Content Management Plugin

[Jimmi08]

Contents
1 e107 Content Management Core Plugin
2 Why Bother Using It
3 Why a content management plugin
4 The Key Elements
5 The Template System for Content Pages
6 Preset & Custom Tags
7 Menu System
8 Advanced sorting system
9 Personal Content Manager
10 Options, more options
11 Content URL Explained
12 Getting Started with Content Manager
13 Content Q&A - HOWTO
14 Live Examples

e107 Content Management Core Plugin
The Content Manager plug-in designed by Lisa_ made its first appearance in the new e107 v.7. With the plug-in comes a whole series of advanced content management functions which have hither to not been possible with e107. The Content Manager plug-in is feature packed, so feature packed that it comes with a learning curve. Depending on your website's need, the content manager plug-in may either fit the bill for all your advanced content needs or it may prove to be a little too unwieldy for small websites. Whatever the case, approaching the content manager plug-in with a clear plan for the organization of your content is almost a must to reap all the benefits of this plug-in. Approaching the content manager plug-in with a plan allows you to incorporate some of the more advanced features allowing your website to embrace a new age of finesse that only the best websites incorporate.

Why Bother Using It
Why would you use the content manager instead of the the other publishing areas?

The content manager is so feature packed that it can handle any kind of content you put to it. You may render the content in different ways using templates. This allows you to bring under a single umbrella content pages which may look completely different and have completely different content in their bellies.

Furthermore, the content manager automatically creates a menu for each top level category ( main category, or type ) based on the content and of the categories you put inside it. The ability to group these different features in one single plugin will allow you to ensure your website's editors don't have to get lost in what can sometimes be three different places of editing in order to get the results they want.

The content manager allows the site to approach content more dynamically and all under one roof.

Why a content management plugin
Overview of why a content management plugin for a cms (Content Management System)

It's just another way of publishing and organizing content. It could have just as easily been called 'content publisher'; there's nothing in the name. It's a 'plugin' just because that is the way e107 started to develop at some point in time - in a modular way, rather than one single entity. The forum is also a 'plugin', but is also an integral part of e107. 'Plugin' doesn't necessarily mean 'add-on', if you see what I mean.

The four primary tools for publishing content are custom pages, content manager, news and forum. Just as news and forums do different jobs, custom pages and content manager do different jobs too. Although both contents output can look exactly the same, the way it is published, organized and navigated is completely different.

With 'custom pages' alone you'd be struggling to manage over 100 pages; the navigation around them would start to take it's toll, and you would have no way of tracking authors. However, for handling a small portion of the site, custom pages do very well.

Content Manager's strength is its own tabular menu and category system. You could have a thousand of pages of content, and be able to navigate it quite easily. You'd also be able to track all the authors and let them be very autonomous. However, with all that comes much more complexity than custom pages, regarding setting it up to do what you want.

........From a forum post.

Is the Content Manager appropriate for you?

The content manager plugin is ideal if:

You are experienced with e107. Spend a few months getting familiar with e107 before launching into Content Manager. Once you understand the basics of manoeuvring the admin console, templating/theming, and shortcodes you are ready to start.
You want to serve multiple types of content and want to control the publication of each differently or provide each type with a unique format. For example, you may want to host Product Reviews and HOWTO guides on your site differently. For Product Reviews you want to user to fill out a simple template with a text field and rating system. For HOWTO guides you want a more elaborate template with multiple, custom-designed fields.
You want to provide various levels of editorial control over content categories. In our example above you may want to allow any registered member to submit Product Reviews while you may restrict HOWTO submissions to editorial review by a editor.
You want to provide editorial content control to select group of users without granting them administrative privileges.
You anticipate a high volume of content, such as regular daily submissions from your users.

The Key Elements
What are the new elements of the content manager plug-in to know about?

Template system for content pages
Preset & Custom Tags
Menu system
Advanced sorting system
Personal Content Manager
Options, more options
This article will seek to explain the different possibilities these various elements of the content manager plug-in enable for the webmaster.

The Template System for Content Pages
One of the content manager's strengths lays in its template system. Allowing you an unlimited series of templates, it allows the webmaster to code any article page to look just the way you want. Because these templates are then saved somewhere, you can easily refer to these templates using a drag-down menu in the fill in area.

Examples of templates can be found in the content management plug-in's folder (content -> templates -> default) - which show you some real basic tasters of what these templates can do.

You can create your own set and have the default templates co-exist with your own.

This author, for example, uses three different templates for content pages on his website. Two of them control content pages which have an assigned image laid out (either on the right or on the left of the page), and another which controls a technical specification file.

See Content Management: Templates for more information.

Preset & Custom Tags
The introduction of preset and custom tags can make certain elements of your content more "automatic." These tags can prove really useful when you're designing your content pages in such a way that all of them include similar information. Say for example you have a series of articles that have a lot of technical detail. Cars would be an excellent example. With preset tags, you can create tags related to a car's dimensions, to a car's speed, acceleration rate and assign those tags to a given category. These tags become simple-to-use fill-in options on your "create content" page and you can be more assured that the front-end result will look the same time and time again.

See Content Management: Preset & Custom Tags for more information.

Menu System
The menu system linked to the content manager plug-in allows you to create menus linked to your categories and control different kinds of output. Your menu can now dynamically incorporate information about the latest additions to the category; they can also give individual categories search menus, and much more. These are automatically created and integrate well with any theme. If you find that you need to individualize even further, the menu system creates a php file that can be modified to a certain degree.

All configuration of the options that are present for the menu item, can be found in the options page, which is listed below to explain the menu item options in some detail.

Advanced sorting system
An important feature of the content manager plug-in is its ability to sort things anyway you desire. Say one category needs to be alphabetized (a to z), another needs to have a custom sorting arrangement, and another needs to be alphabetized (from z to a)... These and many other possibilities are now possible thanks to the content manager plug-in.

See Content Management: Order for more information.

Personal Content Manager
The Personal Content Manager allows you to assign to certain user classes the ability to add (or edit) articles which are made in a particular category. The Personal Content Manager allows those approved users to access the content without having a need for you to make them an admin or without them needing to access the Admin Area in order to modify content items. It is a useful tool if you want to provide easier access to content creation and editing which used to be in the sole domain of the administrator.

See Content Management: Personal Content Manager for more information.

Options, more options
The content management plug-in also offers a whole lot of options - so many that most users will probably feel a little bit submerged by them. This introductory article will not go in depth into them as they require their article to be fully understood, suffice to say that there are enough options to make sure that each and every of the pages meets your requirements to the letter. From controlling the path of where your images are coming from, to modifying what is actually shown on a category page, to determining whether people see sub-headings or not. These options give a "sky is the limit" ability that few other content management systems have actually been able to provide.

See Content Management: Options for more information.

Content URL Explained
The content management plug-in contains a lot of different pages to show different parts of content. This page tries to provide some insight in these pages.

See Content Management: URL Explained for more information.

Getting Started with Content Manager
Before you begin using Content Manager you should map out how you plan to use content on your site.

Read the detailed user's experience on Getting started with the CMS plugin
See Get Started With the Content Management Plugin for more information.
Content Q&A - HOWTO
This section tries to give insight in some basic questions. They will try and explain some HOWTO on the content manager plugin.

See Content Management: Q&A for more information.

Live Examples
This section will provide several interesting websites that use the content management plugin

See Content Management: Websites for more information.