Hi Bill, have you taken a look at the theme switching functionality available on the main website http://www.gae-cms.com (the Preview Themes dropdown)? I was hoping that I could use that area as a showcase for themes that are available. Admittedly there are only two themes currently available. I want people to be able to preview starter themes there and hopefully purchase one to get their own site going. So my vision is that it will be a very extensive set of themes. Of course the entire system is open source and GPL so there is nothing stopping anyone from creating and providing themes freely.
I think your ideas around permissions are the same as what I've envisioned, and I've kept the system flexible enough to incorporate it. My idea is that Content developers should have access to the permissions API where they can say if a permission exists for the current user, show this or do this, etc. They do not have to maintain permissions themselves, this will be taken care of by the system so long as they make the Content's actions manifest, the permissions subsystem will let the admin manage the role assignment based on individual/group for every Content type. This is exactly how ExponentCMS does it. As far as what it can currently do, you can: - create pages (public and private) - manage pages (edit meta data, apply specific themes to them, reorder them, delete) - add content to pages either directly via the theme or via Containers defined in the theme. A footer text for example would be a direct reference to a Text Content whereas a column in which you wish the admin to be able to define the content, you would use a Container. - Content can take on one of possibly multiple views and if you give two pieces of Content of the same type the same namespace, they will give you two possibly different views of the same Content. This can be on different pages or the same page. Global Content will also have the same content across the entire site. - add files to any section as well as delete them - In the site configuration you can set the robots.txt and favicon.ico for the site as well as a bunch of other global settings - And finally you can create or upload entire themes through the system Imran On Saturday, July 28, 2012 10:16:10 AM UTC-4, Bill Graham wrote: > > Hi Imran, > > GAE-CMS runs fine for me locally (Windows7). > > It was somewhat difficult to get started (e.g. I would not have thought > that Section has anything to do with Menus). > > I think the documentation has to start with presenting the structure of a > website according to GAE-CMS (what are the elements of a website and how do > they relate to one another). > > Next there should be a number of how tos: > > 1. how to structure of the site: > 1. how to add or manage menu items > 2. how to add pages/sections to pages > 3. how to change the header (site title, slogan, logo, etc.) > 4. how to change the footer > 2. How to add/edit content > 1. what types of content are supported and how to add/edit the > content > 3. How to change the appearance > 1. How to do theming, etc. > 2. How to work with CSS > 4. How to add functionality > 1. already available functionality/modules > 2. adding jQuery functionality and plug-ins > 3. develop custom modules > > I think all of the above should describe what one can currently do. If > you could provide me a brief list of what you can currently do with the > site, I will try to structure and expand it > > In addition, I would strongly recommend: > > 1. providing a few sample sites as a showcase to give people an idea > of the kinds of things they can do (at least some screen shots) > 2. providing some more variation of themes (blog, club or church > community, small business, etc.). > > Unfortunately many people have little imagination and unless you show them > an example that is close to what they want to they cannot see how they > would create what they want to have. > > I also recommend quickly creating a place for designer/developer support > to encourage designer/developers to create solutions for their customers > around GAE-CMS. (Having a showcase of example sites - even if just front > pages, would greatly help recruiting developers and designers to the CMS). > > Regarding permissions; I spent a number of years architecting an > application framework and ERP system built upon it. This including > designing user, session and security management. My number one thing was > high performance. Our solution was built on a relational database, but I > have been giving thought as to how to accomplish the same in the noSQL > world. In general, I have found the permissions functionality in CMS > systems to be lacking the needed flexibility. I say this because most > people are not really looking for a CMS system but rather an application > framework with CMS capabilities. This gets one into situations with > complicated workflows where different users need to be able to see > different views of the same content types or the same user might be able to > see different content depending on the content of particular fields. > Please let me know what you were thinking of as a permission concept and > I will be able to respond with some ideas you might want to consider. > > Bill > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google App Engine" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/google-appengine/-/nBLf_4lBdQkJ. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine?hl=en.
