six-page sites without a lot of dynamic content to gargantuan information repositories to a environmental data collection and display Web application.

Syntax CMS is a starting point. Syntax CMS is built with the assumption that what you get out-of-the-box is not what you'll end up with as your finished site. We assume you'll not only want to change the templates around, but create new content types and program a couple of custom displays or even Web applications.

Syntax CMS is optimized for content administrators and programmers. Syntax CMS, as befits its primary role as our in-house development platform, is optimized for content administrators who only work with installed and configured instances as well as programmers who develop the applications the content administrators will later use. This is not to say it is the be-all and end-all of usability for either case, but this is where much of the effort we have put into the system has been. Accordingly, you'll see better documentation than in most in-house projects for programmers, and easier-to-use content interfaces than some more developer-centric Web applications. Improving both continues to be a priority for us, especially usability for content administrators.

Syntax CMS is content-based. Syntax CMS was developed with Forum One's clients in mind: policy organizations with a great amount of existing content either locked away in a static HTML Web site or offline in individual documents. Accordingly, the site assumes you'll have different content types, want to use the existing content anywhere it's appropriate, and maximize the ability of users to find the content no matter the strategy they use to find it: clicking on pages, filtering by category, or searching.

This is the main reason Syntax CMS exists--to support faceted classification and content discovery. My favorite metaphor, which I freely stole from one of our senior strategists, is finding salsa in the grocery store. You can look at the store directory and find "condiments," go to that aisle, and find salsa. But you can also find the same product under "ethnic food." And if there's a display of party supplies that includes tortilla chips, salsa will be there. It will also likely be near where tortilla chips themselves are sold. So the store wants to make it as easy as possible to find salsa, no matter how you might think of finding it. Syntax CMS wants to make it as easy as possible to find content items, no matter how you think of finding them.

What Syntax CMS Is Not

Syntax CMS is not a "product" Forum One sells. We sell and support solutions. There's no Syntax CMS box. We don't ship it. It's free. We don't provide support for the open source version the way we do the solutions we create for our customers, though of course you are welcome to make a special arrangement with Forum One to get support on a time and materials basis. It's open source because we thought it might be useful to the community, and really we have no reason to keep it closed. An active user community would be nice, as would contributions and improvements from that community, especially in areas that aren't our in-house priority (just because they're not a priority doesn't mean we wouldn't think they're useful or of value). However, our goal is not Syntax CMS on every server. We expect it will be useful for people with problems like ours. We expect to keep using it to provide smart solutions for policy organizations who come to us for strategy and development. We don't expect to make a lot of money from people who want a given feature and will pay us to implement it--though we of course would be happy to work something out. But bottom line, Syntax CMS is not a "product" and will not be for the foreseeable future.

Syntax CMS is not a CMS-in-a-box. In accordance with our "not a product" strategy, the open source download of Syntax CMS is not designed to be a finished application after installation. You should be able to do some things with it, but it's expected you'll want to tweak it and program it. This means we haven't put in a lot of time to things like a nice-looking default design, or swappable and extendable themes, or even making sure the thing generates zero errors when you first install it on a different server environment than ours (though it should be mostly useable, and getting to error-free is a goal of ours--just not a high priority).

Syntax CMS is not optimized for lone webmasters looking for a quick CMS. While we would love an installation wizard like Serendipity's, it's just not a priority of ours. After all, it's not a product we're trying to sell. So you'll find that while we try to reduce the dependencies, there are a number. It is not yet as easily configurable for different servers as we'd like. We haven't spent a lot of time making it work for other databases, though it is built to allow that possibility. These are areas we would actually encourage any outside users to contribute code or design advice. However it's not a priority inside our organization. But Syntax CMS is not designed for easy installation and configuration to put up a quick CMS for users to start in on. If you're the lone webmaster of an organization that wants a dynamic Web site without a lot of effort, you probably want one of the other Open Source CMSes out there. Even if we get it more easily installed, our not-a-product strategy means it is unlikely you'll see attractive default themes or every module your heart could desire ready and waiting for you. Unless, of course, you hire us to develop a really great Web site for you.

Syntax CMS is not (primarily) page-based. Some CMSes assume that all content will appear on pages, and pages will have authors, and everything on a page is configurable. Syntax CMS is not one of those CMSes. We assume users will come to our content from different directions: searching, browsing by some classification, exploring links of related content, or by following a heirarchical tree of pages. But for Syntax CMS, the content is the thing. We do provide the tools that let you use Syntax CMS to generate a site that mainly gives you dynamic control of a 5-page brochure site (and we have used it in this way). However, that's just not our focus.

In fact, it is this non-page-centric approach that has caused us to build and maintain our own solution, as I noted above. So if you're looking for a solution that is what Syntax CMS is and isn't what Syntax CMS isn't, give it a whirl and tell us what you think. But remember that it's not designed to be a one-size-fits-all product--it's just designed to be a flexible enough platform for you to turn it into the solution you need--just like we do on a daily basis.

Update: I have edited the entry to clarify our stance on the open source CMS we have made available versus the solutions we regularly provide to our clients.

Posted by sandy in 20,000 ft view at 11:37

Hierarchical Pick Table Trees

Tuesday, October 5. 2004

I just checked in a new type of pick table that will be available in our next release. Just in case you are wondering, in Syntax a pick table is a simple database table of id, name pairs that are used mostly for categorizing other records. For example, you could have a picktable for topics, regions, and countries and use those across all your content types - people, documents, events, etc. Until now, these have been flat lists, and in truth they still are, but by adding a field called parent to a picktable, they can be displayed as a tree of options to users.

In the site administration application, child picks are drawn indented underneath their parent and sorted alphabetically. Also, you can not delete picks that have no parent ( parent=0 ) or that have children.

In an input form, if you use the pick_tree widget with a pick table with a parent column, they will be drawn as a hierarchical set of options for the user to select.

Posted by omerida in Oh Shiny! at 23:00 | Comments (3) | Trackbacks (0)

(Page 1 of 1, totaling 3 entries)

About SyntaxCMS

SyntaxCMS is an Open Source Content Management System project sponsored by Forum One Communications. Forum One is a firm based in Washington DC with the singular mission of applying significant technologies to public policy issues of importance.