I wrote a bit for the Furasta.Org overview page yesterday. I decided to share what I wrote (re-written independent from Furasta.Org) because when writing it I couldn’t find anything online documenting it. I know there are things like this – WordPress’s Dashboard is one example – but it didn’t seem to be documented anywhere.

Demo

Download Example

I’m not going to go into the details of how it’s done. If you download the well documented example, you should be able to figure out how it works. Any suggestions for improvement are welcome.

This example is somewhat different from how it is actually done in Furasta.Org, where I use the caching system to store files based on the user’s id insuring that each user can have their own separate configuration. The key difference, noted in the documentation, is that in Furasta.Org I don’t know how many divs need sorting because the plugin architecture has access to what I have called ‘Overview Items’. So to deal with that issue I created a class to deal with the items, which is visible here.

Form validation is quite easy in Furasta.Org. Let’s look at an example form:

<form method="post" id="Information-Form">
 Name: <input type="text" name="Name"/>
 Email: <input type="text" name="Email"/>
 Password: <input type="password" name="Password"/>
 Repeat Password: <input type="password" name="Repeat-Password"/>
 <input type="submit" name="Information-Form-Submit"/>
</form>

Furasta.Org provides a built-in function to validate forms, such as the above one, in both PHP and JavaScript. To validate the form simply create an array of rules:

$rules=array(
 'Name'=>array(
   'required'=>true
 ),
 'Email'=>array(
   'required'=>true,
   'email'=>true
 ),
 'Password'=>array(
   'required'=>true,
   'minlength'=>6,
   'match'=>'Repeat-Password'
 ),
 'Repeat-Password'=>array(
   'required'=>true,
 )
);

Then call the validate function and pass the rules, a selector for the form and the name of the form submit like so:

validate($rules,"#Information-Form",'Information-Form-Submit');

That’s it. Form validation complete in PHP and JavaScript. Easy.

Go from screen to strobe in 0.05 seconds. I just wrote this quick strobe light script for a laugh. This is no normal strobe light – it’s trippy!

Try it out: Download | Demo

At long last Conor’s Management System v0.0.5 is ready for testing. I faced many hurdles getting this up and I would like to thank Kae for all his help! Check the details below to try!

Try it out

*be sure to read the bugs list before you try!

url: http://macaoidh.name/work/cms/

username: guest

password: soeasytoguess

New functions - In my last post on the CMS I made a list of features that I would add before the next release. I am happy to say that all of those features have been added. It is not very feature-full at the moment and I don’t plan to add many features for v0.1.

Status - It is a very lightweight CMS designed for the use of the layman. It is far from ready for general release in this state but now that all the key functions are done I can concentrate on the visual and graphical aspect of it.

Bugs - Most of them are fixed but if you find any let me know.

1. There is one that I am working on a solution for. If you press the ‘Delete Current Page‘  button it sets the page for deletion. You then need to confirm and it gets deleted or deny and it gets un-set for deletion. The bug is if you press the ‘Delete Current Page’ button, the page is set for deletion and then if you press the back button in your browser it remains set. If you go to delete a page again it will delete all pages set for deletion. As say I am working on a fix and it will be included in the next release.
2. This one will be a bit more difficult to find a solution for. The method that I am using to edit and preview the text is done in JavaScript. I didn’t write this entirely myself because I can’t yet write JavaScript. The problem with it at the moment is it only edits a block of the page – so you can put some HTML in there! I have to do something about this but at the moment I don’t know what I am going to do….

The Future – v0.1

I am very optimistic about this project and I have big plans for the future. 0.1 will be the first stable version readyfor general release. I am still thinking about wether to open source it – at the moment it’s not worth it. If it is open sourced I will have an installer in the next release. This is what I want to complete for the 0.1:

1. Function to edit page order.
2. Function to edit page names and urls.
3. Fix all bugs! The edit text bug will be a hard one!
4. The entire visual and graphical side needs to be set up.
5. I will set up a sample website for the CMS to operate on to proove that it can co-operate with working sites.
6. It needs a new name. The current one isn’t great but i’m working on it.

Code-wise

1. Major re-structure of all functions. I have a funny feeling that i’m taking the long way around on a few things.
2. Create a define.php document to define all page variables in each page, such as url, name etc. This will prevent me from having to retreve the same information from the database again and again.
3. JavaScript, JavaScript and more JavaScript. I have been looking into some stuff – jQuery seems to be the most likely candidate. I have some great scripts in mind to smoothen the look and feel out a bit.
4. Possibly get rid of the current method of making pages as it has been pointed out to me that it could pose some security risks.

I know that I have laid out alot for the next version but i’m off school for the next few weeks so I will have some free time!Thats about it. I welcome any suggestions / feature requests / comments on the current release.