Zikula Community

• ccandreva
  
  

  • Rank: Developer
  • Registered: Sep 22, 2005
  • Last visit: May 20, 2010
  • Posts: 292

  Posted: Mar 29, 2007 - 03:29 PM

  The "trends" thread focused on what PostNuke is lacking. As a better counterpoint how about some examples of what people are already doing, and why they chose PN to do it.
  
  Background: I run a small ISP. I was introduced to PN in mid 2005 when I took over two sites that had not been maintained by their designers and hacked. One was in PostNuke (my own fraternity's alumni assoc) and one PHP-nuke. What I saw in PostNuke over anything else was potential. I'm tired of maintaining 5 different webboards, three different carts, trying to make them all work together. Once I saw Pagesetter, it hit me that you could dump the core features of PN (News, comments, FAQ, etc) and just use it as a common framework to buld custom sites more quickly than I ever could before, getting the benefit of others work, and being able to contribute my improvements back. Wonder of wonders --- it looks like the devs had exactly that idea: Make it a framework.
  
  The first thing I had a chance to build was the alumni directory I mentioned in the "Features list" thread. I have a client who built the main site in Dreamweaver, and maintains the content by hand: http://www.yonkerspublicschools.org/
  
  I thought it would be easy to turn their design into a theme. The Dreamwaver code wasn't the easiest thing to convert, but once they decided to strip out their own javascript menus from the alumni side it was easier. That looks like so: http://alumni.yonkerspublicschools.org/
  
  In a further discussion with the client, they liked the idea of a CMS, but didn't think that PostNuke could handle their full design, because all they had seen was the main News module. In about 20 minutes I made a demo using Pagesetter to recreate their main design, with main content in the middle and a specific FYI box on each page. I have a single demo document for this format: http://alumni.yonker…viewpub&tid=6&pid=1
  
  To enter information into this page type, you would use a form that looks like this.
  http://www.westnet.c…ostnuke/ypsform.jpg
  
  The coments you see on the demo page ("Did you just hit the jackpot, Chris?") was the designer kicking herself because she didn't understand what PN could do when I first described it. We're bidding on a few more schools now and hope to use this concept.
  
  Another example (not quite as impressive) is a site I just did for my son's school. What they were looking for was the functionality of their existing site, but the ability to update it themselves. (Believe it or not they were paying someone to update this for them http://www.resurrect…ol.com/OriginalSite )
  
  What they wanted was a place to post the PDFs of the fliers they used to send home. My goal was to come up with a something that would let them post PDFs while moving to putting things directly up as pages. I came up with a Pagesetter document that acts as a Topic home page. By using Pagesetter's inline publist feature, you can combine listing of various document types (Articles, News, and Files) on one page. The home page document lets you define a header and footer for the page, and title, number of items, and sort order for each list. (So one topic can call it's files "Calendars", another "menus", etc).
  
  See http://www.resurrectionschool.com/, Middle School Sports is probably the best example of a topic home page.
  
  So, what are others doing ?
  
  
  
  edited by: ccandreva, Mar 30, 2007 - 08:48 AM

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• pnDev
  
  

  • Rank: Softmore
  • Registered: Jul 16, 2004
  • Last visit: Oct 21, 2009
  • Posts: 406

  Posted: Mar 29, 2007 - 05:46 PM

  I think you hit the nail on the head. From what I've seen, limited, from some other CMS's is that their strong point is they have a Pagesetter style thing built right in that makes those products easy to start publishing content right off the shelf. Bye luring Postnuke users into thinking categories, topics, news, faqs, etc seperately I think it confuses them when they are first presented by Pagesetter. Basically Pagesetter can replace all those things and much more while making everything more organized, streamlined and user friendly.
  
  I want to replace alot of my sites functionalities via Pagesetter instead of old out-dated modules, just haven't had the time to do it yet.
  
  Great post should be turned into one of those case-study things to help with PN marketing.

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• vworld
  

  • Registered: Dec 31, 1969
  • Last visit: Oct 21, 2009
  • Posts: 786

  Posted: Mar 29, 2007 - 07:31 PM

  Thanks for starting this thread. I think pointing to what can be accomplished with the system is a good way to give others ideas of the robust capabilities within the PN framework.
  
  I've used an outline below that people can scan:
  
  Client AfricaRenewalMinistries - http://www.africarenewal.org/
  Non-profit with users scattered across the globe (some with dialup which needed to be factored into the design of the site, i.e., not heavy on graphics or extra options that weren't needed)
  
  Previous Site: Static HTML
  
  Goals/Objectives:
  1. Ability for members from around the globe to submit/manage/edit site content.
  2. Keep donors/site visitors informed about current/upcoming projects, trips, and organizational activities.
  3. Site administration and content publishing responsibilities needed to be spread across the organization.
  
  Solution:
  A CMS that would provide stability, customization, easy administration, workflow, browser based administration, and a robust permissions system.
  
  Implementation:
  PN Framework - as a base for the system.
  htmlpages - for content that didn't change very often.
  Pagesetter - content that needed to be submitted/reviewed/approved.
  pgCalendar/pagesetter - published events
  PhotoGallery - publish images of projects
  RSS Feeds
  Contact Form - used MDContact because it is simple to setup for the user but would prefer an API templated contact form in the future.
  Scribite
  PostWrap - gave me the ability to integrate the PHPLists application within the framework of the site.
  
  Custom End User and Administration Themes
  Custom Pagesetter Workflow
  Customized Groups/Permissions
  AutoTheme for Customized Content Display - chose AT over Xanthia (XT) because it gave me the ability to customize theme pages. I understand this feature should be available in the upcoming version of XT and note, I have used both AT and XT. It is easier to customize output in XT but I had to have the ability to customize specific pages in this project. Note, from my experience, it is also, currently, easier to train someone on how to administer/manage their site using AT.
  
  A new look/feel was developed for the organization and the information was presented in several ways, i.e, around topics, around people etc. Finally there were specific areas of PN that was customized for a more user-friendly experience.
  
  Results: The organization is very happy and getting wonderful feedback from users and donors!
  
  Admin Feedback: The site is easy to maintain, update, and manage. However, there are areas that can be improved so along the way I've taken notes to submit to the team.
  
  Things Learned:
  Would like to have export my permissions setup so it could be easily shared/used in similar projects. You know how you can export publication types in Pagesetter -- it would be really nice to be able to do that with groups/permissions.
  
  I'm sure I'll think of more soon and add them to my list. ;)
  
  --
  iThinkMedia.com
  
  Follow me on Twitter

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• ccandreva
  
  

  • Rank: Developer
  • Registered: Sep 22, 2005
  • Last visit: May 20, 2010
  • Posts: 292

  Posted: Mar 30, 2007 - 03:55 AM

  Quote

  
  Would like to have export my permissions setup so it could be easily shared/used in similar projects.
  

  
  
  You could dump the pn_groups and pn_group_perms tables, and load it into future projects as a starting point.
  
  More generally, you probably have a customized default configuration you normally start from. From a clean install, set things up in the way you would like to start from (but don't enter any site-specific information). You can disable modules you never use, enable additional modules you always do, customize the allowed HTML tags, etc. Then do a full database dump (from mysqldump or phpMyAdmin export). If you've added modules you might even make an archive (.tar.gz or .zip) of the install directory to install your next site from.
  
  Next project, instead of going through the full install procedure, stop after it writes the DB name, username, and password to config.php (or us the PN Swiss Army Knife to set the values), and load your "default" database dump. Presto -- create new sites with your own default configuration.
  

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