[Delta NITT] Pragyan CMS v3.0

[Abhishek]

In this thread, we are going to discuss about the Pragyan CMS v3.0
project. Those who are interested in working for the next version of
Pragyan CMS can post their ideas here.

As of now, the following changes have been done in the Pragyan CMS :

1) FCKEditor 2.3 is replaced with new and better CKEditor 3.4.
2) Page Specific Templates have been implemented, now every page and
page tree of the website can have a different template. It will be
useful for NITT website with different templates for every department.
3) Most of the settings of the config.inc.php file have been moved to
the database and it is possible to change them from within the site
itself like the upload limit, website name and email, etc.
4) User Management is completely re-written with many user-friendly
features.
5) Lots of bug fixes and code-optimization.

To Do List :

1) Template Installation Module
2) Events Module
3) Rewrite Forum Module
4) Add-ons Installation Module

[Balanivash]

I'm happy to see that you ve considered some of the things i've
posted...And will it be possible to include themes that the user can
choose from in his profile and what about avatars....i think these ll
create a more personalized feel ......Hoping to work on Pragyan CMS
V3......

[kaydee]

hey was that bug with respect to the java scripts fixed in the form
module?? abhilash was talking abt it b4 he left but none of us did
anything abt it.

[jack]

Implementation of Page specific templates is surely helpful, but not
for the example cited (diff templates for diff department), because
the sole purpose of CMS itself is to maintain uniformity. isnt it?

[Shankarram A]

Id have to agree with jack here. Not for department pages, atleast since we have been wanting uniformity throughout probably keep it that way. But i guess changing only the colour and maybe poistion of image from left to right or such minor changes may be acceptable and might make the site look lively but dramatic changes like different font and layout might just add to confusion.

[sandeep]

Hey..

How abt an idea like personal home pages for professors lyk all other
colleges. It gives more freedom to put up their own stuff and get
their own webspace. The site can still remain the same then.. We can
have predefined standard templates for the professors to choose or an
option for them to upload their own templates (those prof's with a bit
of knowledge on web designing). We can arrange a link to this page
from their profile page on the CMS.

> > the sole purpose of CMS itself is to maintain uniformity. isnt it?- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Shankarram A]

Hi sandeep ...

  i dont think uve ever been involved in updating a professors page! Even when we sit with them and update their page they mess it up so bad we need to go back some 5 revisions to get a readable copy and this is with a WYSIG editor in place! No we dont give them a personal page for the simple reason they dont know how to use it and if they do they have marquees all over the place. No offence to the few more techy teachers! Ul get the idea once u start editing pages for them!

[sandeep rao]

I have done lot of editing.. Besides I have been doing all the editing for my dept pages. But my main idea was to give them a personal webspace which is not available right now for uploading some coursework blah blah.. 

[Abhishek Shrivastava]

@jack : Page specific templates are a good idea if we want to give unique identity to different department. Consider the websites of other colleges, they have different website for each department and it gives them a feel that the department is in itself a institution rather than being a part of NITT.. Ofcourse, the basic font and structure of layout will remain same.. only the header and footer and background images and colors will be changed..

@sandeep : That's actually a good idea.. Abhilash was working on the Faculty module but couldnt finish it.. we'll take it up soon. And yes, we wont give complete access of the page to the professors, only the content entry part.. the designing and fonts will be inherited from the CMS page template which the professors wont have the access to change.. In simple words, the profs can only enter "simple text" in appropriate places, while the HTML tags will be handled by the CMS.

[Ashutosh Dhar]

why dont we try creating individual pages for every dept? Most department profs use slides etc to teach, and they keep giving assignments etc. So we can create a webpage wherein ppl can upload
1)Relevant notes
2)Assignments (just the question papers!)
3)Links to useful sites
4)Ebooks and other useful resources.

It'll serve as a central server for ppl to get their stuff, saves them the trouble of gettin copies from SC etc... bt no "chat-forums"... that'll just create a lot of problems...

[Sachin Gupta]

i think we shud b hvng uniformity in the website..... giving professors an editor is not gonna work bcoz they will not take that much botherage to type all the contents.... better give them options to upload their ppts and other stuff ........

 

And what about query module inclusion.... it'll be gud if students can place their queries for professors .....................

[Balanivash]

Hey i think it'd be great if we make the profs post their notes and
ppts online....These ll all be in the faculty module right......and
about the query module....it'll just look good but i don't think ll be
of much use considering what most of the teachers use their net for....

[Sachin Gupta]

i also know that hardly any prof will use..... but still we can provide a feature ..... if any prof uses, its a plus point ... will solve students prob.....

[Ashutosh Dhar]

So when are we going to start working on Pragyan 3.0??

[Abhishek Shrivastava]

Work on pragyan cms will begin on Saturday. Till then, come up with tutorials.

--
Abhishek Shrivastava
E.C.E., N.I.T. Trichy

[priya]

Hai..

@Abhishek.. U hav already started working on pragyan cms v3 right..
where can i view the files? As in changes.. I hav written templates
for the pragyan cms while in second year.. Now i want to write
modules.. While in col, abhilash asked me to work on faculty module
and i started working on it, but not seriously.. i would like to work
on faculty module.. also template installation.. so give me some
inputs on how to proceed.. And i know javascript too.. I worked for
pragyan javascript along with abhilash.. I'm not good at writing
tutorials.. So i would like to contribute by coding..

[Abhishek]

@priya : Good to see ur interest. I'm almost finalizing the changes so
by tomorrow(atmost day after tomorrow) I'll host it online where
everyone can download the new version. Template installation is an
easy thing, so I'd advise you to proceed with it first.

First of all, I do not want template installation as a "module". I'm
planning to integrate it into "core". So you don't have to follow the
module rules for writing it. Basically, the template installation will
be a part of the "Admin" page, in the admin.lib.php. When a user
clicks on the template installation button, he should get a form
asking for uploading the template package. The template package can be
of any popular format like .zip, .tar, .tar.gz, .rar, etc.. which the
CMS should identify and appropriately unpack. Initially, the contents
will be extracted into a temporary folder inside the cms/uploads
folder. The CMS will then check the name of the template folder
created to see if another template of the same name already exists. If
it does, either it rejects the package or renames it. If no conflicts
arise, the CMS should copy the extracted template folder into cms/
templates folder. Then the CMS should call a reloadTemplates() method,
to load the template into the CMS database. Also the URL for accessing
template installation form will be : ./+admin&subaction=templates. So
you'll have to write the following functions (you can probably create
a new templates.lib.php file).

templateInstallForm() : It should check whether the form is opened
for first time or is it being submitted. In the latter case, it should
first call the installation functions and then will return a fresh
HTML form with an upload field and button (if the user wants to upload
more). Form action : ./+admin&subaction=template

extractTemplatePackage() : will extract the contents of the uploaded
template archive to the cms/uploads/<some-random-number>/ folder. Do
not extract it directly inside cms/uploads folder as the package may
not contain folders already.

checkTemplateInstallConflicts() : will check the name of the template
folder created in the random directory with the folders already
present in the cms/templates folder. Also it should check whether the
template is Pragyan CMS compatible i.e. it should have the basic PHP
variables which the Pragyan CMS needs for templates like $ERRORSTRING,
$WARNINGSTRING, $MENUBAR, $BREADCRUMBS, etc (u can find all the
variables within any existing template file, preferably CrystalX ).
Also if conflicts come, it should try to resolve them or if its not
possible, it should inform the user that it failed and the reason.

installTemplate() : the extracted folder is copied into the cms/
templates folder, deleted from the uploads folder and
reloadTemplates() method is called.

reloadTemplates() : this will put the template entry into the database
and places as required. Don't worry about it, I've already written it,
its available in common.lib.php :)

You will have to find out how you can handle various archive formats
using PHP and unpack them. Use only those formats which come with
default PHP. You also need to revisit how uploads are handled in
Pragyan CMS. You can refer the uploads form in article.lib.php. Note
that there is a new entry in the database called "upload_limit", which
restricts the size of file uploaded thru the cms.

I hope this should be sufficient. You can start writing the basic
functions set and contact if any questions arise. When you complete
the templates.lib.php file, you can send it to me and I'll integrate
into the Admin page or you can yourself do it but since I've
completely re-written admin.lib.php it may take time for you to
understand it. Best of luck !

[Abhishek]

Pragyan CMS v3.0 is now released on sourceforge. You people can
download the sourcecode and start working on modules.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pragyan/

[Abhishek]

I'd recommend everyone to use Subversion for contributing to Pragyan
CMS. The problem with doing it the other way round is that if 2 or 3
of you download the Pragyan source code and make some changes, and
then when you are trying to push it back to sourceforge, it will be
near impossible to merge them because you may have made changes which
the other developers were not aware of, and may be those changes could
make the other's changes useless or create errors . To avoid such
conflicts, you should use subversion and keep committing as frequently
as possible.

The SVN repo link for pragyan cms is :
svn co https://pragyan.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/pragyan/trunk
pragyan

Read access is open to everyone, however write access is restricted.
Those who want to commit changes, contact me. You can use command-line
or you may also use IDEs like Eclipse , Netbeans for SVN. If you're
not familiar with SVN then you should google and learn about it. If
you're still finding difficulty, you can post for help in the
discussions.

[Shiva Nandan]

hi... just a suggestion.

I installed pragyan cms v3 in my server and the installation was
successful. And when i was taken to the home page, no contents were
displayed other than the external links. I was not able to do any
thing there... When i went through the code, i found that in the
CrystalX template used short form php, [such as <?=$TITLE?>] to
display the title and all other contents. When i changed it to the
full form php as <?php echo $TITLE; ?>, the page was displayed
properly.

So can't we change the code in all the template pages [CrystalX and
blacksilver and all others] to use only full form php???

[Shiva Nandan]

hi... just a suggestion.

I installed pragyan cms v3 in my server and the installation was
successful. And when i was taken to the home page, no contents were
displayed other than the external links. I was not able to do any
thing there... When i went through the code, i found that in the
CrystalX template used short form php, [such as <?=$TITLE?>] to
display the title and all other contents. When i changed it to the
full form php as <?php echo $TITLE; ?>, the page was displayed
properly.

So can't we make it mandatory for all the template pages [CrystalX and

blacksilver and all others] to use only full form php???

This will make sure the cms works in servers that do not support short
form php

[Shiva Nandan]

and one more suggestion...

currently when a user clicks on 'Login' or 'Register', a new page is
loaded with the same addres with a '+login' or the like appended to
it. Just for the sake of adding a small form in the page we are taking
the user to a new page, where the contents of the whole page has to be
loaded. Won't it be better if we load them dynamically, where all the
page contents stay intact and its only the form that is loaded?

[Siddhant Sanyam]

Shiva,
Don't bother too much. Modern browser have caching support. So they
would take care of that. HTTP protocol support the If-Modified-Since
header which allow browsers to take advantage of cache and do not load
the resources (like images) which are not being modified since the last
visit.

I do agree that Login Page could have been dynamically added. You can go
ahead and code. Then make a patch and submit. This is the way usually
Open source development works (though I am not sure about the protocol
for PragyanCMS).

[Abhishek Shrivastava]

@shiva : which webserver did u use and whats the php version? You can find ur php version by seeing the output of the command phpinfo() in PHP.
I was under impression that php shortforms are supported in  PHP 4+. Well if thats wrong, we might have to change it. And for your second suggesstion, I'd advise you to create a ticket on TRAC. And if possible, try to develop the patch urself.

[Shiva Nandan]

@abhishek: i am using Uniform Server version [5.6.2-Nano] and the php
version is 5.3.2
I have added the ticket on TRAC. I'll work on developing the patch for
it

@siddanth: it would help if the user has a modern browser. But we
can't rely on that right?

[Abhishek Shrivastava]

I hav fixed php short forms :)

[Siddhant Sanyam]

Oh C'mon, every browser which is popular today, name it (FF, IE, Safari,
Opera, Epiphany) support caching. I appreciate your concern however. But
do note that caring on such trivial issues can be counter productive.
How much care do you take to make it XHTML compliant? Which actually
should be the priority.

[Shiva Nandan]

@siddhant:

> do note that caring on such trivial issues can be counter productive.

I understand that bothering such trivial issues will tend to be
counter productive... I'll try to avoid doing so the next time.
Thanks:)

> How much care do you take to make it XHTML compliant? Which actually
> should be the priority.

and yeah dude... i do try my best to make my code XHTML compliant....
i might miss out on a few minor specifications of XHTML that i don't
know... but i do adhere to all the specs that i know

[Shiva Nandan]

@abhi: still got problem with the current php implementation as in [<?
echo $TITLE; ?>].... it works only when the code is changed to [<?php
echo $TITLE; ?>]

[Mohnish.........NIT(T)-ECE]

i think u r trying to use it wrongly..........it is <?= $TITLE; ?>

--
Mohnish prasanna
ECE , NIT-Trichy

[Shiva Nandan]

no da... tat short form didn't even work.. tats y switched over to the
current form.

[Abhishek Shrivastava]

@shiva : looks like there's some compatibility issue with ur pc/php version. The <? ?> are standard php tags.

[Shiva Nandan]

k... i'll download a different server and check it out...

[Siddhant Sanyam]

<? ?> is not standard. You will have to edit your php.ini to enable
something like short_open_tags or something similar
(http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.basic-syntax.phpmode.php).
I still insist on using <?php as it is standard and guaranteed in all
systems.
Shiva: http://www.sjhannah.com/blog/?p=118 for you.

[Nivash S]

If you are using wamp this can be enabled in php settings......there
is an option to enable short open tags

[Shiva Nandan]

@siddhant: is it linux command which given in the site?

[Shiva Nandan]

@nivash: i'm using uniform server v5.6.2

[Siddhant Sanyam]

Yeah why? You're on Windows?
Oops. Then why don't you write a small app which can do this thing. It
won't take long I guess.

[Shiva Nandan]

yeah i'm using windows...
i'll write an app do it
Thanks:)

On 6/14/10, Siddhant Sanyam <siddh...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Shiva Nandan]

@siddhant: changed the settings in php.ini and the short form works
fine now :)

@abhi: i checked out in the php.ini for changing the settings and
found that this short form is depreciated due to the rise of xml and
other languages, which use similar short form and may be ambiguous to
the server.

Here's quote from the php.ini file:


; This directive determines whether or not PHP will recognize code
between
; <? and ?> tags as PHP source which should be processed as such.
It's been
; recommended for several years that you not use the short tag "short
cut" and
; instead to use the full <?php and ?> tag combination. With the wide
spread use
; of XML and use of these tags by other languages, the server can
become easily
; confused and end up parsing the wrong code in the wrong context.
But because
; this short cut has been a feature for such a long time, it's
currently still
; supported for backwards compatibility, but we recommend you don't
use them.
; Default Value: On
; Development Value: Off
; Production Value: Off
; http://php.net/short-open-tag
short_open_tag = Off

so i suggest we either switch to using the full form [<?php ?>] or ask
the user to change settings in the 'php.ini' file, to ensure that the
server has this feature turned on.

[Abhishek Shrivastava]

I don't know why it was not enabled for your php version. Its default value is always kept ON for compatibility and so, in most cases, there shouldn't be a problem. Anyways, I'll include that in the .htaccess to make sure it is always turned on in pragyan cms. Thanks for pointing it out though, nice observation !

[Shiva Nandan]

how do we work with sphider...

i am not able to search anything through it

[Abhishek Shrivastava]

You first have to reindex the site. Goto "Admin".

[Shiva Nandan]

yeah got it... it works:)