Add-on Content Management Framework

[Dan]

I think what you've described so far is pretty much spot-on. The idea of "front page" content showing up under What's New (and any search in general) is pretty awesome.

I do have a couple of specific things to consider:

1. "Draft" content. A lot of articles take days or weeks to put together, format, preview, etc before they're ready to go live. Not sure how to handle this. Maybe they're just separate/hidden nodes with a tabbed interface or something.

2. Scheduled posts.

3. Some sort of media manager. I'm focused mainly on the ability to pull an image from a library, size/justify(!!!) it, and place it in an article. It would also need to have caption text that's tied to the image in the manager. Caption text should be in addition to alt text, but maybe pull one from the other if both fields aren't completed, etc. I should have the ability to pull out individual images to place in the content, then a gallery view that would use a lightbox to flip through all the images in that article.

4. "Sidebar" content. We use WP for our front page and have added an extra PostID to each post. If you plug in the post number of some other post in that field, it will then show the content of that post in a sidebar alongside the article. No postID, no sidebar. Maybe it's just a second text field appended to the first post. You could expand on this idea to do any number of different things. Maybe you've got a live event comment thread <cough, rapid ajax polling for new comments>, and you use the sidebar to maintain a leaderboard. Then you format it to put the poll in the sidebar. You could add a poll for "who do you think will win today's race?" and it would show up under the leaderboard alongside the article.

5. Multipage content. I don't do much of this, but to follow up on Morgain's comments above, this could be as simple as some BB code in the first post. Type your first page, add a bb code for [page=This is the title of page 2], and it would sort pagination out that way. If you wanted to display that same content as a thread later, it would just ignore the BB codes. Comments would be displayed on all pages, but would have to tabbed/paged separately.

And yeah, I don't know what kind of fires I could light to help speed development along....

Great suggestions and will be considered. But I need to clarify, this will not be a landing page or portal. It may eventually evolve, but right now, that is not our goal with this project.

 

[Dan]

YES.
#1) start small. Get a release out ASAP. Say what you are going to do and nail it. Keep the price low. Instill confidence.
#2) Expand.

Couldn't agree more!! We should have a demo available @ extralicense.com within the coming weeks

 

[Biker]

Great suggestions and will be considered. But I need to clarify, this will not be a landing page or portal. It may eventually evolve, but right now, that is not our goal with this project.

Then it does me absolutely no good at all. What good is a CMS if you can't designate it as your landing page?

 

[Dan]

Then it does me absolutely no good at all.

Unfortunately, as of the first release anyway, doesn't sound like it.

 

[Morgain]

Great suggestions and will be considered. But I need to clarify, this will not be a landing page or portal. It may eventually evolve, but right now, that is not our goal with this project.

Then it does me absolutely no good at all. What good is a CMS if you can't designate it as your landing page?

I spoke with one of the developers and he explained there is to be a basic addon which has the flexibility to generate articles, marketplace etc.
However the items it generates will be basic - I think an article will be single page for example, and there will not be a CMS function to provide a landing page/ homepage.

BUT there will be secondary addons which can add extra functionality. This way we get a compact core addon without bloat. We then add whichever type of more complex item we want.

 

[Biker]

I spoke with one of the developers and he explained there is to be a basic addon which has the flexibility to generate articles, marketplace etc.
However the items it generates will be basic - I think an article will be single page for example, and there will not be a CMS function to provide a landing page/ homepage.

BUT there will be secondary addons which can add extra functionality. This way we get a compact core addon without bloat. We then add whichever type of more complex item we want.

And adding secondary addons on top of the core isn't bloat?

 

[Brandon Sheley]

This looks like it could be great, looking forward to the development.

 

[Dan]

What good is a CMS if you can't designate it as your landing page?

Seems I missed this part. This is not a CMS, it's a CMF

 

[Morgain]

And adding secondary addons on top of the core isn't bloat?

No because you choose which of the secondaries you want. If you got them all in one addon it would be bloat yes. But you get the basic CMF and then you choose what extra bits you need.

For example I get the core addon and maybe that's enough for my needs.
My interest would be Articles. Maybe I only need single page articles.
But if I want more sophisticated Articles, or a CMS, then I get the secondary addons for those functions. I don't have to get all the secondary addons that add Wiki, marketplace, reviews and other extra features.
Then later I might decide to add one of those. Or CMF might produce a new one I like and I can add it.

It's a good system. But the powerful flexibility, and the foundatio0n for secondaries, is why they have to get the core foundation really strong before it is released.

 

[Rho Delta]

Slider, nested comments, draggable customization like xenporta, ability to future date posts.

 

[XẹnPixel]

Seems I missed this part. This is not a CMS, it's a CMF

So it's something like ExpressionEngine/ModX/ProcessWire where it's starts as a blank page/nothing and then it's up to us what content to put on?

 

[Morgain]

So it's something like ExpressionEngine/ModX/ProcessWire where it's starts as a blank page/nothing and then it's up to us what content to put on?

As I understand it you are getting the STRUCTURE for your content.
As default we have threads and posts.
These are now being reshaped so we can optionally display them in different ways.

 

[Dan]

As I understand it you are getting the STRUCTURE for your content.
As default we have threads and posts.
These are now being reshaped so we can optionally display them in different ways.

Well stated.

 

[Dan]

This addon is very similar to vB GARS ( http://www.thevbgeek.com/ )
It's not a landing page(but it shouldn't be hard to do this ), it's not a replacement for a full blog system, for a cms or any other similar system including own content types.
It's not powerful as a stand alone addon (e.g. blog)

The basic idea behind the addon is to provide a easy and fast way for non coders to customize their forum categories & threads and turn them into article,tutorial, review, blog , linklist,...........sections!

Again, this is not a replace for a gallery, blog, linklist,etc, but it's an alternative, which is "almost finished" and easy to use!
You don't need coding knowledge to create own controllers,routes,models, datawriterts and all the handlers ( search,mod,report, alert handler )etc...

I spoke with one of the developers and he explained there is to be a basic addon which has the flexibility to generate articles, marketplace etc.
However the items it generates will be basic - I think an article will be single page for example, and there will not be a CMS function to provide a landing page/ homepage.

BUT there will be secondary addons which can add extra functionality. This way we get a compact core addon without bloat. We then add whichever type of more complex item we want.

Morgain is right.
The idea of CMF is to provide a solid basis. Not everybody will need a linklist type, an article type, support/ticket system type, bug/suggestions tracker, etc..
It would be stupid to bloat it up and provide everything in the core of the CMF.

You'll be able to create simple types without any php knowledge.
On the other side, this system is extension friendly, which means you'll also be able to create more complex types with own php code running in background.
As you've probably seen on the screenshots in http://xenforo.com/community/threads/content-management-framework.45066/ you're also be able to associate the CMS type with an addon to be able to ex/import the types and share them.

We'll also release the most important types on the release of CMF and provide support for them.
That's why i suggested to start this thread to see what people are interested in.

Let's take a link list as example:

CMF type linklist



This needs to be associated to an forum


Once this is done, the system manipulates the output when you're in this forum and in threads from this forum.
Instead of the standard xenforo thread list, you'll get the template which is associated to the CMF Type, instead of the standard xenforo thread list.


And depending how you configured the CMF Link type, the link will be opened in a new window, or you'll be redirected to the thread (where the output is also changed. Similar to the xf resource manager)

e.g. here's a article/tutorial view with multipage support:

 

[jonsidneyb]

YES.
#1) start small. Get a release out ASAP. Say what you are going to do and nail it. Keep the price low. Instill confidence.
#2) Expand.

LOW? I will pay high if it will do what I want.

 

[Digital Doctor]

LOW? I will pay high if it will do what I want.

First release. Minimal features. Low price.

THEN go for the "All you can eat" CMS.

Myself as well ... i'd happily pay alot for a solid CMS.
Some would pay ALOT ALOT.

 

[jonsidneyb]

First release. Minimal features. Low price.

THEN go for the "All you can eat" CMS.

Myself as well ... i'd happily pay alot for a solid CMS.
Some would pay ALOT ALOT.

I just want certain features. I am willing to pay for them. I don't need everything but if it is there I will not use that part.

I have a feature list I want

I just cannot find anyone to make it.

Ragtek was going to make it for me then he left.

 

[Morgain]

I just want certain features. I am willing to pay for them. I don't need everything but if it is there I will not use that part.
I have a feature list I want
I just cannot find anyone to make it.
Ragtek was going to make it for me then he left.

I think you'll find this addon can support what you want with a secondary addon made by the same team.

 

[jonsidneyb]

I think you'll find this addon can support what you want with a secondary addon made by the same team.

OH

I have wanted this before I moved to Xenforo. I have been waiting half of forever.

How far out into the future are we looking. I want this 2 years ago.

 

[Morgain]

OH

I have wanted this before I moved to Xenforo. I have been waiting half of forever.

How far out into the future are we looking. I want this 2 years ago.

That we do not know. At a guess I'd expect the basic addon in a month. Then start queuing for the secondaries we want!
But it sounds like even the basic one will do a lot. A good deal of it is an interface so we can design our own system without having to know php.
I remember Fuhrmann dreamed the same concept when XF started. An adaptor addon which would design the DISPLAY of its content on the page pretty much any way you want it.

What kind of stuff is your interest Jon?