phpWCMS open source web content management system
This is the outdated phpwcms project site.
Something new is coming soon. Always keep in mind to check GitHub for the newest release.
site structure creation
A tidy house, a tidy mind: organize your content

After you have arranged page layout and templates of your originating website it's time to think about the structure of your website. This is a cool section in phpwcms and can be find in the admin section. Starting this for the first time you will wondering yourself — there is only one entry "index".


The Concept

phpwcms can handle unlimited nested structure levels; starting always at "index" (the phpwcms internal website home page). Most other cms out there can handle only a maximum of 2 levels. This often is not enough. (pic shows 2 at the moment only)



Another problem of many database based content management systems are cryptic URLs to link to special structure (navigation) level like "mypage?id=jahjd& gg=776713& hk=ggsggsh…". Who can remember such link moster? phpwcms makes this much easier by using alias names for any levels (if you specify one). If you would use a link in texts or somewhere else all you have to do is remeber the alias e.g. "download". That makes it very easy to create templates outside phpwcms. And when you edit articles you can use the simple replacement tag [IDdownload]try it[/ID] — results in: try it. If want to hide a level from listings (e.g. nav menu) set its status to hidden — try this.

Site structure and article handling

Albeit site structure represents website tree it's insignificant without articles. There is a difference between articles and structure level on the one side and web pages on the other side — rendering the content based on articles and structure results in dynmaic web pages. You can have as many articles per structure level as you like.



During developing the rendering part for articles based on structure level I thougt about how can I do this. And I have found a solution that is pretty good (I think) — if you have only 1 active article and select the appropriate level this article will rendered complete. If there is more than 1 article per structure level available an article list with the top article and summary text will be returned. Look the news section of phpwcms for this behavior. Most of phpwcms's project web pages are formed of levels with 1 present article.