CMS Made Simple Development Cookbook

Over 70 simple but incredibly effective recipes for extending CMS Made Simple with detailed explanations - useful for beginners and experts alike!

• Build new modules and tags, and use the built-in capabilities of CMS Made Simple to their fullest
• Provides complete examples as well as educational starting points for your own projects
• Designed to give you an understanding of the entire system
• Covers CMS Made Simple version 1.9x
• Step-by-step "recipes" along with detailed explanations

In Detail

CMS Made Simple has great capabilities "out of the box," but one of its great strengths is the ease of extending those capabilities. You can add a surprising amount of functionality just by customizing the core modules, but once you learn to write your own tags and modules, your ability to add features is virtually limitless.

CMS Made Simple Development Cookbook will show you how to use custom PHP code to extend the power and features of CMS Made Simple, and make it do exactly what you want. This easy to use guide contains clear recipes that introduce the key concepts behind each approach to extending the CMS, while also providing examples of solutions to real-world problems.

You will learn the differences between the various kinds of tags and modules in the CMS Made Simple environment, and to which purposes each is best fit. Each technology is then explored in detail with a series of practical recipes and examples.You will not only learn the basics of creating tags and modules, but you will explore the underlying APIs that you will use to solve real-world website problems. You will become proficient with the database and form APIs, so that the code you write is portable and maintainable. You'll learn to localize your code and use templates to add its flexibility. You'll master the safe handling of parameters and the creation of secure code. You'll be familiar with the CMS Made Simple Developer's Forge, and how you can use it in conjunction with revision control as a community-focused code management system, complete with web-based bug tracking and feature requests. You will learn to code complex interactions between modules, both directly and via the creation and handling of events. You will gain exposure to an array of advanced tips and tricks, along with commentary from the distilled experience of someone who has written dozens of modules. The CMS Made Simple Developer's Cookbook offers an amazing wealth of knowledge in approachable, bite-sized recipes. Whether you're new to the CMS or an old hand, you're sure to find valuable tips and information that will have you creating a richer CMS.

A hands-on collection of recipes for extending CMS Made Simple, with detailed explanations - useful for beginners and experts alike!

What you will learn from this book

• Use template logic to achieve complex functionality without installing anything beyond the CMS Made Simple core
• Create tags to achieve such varied tasks as filtering content and interacting with web services
• Write fully-localizable modules in a maintainable and memory-efficient fashion
• Interact with the underlying database using the API for safe, platform-independent access
• Render and process complex forms and user interfaces with the Form API
• Share your work with the community via the Developer's Forge and shared source-control repositories
• Build admin-side panels so site administrators can manage and configure your module
• Trigger and handle events for complex interactions with tags and modules

Approach

This is a cookbook, with practical recipes providing tips and tricks to the most common problems and scenarios faced with CMS Made Simple Development.

Who this book is written for

If you are a CMS Made Simple user wanting to expand your skill set, or a programmer who wants to develop for CMS Made Simple, this book is for you. You will need working knowledge of PHP, HTML, and SQL. Some experience with CMS Made Simple is recommended.

Samuel Goldstein

Samuel received a TRS-80 computer for his 12th birthday, and has been programming ever since.1969 Communications builds and maintains web-based business tools for clients which include national brands like Isuzu Commercial Vehicles and Bioness Medical Inc. 1969 Communications specializes in e-commerce, integrating web applications with back-end / legacy systems, complex workflows, content management solutions, and troubleshooting complex issues.

Before coming to 1969, Samuel served as Vice President of Technology at Magnet Interactive in Los Angeles, Director of Engineering at COW, and Lead of the Programming Department at BoxTop Interactive. Projects at these companies included development of reusable frameworks, web-based applications, and data-driven systems. Clients ranged from dot-coms to well-known companies such as Nissan/Infiniti, Quiksilver, National Lampoon, Stanford University, Guess?, USC, Kahlúa (Allied Domecq), UPN, UCLA, Major League Soccer, and SegaSoft.

Prior to focusing on Internet technology, Samuel worked as a member of the technical staff at The Aerospace Corporation, where he researched distributed systems and database technologies. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Physics from Pomona College in Claremont, California and a Master of Science in Computer Engineering from the University of Southern California.