I made a CMS prototype with multi-language support for my last school subject before vacation. Some requisitions where that it uses SQLite and the possibility of using mySQL instead and PHP. And to top it off with CSS/XHTML layout. It all sounds very easy but there are quite a few gotchas here.
There are a lot of CMS out there, of all kinds. But to tell the truth I never came across one that was simple, strait to the point, easy to mod, clean code and multi-language support. First I can’t find myself in the templating system, Textpattern has an usable one but I never went all the way with it, always looking for which tag to do what because there are so many. Although I do like the tag system but in more moderate use. I want to implement the tag use but still haven’t figured out how to do it.
To get more of an idea let me show you first what my PHP skill level is. For this I’ll use the Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition that the Pragmatic Programmers began advocating in 2002. I’m level three although sometimes I lean on level 4, depends of what I’m coding.
Level 3: Competent
- Develops conceptual models
- Troubleshoots on their own
- Seeks out expert advice
- Sees actions at least partially in terms of long-term plans and goals
I got a pretty good prototype working albeit not exactly how I wanted. For starters I have to figure out how to use ‘nice urls’ to cover all the language and variable request in the links. Also how to manage the content in the database; which pages show in the top menu, how to recall a page for linking from other page content.
For end users the most simple is to create the pages and only give access to edit current content. Which points out that if a user has access to create pages the amount of links shown in the menu should be limited to a default to avoid breaking the layout. Bottom line is that this is a very simple CMS, input, edit, and managing. I have the SQLite version running on my iBook and the one on my host is running on mySQL as they don’t support SQLite.
Once I get out of the vacation funk I’m in I’ll start working on this again. It’s always handy to have a system like this ready for own use and it’s a good way to practice my programming skills. I already have a working ‘Hotel/Motel reservation system’(QuickBookings), it’s in beta and still needs testing by a third party but is does the job. Also my weblog code needs some cleaning up and optimizing but I can never seem to get it done.
Note to self: start digging into AJAX.
