Modules

You want to know how to develop modules? There is an own chapter about this topic: Module Development

Slides

If you want to enhance your website with a real eyecatcher a slider is your method of choice. A slider consists of slides. To maintain continuity sliders are called "slide categories" in the backend, so every slide belongs to a slide category. Many JavaScript sliders exist out there but for your convenience Contentify comes with a slider already built-in. Inserting it into a template is a piece of cake:

@widget('Slides::Slides', ['categoryId' => 1])

categoryId is the ID of the corresponding slide category aka the slider. You may add multiple slider widgets to one template. The widget basically adds the modules/slides/views/widget.blade.php template to the parent template. That's where the jQuery slider plugin is instantiated, like so:

$('#slider{{ $categoryId }}').contentifySlider();

It's possible to pass options to it - take a look at libs/slider.js for a complete list:

$('#slider{{ $categoryId }}').contentifySlider({ autoplay: false });

The slider widget comes with a default CSS styling. Don't hesitate to make any changes you want to adopt the styling to your website. It's located in the frontend.css stylesheet at the .slider class. You probably want to set the slider's height to an appropriate value.

.slider { position: relative; width: 100%; height: 245px; /* Height of a single slide */ }

Scrollers

Strictly speaking, scrollers are not part of a module.

If you just need a UI container with items that can slide horizontally consider to implement a scroller instead of a slider. A scroller is an HTML container with a list of items and two scrolling buttons. Clicking on one of the buttons slides to the previous or the next item. Endless sliding in one direction is possible. Example markup:

<div class="scroller">
    <ul class="layout-h">
        <li>
            Item 1
        </li>
        <li>
            Item 2
        </li>
    </ul>
    <a class="to-left" href="#">&lt;</a>
    <a class="to-right" href="#">&gt;</a>
</div>

{{ HTML::script('libs/scroller.js') }}
<script>
    $(document).ready(function()
    {
        $('.scroller').contentifyScroller();
    });
</script>

It's possible to display content with a JS scroller instead of a JS slider and vice versa.

Ratings

Strictly speaking, the rating system is not part of a module.

The rating system allows users to rate content with one to five stars. Similar to comments the type of content is not restricted: If you want to, anything can be rated anywhere. To integrate the rating system in a template, you may use this code:

{!! Ratings::show('shoes', $shoe->id) !!}

In this example we assume there is a Shoe model and we want to allow users to rate shoes. The "shoes" string defines the identifier of the type of the content and the ID the concrete shoe the rating belongs to. Users have to be logged into their account to rate something.

Videos

Every video belongs to a provider. The only two default providers are youtube and vimeo. As you might guess, a provider is a platform that hosts videos. The App\Modules\Videos\Video model stores a $providers array with available providers. You may add additional providers to this array. If you do so you have to care for handling videos from these providers by modifying corresponding templates - at least app/modules/videos/resources/views/index.blade.php and show.blade.php. You may also take a look at admin_form.blade.php.

Streams

Streams - most likely hosted by Twitch or Smashcast - usually tend to be online or offline and to have at least zero viewers. The Streams module can display such information but it needs to frequently update them. Therefore it adds a job to the jobs manager. This job will be executed each time when the job manager is triggered by a cron job and the job is not cooling down. Therefore you need to create a cron job if you want automated updates. Read more at the GitHub page of the Jobs package.

Navigations

As an administrator, you are able to create new navigations (=menus) in the backend. If you do so, you have to manually include these navigations to one or more templates. Probably you want to add it to the main template, so open app/Modules/<ThemeName>/Resources/Views/layout.blade.php with a text editor and add this code to an appropriate place: @widget('Navigations::Navigation', ['id' => 123]) Do not forget to replace 123 with the actual ID of the navigation.

Pages

Pages are containers for rich-texts. There are three types of pages:

• Blog Post: Also called "articles". They have a comment section.
• Page: Similar to blog posts, but they do not have a comment section.
• Custom Content: They are meant to be included somewhere else, for example, you may use them as editor templates and add them to texts by clicking on the "insert template" button. You may also include them on your website with the help of the Pages::Fragment widget. This allows you to create parts of the website that can easily be modified in the backend.

The pages module also includes the short biography widget. You may edit the short biography on the general configuration page. This field is supposed to give a brief summary about your organization, project or website in general. You may then use the short biography widget to actually display the short biography somewhere on the website, for instance in the footer.

Events

The events module comes with two widgets:

• Events widget: Display events (up to a given maximum) ordered by the date and time when they start in a table
• Calendar widget: Displays the current month and all of its events as a calendar. Allows switching to other months. It loads the events of the chosen month via AJAX.

Partners

In the partners module, you may create entries for all of your partners and sponsors. We recommend creating one category for your partners and one for your sponsors. You may use the partners widget to display your partners and sponsors on your website. Use the category parameter of the widget to only show partners or sponsors.

Shoutbox

The "Shouts" module focuses on a single widget, the shout box widget. It is a very simple chat for your website.

Technically the shout box is pretty rudimentary. Therefore it might not perform well on websites with much traffic. We do not recommend to use it on a page of your website that is accessible by everyone (for example the landing page) if your website has more than 1000 daily visitors.

Use the shout box widget by adding this code to a Blade template: @widget('Shouts::Shouts')

Contact / Applications

The "Contact" module consists of two parts: Its main part is to provide a contact form when a client navigates to the URL example.org/contact. Its secondary part is the application form. Navigate to example.org/application to see this form. You will be able to see messages of both types in the backend in the "contact" section.

Languages

The CMS supports multiple interface language. Users can choose one of these languages by editing their user settings. It is also possible to add a widget that displays country flags of countries associated with the languages. Users can click on a flag to choose a language. Add the widget to a Blade layout with this code: @widget('Languages::Languages')

Learn more about languages in the translation chapter.

Users

Widgets

The "User" module has several widgets:

• Latest user widget: @widget('Users::LatestUsers') Displays the latest users, ordered by date & time when they created their account. This widget has one optional parameter: limit This parameter specifies how many users are displayed. Technical hint: This widget uses an HTML table element which a header and one row for each user. This widget is used in the backend in the dashboard.
• Online widget: @widget('Users::Online') Displays the users who are currently online on your website. Users are considered to be "online" within 5 minutes after their last action. This widget has one optional parameter: limit This parameter specifies how many users are displayed.
• Random user widget: @widget('Users::RandomUser') Displays one randomly selected user. Also known as "fame box". Picks a new user after 60 minutes. If you want to change that, use the minutes parameter.