CMS Made Simple Forums

A fully customisable database/directory module which could be made from modifying the news module.

I've often had to go and use other CMSes or code something from scratch if I'm doing a website for a community site that wants a business directory, an estate agent, a site that posts news that doesn't fit into the format of the current news module, a site that regularly add reports to download, a site that has a satff contact list, a site that you can search for an agent on, a site that has a list of stores, a site that has a price list, etc

I know that this isn't in the scope of the CMSms philosophy, but everything other open source alternative for larger sites is just hair-pullingly stressful from start to finish, i actually enjoy making sites with CMSMS I couldn't possibly imagine a version Mambo where that happened!

I see the module working like this...

A module manger screen (like add news for the news module) where you can specify the feilds for each item, for my business directory it would be (name, address, photo, description, web-site link - news has title, description, author, etc), once you've specified that you can then add items to the list (for an estate agent you add a new home) and you get presented with a list alot like the content list where you can add/edit/delete items. You can then add the module to a page which either lists all the items on the list or has a search screen that users can use to narrow it down. This search/filter thing would be accessable by the URL so you could have a link in your menu to just reseraunts or just flats or whatever.

Would anyone else see this as useful and would anyone be up for trying to turn it into reality?

Interesting. After writing a few modules for clients which are Consultant directories, or Resource directories, I was thinking along these same lines.

Some of the common features are:
- ability to show list views, summary views, and detail views.
- most have wanted both admin and user-side forms to populate the database, with admin approval of user-side submissions.
- email to admin on submission of a user-side submission
- email on acceptance/rejection of a submission

The problems that have prevented me from writing this are:
- access control. My clients have wanted varying access control over which parts of the records are viewable (e.g., only logged in users can see detail views, but everyone can see list views). I don't know a general way to implement this.
- relational algebra. Often, a record will want fields that come from fixed domains, rather than free text.
- things like file upload would have security issues that would need to be addressed.

In a lot of ways, this could be done with an extension to the FeedbackForm module. But I wrote that module before I knew anything, and, while it works, it could use a lot of code refactoring.

I was waiting for a client to need this directly, so I could be paid to write the new functionality

*hopes a client will come soon*


I've been trying to modify the news module myself, but i'm not a programmer on this scale.

I've noticed from the code it has alot of the features all ready there. It divides suff into categories, it can sort by any field, it has an RSS field - which is nice, can take customised templates for summaries and for detail.

What needs to be added is a search, customisable pagination, an admin interface that allows you to add/change categories and displays a more detailed view of the stuff that's already there with filtering options. Then the non-relational module is cracked, i've no idea where to start with a relational approach, but perhaps this would be a good, hackable temporary solution if someone had the knowlege to add the new features.