CMS....php

[badran]

Well i am running my site www.it101.uni.cc , i am planing of adding a php back end to this site...

I was thinking of making some simple and that works... in a Slackware type of way... so that you would be able to control everything with the help of a simple text editor (you can do that now... but it is not a simple as just changing a line or adding one... ) just putting the content in one file and the links in another ... and so on... so it would be easy to change a template (as it would be in one file) ... if you change a link it would change all around the site...

any suggestions would be appreciated... BTW I m thinking of GPLing the whole thing...so that others would be able to use :)

it would be a great way to get my php skills up.. and maybe learn some JS and so on...

[digital-ether]

Is the current site just HTML/CSS? It looks really good.

I've never written a full CMS before... I've written small miniture CMS type deals, for web apps, similar. What I usually do is just look into the (GPL) code of my favourite CMS's, and pick out what I like best and modify them for what I'm doing..

The main points I would believe is to keep in mind the following:

1) Create a modular core that stands in the middle, not right at the bottom. Most think the core of a CMS should be at the bottom of a pyramid.. they end up redesigning the core later. If you just think of it as in the center of a circle.. you'll be able to add say, a new database support such as mysqli withought too much redevelopment.

Example: redesign of Joomla's "database abstraction layer" to support mysqli. It seemed the core depended on the mysql class so everything up from there was dependent on it also.

Thsi would probably be the hardest to figure out.

2) Follow existing standards and use existing scripts. There are too many advantages to this!

Some resources for scripts and design concepts/standards:
Model-View-Controller - a way to think of the structure you're designing.
Pear - Some coding principles and some "standadization"
PHPTools - some cool php apps w/ a modular base
Smarty - popular templating engine

For web Standards:
W3C - World wide web Consortium (Im sure is spelled that wrong).

You'd probably have to make a decision on what type of data your CMS will output. xHTML/CSS, or just XML/XSLT, or even something cool like: JSON/JavaScript
But if your CMS is modular enough, you should support all.. aye?

As far as the WYSIWYG editors go.. heres a list:
http://extensions.joomla.org/component/option,com_mtree/task,listcats/cat_id,1773/Itemid,35/

Its for the Joomla CMS, but most of them are based on standalone versions so you'll probably get their original author in the GPL if you donwload them.

In my experience, the more modular you want yoru CMS, the more work you put in initially, but on the other hand the less time you'll need fixing it. But since you can't spend forever making it modular, you'll have to compromise..

I usually fall into a unending cycle where I'm designing a more and more modular core and never ever finish the *amn thing..

Hope that helps abit... and watch out for too much modularity.. ;)

[badran]

Thanks for the tips.... those links are great.... yeah it is html/css (some php for common things like links on the top and so on)

I am going to start with simple scripts that would do simple things... like control the links on the top... add and remove content... and so on... (one script and an xml file for the data) then i would work on a simple bare-bone core... as i want this to be a light as possible.... (Slackware-ish) as for templating I need to work on that on the 1st stages of the core design... as I want it to be easy to make templates (i believe this to be the selling point for any cms....)