Arantor
Community Explorer
So I thought I'd put this out there because I'm having a hard time nailing down exactly what the scope of the project should be.
I have two concurrent projects, both interrelated. One is a forum with side content (articles, resources, reviews etc.), the other is, well, the CMS to power the first.
And I got all excited and made a list of notes about all the things I want to build - and eventually make available - but I'm having a hard time keeping it straight and deciding what's important. So I thought I'd open it to this community - I don't really want to open it to a much larger discussion pool just yet because I will get overwhelmed in so doing. That can be a 1.1 or 1.2 time. It's not helped by the fact that I'm inspired by multiple other systems that do similar things and I'm unable to pin down what I need/want out of these because the answer of 'should it be A or B? yes' isn't helpful
So, without much more ado, I present my ridiculous plans for XenFolio, a CMS addon for XF.
Feature 1: Channels
You define channels of content, areas of the site that each have reasonably homogenous content to each other. You then define what the content model is: if I define a channel that is 'articles', at a minimum I want title, body, meta tag stuff and maybe a couple of images (e.g. if I'm going to display them as a grid, I want a nice chunky image for it) so I set out that this is the content model I want to use, that each of the articles has these things, and I can either use an existing (provided) template for showing one article, or add a custom one, then I can say 'this collection, articles, has an index of articles and it should use a grid layout'
Feature 1a: Channel Node
In much the same way you can define a search node, you should be able to define a channel node that actually feels like it's intentionally there, not like a link forum that is obviously a link forum.
Feature 2: Standalone Pages
Should be able to make standalone pages constructed out of regular content, plus existing XF widgets. A drag and drop interface would be nice but not likely a 1.0 feature just because so much other stuff to do to even get to that point. Pages also should be able to opt out of the PAGE_CONTAINER if appropriate.
Feature 3: Media Library
A place to upload images and other files, organised into folders. Probably with a core private/public separation where public ones can live on a CDN and don't get routed through XF; private ones with some permission controls.
Where it all gets messy is that I find myself thinking about things I do in the WordPress world where I sometimes define post types for things that won't ever get an index page but will be transplanted into something else (e.g. testimonials that then have widgets for display elsewhere) where channels do work in this context. Or even some kind of bbcode-esque display for them inside other pages somehow.
And of course there's about a million side things this brings up: do pages have a hierarchy (probably?), categories and tags (probably? global or per content channel?), revision history (almost certainly?), approval workflows (maybe?), redirection management (probably?) - and of course whether to stick with 'XF's bundled editor' for content creation or to add something else. There are definite temptations for adding something like Gutenberg in as an option because as a content creator there are things it does that I really like in terms of showing me the document structure...
The one line description I have in my head is of course Invision Pages but for XF (their Databases feature is my Channels feature at heart), but it's more nuanced than that and more complicated because I find some of what Invision does to be fussy and clunky, and potentially there might be desires to do things like permissions for content channels (e.g. some sections being admin only, others might invite some other people in to write)
It's my first XF addon so there's a lot of learning going on, translating 'how I'd do this in that platform' to 'thinking about it in XF terms' and that's been an interesting journey so far.
There are things about the existing plugin choices (notably AMS, XenPorta and a few others) that are influencing my thoughts but ultimately I'm not looking to make knockoffs of those because I think they do things in a way I don't like, hence XenFolio's coming into existence at all.
So I'd like to get some thoughts on what people think, in particular must have/must not have/nice to have features. I definitely do not want to call it Databases anywhere though!
I have two concurrent projects, both interrelated. One is a forum with side content (articles, resources, reviews etc.), the other is, well, the CMS to power the first.
And I got all excited and made a list of notes about all the things I want to build - and eventually make available - but I'm having a hard time keeping it straight and deciding what's important. So I thought I'd open it to this community - I don't really want to open it to a much larger discussion pool just yet because I will get overwhelmed in so doing. That can be a 1.1 or 1.2 time. It's not helped by the fact that I'm inspired by multiple other systems that do similar things and I'm unable to pin down what I need/want out of these because the answer of 'should it be A or B? yes' isn't helpful
So, without much more ado, I present my ridiculous plans for XenFolio, a CMS addon for XF.
Feature 1: Channels
You define channels of content, areas of the site that each have reasonably homogenous content to each other. You then define what the content model is: if I define a channel that is 'articles', at a minimum I want title, body, meta tag stuff and maybe a couple of images (e.g. if I'm going to display them as a grid, I want a nice chunky image for it) so I set out that this is the content model I want to use, that each of the articles has these things, and I can either use an existing (provided) template for showing one article, or add a custom one, then I can say 'this collection, articles, has an index of articles and it should use a grid layout'
Feature 1a: Channel Node
In much the same way you can define a search node, you should be able to define a channel node that actually feels like it's intentionally there, not like a link forum that is obviously a link forum.
Feature 2: Standalone Pages
Should be able to make standalone pages constructed out of regular content, plus existing XF widgets. A drag and drop interface would be nice but not likely a 1.0 feature just because so much other stuff to do to even get to that point. Pages also should be able to opt out of the PAGE_CONTAINER if appropriate.
Feature 3: Media Library
A place to upload images and other files, organised into folders. Probably with a core private/public separation where public ones can live on a CDN and don't get routed through XF; private ones with some permission controls.
Where it all gets messy is that I find myself thinking about things I do in the WordPress world where I sometimes define post types for things that won't ever get an index page but will be transplanted into something else (e.g. testimonials that then have widgets for display elsewhere) where channels do work in this context. Or even some kind of bbcode-esque display for them inside other pages somehow.
And of course there's about a million side things this brings up: do pages have a hierarchy (probably?), categories and tags (probably? global or per content channel?), revision history (almost certainly?), approval workflows (maybe?), redirection management (probably?) - and of course whether to stick with 'XF's bundled editor' for content creation or to add something else. There are definite temptations for adding something like Gutenberg in as an option because as a content creator there are things it does that I really like in terms of showing me the document structure...
The one line description I have in my head is of course Invision Pages but for XF (their Databases feature is my Channels feature at heart), but it's more nuanced than that and more complicated because I find some of what Invision does to be fussy and clunky, and potentially there might be desires to do things like permissions for content channels (e.g. some sections being admin only, others might invite some other people in to write)
It's my first XF addon so there's a lot of learning going on, translating 'how I'd do this in that platform' to 'thinking about it in XF terms' and that's been an interesting journey so far.
There are things about the existing plugin choices (notably AMS, XenPorta and a few others) that are influencing my thoughts but ultimately I'm not looking to make knockoffs of those because I think they do things in a way I don't like, hence XenFolio's coming into existence at all.
So I'd like to get some thoughts on what people think, in particular must have/must not have/nice to have features. I definitely do not want to call it Databases anywhere though!
