Just how customizable are User Defined Tags?

[Mateo1041]

I'd love to use CMSMS, but plan to incorporate a lot of custom code with various function calls and include files.  A few examples of things I plan to incorporate:

* Web services connection
* User sign-in
* Specialized search form that calls the current page with parameters or another page
* Database interaction, such as storing comments

Can this all be easily done using User Defined Tags?

Thanks,
- Matt

[calguy1000]

sure, your UDT can just consist of

include('whatever.php');

if you want

you just have to be careful your php code doesn't stomp on any CMS globals, and there is only one that I know of.

But for user sign in, and comments, etc. there are modules already built.

[Mateo1041]

The user sign-in would need to be pretty custom as would the comments, so I'm debating on whether to create these myself.  Thanks for your quick reply!  I'll have to consider whether I'd want to use a module or not.

[Pierre M.]

Hello Mateo,

please consider twice improving existing modules before starting from scratch and reinventing the wheel : modules/core updates could stop your fork to work. And participating/sharing can bring you more testers, reviewers, suggesters in. May be you can improve existing modules for common things and put you very specific needs in your own new modules ?

Pierre M.

[Mateo1041]

I'll consider that, Pierre.  I admit I'm not too familiar with programming modules and that is partly why I hesitate.  But if it looks simple enough, then I have no problem donating my time to bettering CMS Made Simple.  It is truly a great system.

[calguy1000]

if you're going to be writing some PHP for use within CMS here's some general guidelines

1) UDT's are best kept short
2) If you're going to want an admin interface of any sort now or in the future, write a module.