CMS Made Simple Forums

Hello

After looking on opensourcecms.org, website baker was going to be the first cms I tried.  Fortunately, it wouldn't run on my host (PHP safe mode issue) so I chose CMSMS, which appears to be a great choice so far. 

I downloaded and installed the latest CMSMS last night and have a few questions if you wouldn't mind:

1. Group Permissions - News settings - I have three options: 'Modify news' x 3.  Should two of these have a different label?

2. News listing - these appear to use American format dates mm/dd/yy.  Is there a way I can change then to dd/mm/yyyy?

3. Can I add a news listing to the home page?  Can I limit the number of news items listed?

4.  How would I backup my database?  I cannot seem to find a backup routine like there is in phpBB.  I'm logged on as admin and can see the Group Permission; Create Backup sets, but cannot see how to access this feature.

5. Are there are free templates available?  I'm sure I saw some somewhere but cannot find them again.

6. Is it possible to create a form where users can submit there own news items without an Editor getting involved?

Any help greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Orson

Hi OrsonK and welcome to CMSMS!

1. Group Permissions - News settings - I have three options: 'Modify news' x 3.  Should two of these have a different label?

Are you using the svn version of CMSMS? We're preparing that for a beta version for 0.12, so it still has some errors here and there. I'd recommend you to download the latest stable release (currently 0.11.2) if you use it in a production environment.

2. News listing - these appear to use American format dates mm/dd/yy.  Is there a way I can change then to dd/mm/yyyy?

You can format the dates used for news to any format you want, based on the srftime function. See the Help for News in Extensions -> Modules in your admin panel to see how to use that.

3. Can I add a news listing to the home page?  Can I limit the number of news items listed?]3. Can I add a news listing to the home page?  Can I limit the number of news items listed?

Yes. Again, look in the Help for the News module. Basically insert something like this in your template or page: {cms_module module='News' number='3'}

4.  How would I backup my database?  I cannot seem to find a backup routine like there is in phpBB.  I'm logged on as admin and can see the Group Permission; Create Backup sets, but cannot see how to access this feature.

There is a module called Database Backupthat does this.

There is also a module called Archive Manager, that only works with CMSMS versions later than 0.11.x (that is current svn or 0.12 when that is soon released). Archive Manager lets you go back to previous versions of pages, templates, stylesheets or HTML Blobs (in 0.12 renamed to Global Content Blocks). The current version of Archive Manager doesn't take database backups though.

5. Are there are free templates available?  I'm sure I saw some somewhere but cannot find them again.

You can use any template you find on the net and replace the content text with {content} and the menu with the CMSMS menu to use. Then attach the stylesheet to the template.

There's also a CMSMS Themes site in development where you'll be able to download themes (templates + stylesheets). But the CMSMS templating system is really flexible. Read in the documentation about the current default templates.

6. Is it possible to create a form where users can submit there own news items without an Editor getting involved?

You mean frontend, without having to log in to the Admin Panel? You can create your own groups and give those the permissions you want (like Modify News) and then assign users to this group. When those users log in to the admin panel they only have the permissions that you give them and they can't touch anything else.

There is currently no way of adding news from the frontend, but it's easy enough to log in to the backend, or you can make a direct link to the Add Article page from the frontend (and the user is taken through the login page). Just don't put this link too obvious, so that others may be tempted to try to log in.


Hope that helps a bit on the way. Good luck!

Are you using the svn version of CMSMS? We're preparing that for a beta version for 0.12, so it still has some errors here and there. I'd recommend you to download the latest stable release (currently 0.11.2) if you use it in a production environment.

Stable Version 0.11.2 from the downloads page.  Should that have 3 duplicate 'Modify News' permissions?

Module|Help - I must remember that 

Thanks for your assistance. 

2. News listing - these appear to use American format dates mm/dd/yy.  Is there a way I can change then to dd/mm/yyyy?

You can format the dates used for news to any format you want, based on the srftime function. See the Help for News in Extensions -> Modules in your admin panel to see how to use that.

If I edit the 'CSS Menu Horiz1' template to add the date formatting, how would I use the two fields:

{content}

and

{cms_module module='News' dateformat="%a, %d %b %G"}

Thanks.