Zikula Community

I'm posting this in the hope that I reach whoever is working on the next Presentation Layer API. (Whatever will be the new BlockLayout/Encompass...) I have a functional requirement that I would like to be sure is included.

I have just finished adding SimpleURL functionality to the MTmodular theme (which will be released next week.) Since I use several modules implemented with the new pnAPI for modules, I had to extend the "Search Engine Friendly URL's" as documented on http://www.postnuke.com and elsewhere to handle the URL's the pnAPI uses. This was more difficult than I had originally expected. :*)

The functional requirement is a hook or other open call that theme developers can call once all of the output of the page is generated and before it is passed to the PHP output handler. This would allow the theme developer or webmaster to do post-processing of the web page. In addition to the above example of using this hook to simplify URL's, it could also be used for numerous other post-processing tasks. For example:

* Hide email addresses. By changing all email addresses on a page to javascript calls, you can effectively hide them from bots. (See this article for how: http://www.netmechan…ol4/design_no21.htm)

* Truly dynamic meta keywords. The existing PN dynamic meta keywords only works on some modules. (Maybe only the News module.) It would be good if we could actually generate the meta keywords from page output.

So, please include these considerations in your design and implementation.

Thanks,
Craig

PS - I'd reconsider trying to implement RFC-23 (http://centre.ics.uc…ort%20URL%20Support) to support Short URL's. You will find that once you start using virtual directories, you'll have redirect problems. It's do-able but things will be much more difficult and you will almost certainly need to depend on web server configuration (or, to be more specific, re-configuration.)