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Just an update here.
I started rethinking the structure a little bit and Ive decided to make a small change to how the update tool works.
The update tool uses a dropdown list to determine what site is being updated. Im planning on making this more dynamic by allowing entry of new sites, along with the URL, so I know where to redirect. I may even take the redirection out as Ive included the update tool as part of an administrative section. I'll try to upload something this evening, but chances are, I wont finish it tonight. Once I have something that qualifies for viewing, I'll upload it. I will not be changing the current update tool until I at least get the user login stuff to work.
Im also toying with an idea on how to improve integration. The really sweet thing about this is that once the user login is available, we could add sites to the CMS for updating that are in no way involved with the CMS. All you would have to do is register as a user, add your site, post an update and add the integration piece and voila, dynamic updates. Now obviously, there would need to be some control so that not just anyone could register, as the amount of data would become huge very quick, but for subsites, this would be incredibly handy. Essentially, what I would do, as far as integration, would be to have users modify their main page HTML to include a call that would have one function call, like echo getUpdates('site source', 'number of updates to display') or something like that. The only downside is that anything hardcoded w/ index.html (which people shouldnt be doing anyway) would now change to 'index.php' because of the php code necessary to make it work. This could be a very cool tool later on. Just have to get the user section done first. That could take awhile as there's a lot involved with accepting users.
Currently, there is no user login. I will be adding that as soon as I finish what Ive got going now.
I think it will be once its done. Right now, Im struggling with some PHP related items as far as passing parameters around and whatnot, but the overall structure of what I have so far looks pretty good. Just have to keep plugging away at it.
Hopefully sometime next week I'll have enough done to demo.
Well, interestingly enough, apparently PHP doesnt like URL includes. Im trying to include a file from a website and it seems to not want to use the file. However, if I use a relative path on the same server, it works fine. So for the time being, the client part of the CMS tool is only going to work if the site using the client end is on the same server as the server pieces of the CMS. Im going to have to spend some time figuring this out, since it really bugs me that its not working right now.
Greg, you said something about the update tool a few days ago and it got me thinking about it a little bit earlier today. The whole point of that update tool was to eventually turn it into some kind of “home grown” CMS at some point in time. Im thinking of working on it again. Most of the motivation for working on it now stems from the lack of some features I'd like to see in other CMS designs, as well as just building our own. Here's what Im thinking of doing.
The CMS could run independently of itself, as in a one site CMS, like most of them currently work. However, what would be cool is to have a CMS that runs off the main site where subsites could interface with it in such a way that it could pull information right from the CMS. We would assign permissions to users who register to give them certain levels of access. Like Site Admins would be those who could access the admin panel and be able to maintain data for multiple sites, as well as the main site, but not inclusive to that. Also, I would expand the update tool to allow for an update that applies to all sites. So if something happens at MI, the update could be viewed on all MI related sites. We could also control whether or not to display main site updates on the subsites. There's a fair amount of interfacing involved that I havent come up with yet, but those are some of the things Im thinking about.
Eventually, I might even consider making the CMS that we come up with Open Source and release it to the community, but not until Im comfortable with its features.
I'll see what I can come up with.
Would love to see some input here. I know, right off, that Greg's going to want to integrate image displays, which I have no idea how to do, but could easily pick it up by studying the coppermine code.
Greg, if you could, I know you're busy, but this would be a huge help. Since Ive decided on a name for the CMS, I'd like to have two images to use with it. The first is a banner about the size of the MI Forum banner that's blue and black, kinda like the old MP logo's used to be, that says “MightorCMS” The other would be a smaller button type image that's similar that says “Powered by MightorCMS” These are not a “I need them yesterday” kind of thing, but I'd like to see what we can come up with. Im going to start plowing through the update tool code a bit and see what I can do to make it a bit better.
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