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How you can help Postnuke - Part 1   (News)

There are many general CMS, Coding, PHP aso communities all over the web. Tell them what we are doing.

Some examples:
Ohloh.net is an open source network that connects people through the software they create and use. This is were you can meet other developers and see what they are doing. The registered projects are analyzed and can be compared. On the Postnuke project homepage you find some very interesting information about Postnuke. Ohloh.net regards not only the Postnuke core but also some of the better known modules. Thus the statistics reflect the development of Postnuke as a whole. You can add your own repositories there and claim your code. Show those other devs, that you are there and what you are working on.

cmsshowcase.com collects websites and sorts them by the used CMS. There's not one Postnuke site in that list. You should take 2 minutes to submit your best Postnuke work.

If you are registered at xing.com you find a Postnuke Group with more than 50 professional Postnuke users - join us there.

Give presentations about Postnuke at Web Mondays or at BarCamps.

When you look for other CMS at youtube.com you find a load of tutorial videos - why don't we have any of those for Postnuke?

If you have a personal blog: write about Postnuke and what you do with it.

Maybe you have some ideas of your own that you like to share with us. Simply add a comment here!

Generated on September 5, 2007.

Did you know: The Power of Workflows   (News)

relative order is, how they are synchronized, how information flows to support the tasks and how tasks are being tracked." -- Wikipedia

So workflows offer the possiblity to make the usage of modules more flexible. For example you could apply the submit/approve scheme to every module. Or you could add another step: User submits, lector corrects, editor approves

But workflows don't only organize the cooperation of user groups in a publishing process. They can also start automatic functions like sending a mail when a new user submits an article. Or it could also add the new article as a new thread into a forum.

Axel Guckelsberger experimented with the workflow system that is already included in Pagesetter. In his tutorial "Managing pnCommerce with Pagesetter" he describes how a item in Pagesetter is paralelly added/edited/deleted in pnCommerce. This makes it possible to manage the products with pagesetter and only use pnCommerce cart and order functions.

Another nice example of how to add a brand new feature to a module by only putting some XML into a workflow file is Markus Gossmer's "save as feature for Pagesetter. With this you can edit an existing item, edit it and save it as a new publication. Which is very useful if you e.g. have to add several similar events to a calendar.

There is already some documentation on the .8 workflow system in the Wiki whereas the according API Docs are still a bit rough.

Links:
Managing pnCommerce with Pagesetter
"save as" for Pagesetter
Workflow System
Workflow API doc

Generated on March 17, 2007.

New web forms framework (PN .8)   (News)

have fields for the title, the content, and an expiration date, and the title is mandatory, so the user *must* write something.

To do this you must go through the following steps:

1. Read the posted values one by one.
2. Verify that the title contains text (validation).
3. Verify that the date is really a date (validation).
4. Generate an error message if validation fails (error handling).
5. Regenerate the input form, but this time include the previous user input (state management)
6. Possibly convert the date to a format readable by the database (database access).
7. Transfer posted values to database.

All of these things must be done for each web form you create. This is very tedious and error prone work, which is why pnForms was introduced to PostNuke: pnForms address all of the 1-6 issues above, and with the use of PostNuke's DBUtil API you can start creating web applications with much much less programming than ever before in PostNuke.

Features
(excerpt from wiki docs):

First of all - pnForms is a clean extension to pnRender! You can do all the stuff you are used to, but you can also make life easier with the extensions.

pnForms is event driven - you supply an object (the page event handler) to the pnForms framework which will in turn call different methods on this object when interesting things happen, like for instance the click on a button.

pnForms builds on Smarty's plugin system and allows you to extend the framework with new plugins (like for instance a GPS input field for your next project). Plugins are heavy on object oriented programming which means you can reuse and extend existing plugins by simple OO-inheritance.

Plugins are also event driven like the page event handler, so your plugin will get notified when certain reactions are required such as rendering the plugin or reading data posted from the web form.

pnForms manages state for you - all variables in your page handler object is persisted accross different calls to the browser. So if you save an article ID in the event object during the first page rendering, well, then it's still available after the next postback of data from the form.

pnForms handles input validation - you just insert a plugin in your template and pnForms takes care of the rest. You will just have to ask the render whether the page is valid or not.

pnForms simplifies database driven data: you supply the database field name to the plugins (defaults to their ID), assigns data to the render's template variables, and then pnForms take care of the rest. If you also use PostNuke's database utilities (DBUtill) then there's very little work left to do for you.

Please read the rest of the article for a complete example.

Current state
All of the above is working now and mostly documented in both code and in the Wiki. So grab the current SVN snapshot of PostNuke .8 and start playing around with pnForms. Look in the Wiki docs for an introduction and pointers to complete code examples.

If you want to try out the user side then look at turmappen.dk which is 100% PostNuke .8 and pnForms based. You can also look into Frank's Multihook module (SVN version only) for ideas - it should already be converted to pnForms (so I was told at least).

If you have questions then please post them in the forums, but since I don't read these regularily I suggest you send a short notice to me at jw-at-fjeldgruppen-dot-dk.

Happy hacking to all of you guys and girls :-)

/Jørn (www.elfisk.dk

Generated on January 21, 2007.

New Website Goes Live!   (News)

format. Each item should now only have one listing, whereas before there were often large numbers of articles to search through.

We've also moved one step closer to improving the documentation available for PostNuke. Any member of community.postnuke.com can now contribute to our documentation, and we would encourage you to do so. Through working together we aim to drastically improve the availablity of documentation for both users and developers.

Our forum support module has switched from PNphpBB to pnForum. This decision was taken for a number of reasons, mainly as the API compliant pnForum offers an easier platform for support through hooks. Common problem phrases in posts can now be autolinked to useful knowledgebase tutorials and wiki pages. Please note that the forum structure has been rearranged as a result of this move, and ensure that you are posting in the correct forum for your problem.

Finally, we think the new site offers improved navigation, content and functionality. We've tested fairly well, but if you do find any bugs in the new setup please post them in the forums.


Simon Birtwistle
PostNuke Steering Committe

Generated on May 2, 2006.

Second Annual PostNuke Developers Meeting: See the Fun on the Live Webcam   (News)

Live Cam Feed: http://support.pn-cms.de/webcam.htm

Presentations and Papers
Download the presentations and papers here when the weekend in finished: http://support.pn-cms.de/Downloads-req-viewdownload-cid-8.htm

Missed the Live Feed: Checkout the History of Pictures
http://www.juist-news.net/cgi-bin/pnmeeting/view.pl
Conference Agenda
Saturday, August 13, 2005

9:00 Official Start
Welcome message

10:00
Whats going on behind the scenes right now for .8? (all)

10:45
What's left to be done for .8 and what comes next (Mark)

11:30
Debugging Tools (Sebastian)

12:30
Lunch break

13:30
Introduction to the new Module Developer Tutorial (Jörg)

14:00
OpenStar: Background & Targets (Robert Gasch)

14:45
OpenStar: Module development using the OpenStar-libraries (Robert Gasch)

15:30
API Level Bug considerations (Sebastian)

16:15
PostNuke Foundation (Mark, Drak, Andreas)

19:00+
Biergarten

Sunday, August 14, 2005
9:00 Begin

9:15
PostNuke in commercial environments I(itevo)

10:00
PostNuke in commercial environments II(itevo)

10:45
Introduction to the new Folder module (Jörn)

11:30+
Annual general meeting of the PostNuke e.V.

Generated on August 13, 2005.

Get Involved: Get Your Name in Lights!   (News)

Get Involved
We are looking for volunteers for several positions listed below:
PostNuke CMS Module Reporter
Responsible for testing and reviewing new and older modules to publish on the main PostNuke CMS site. Your articles/publications will include your picture, a short bio, and a link back to your site.

PostNuke CMS Community Reporter
Not every module developer writes his own news at PostNuke and we're looking for someone who is interested in writing up announcements, interviewing developers, and looking for exciting developments in this specific area of the community. Your articles/publications will include your picture, a short bio, and a link back to your site.

International PostNuke CMS Community Reporter
As a project we want to build relationships with the wonderful international sites and communities. The person who takes on this position will be responsible for writing announcements, and conducting interviews. Your articles/publications will include your picture, a short bio, and a link back to your site.

PostNuke CMS Theme Reporter
Responsible for theming news, short how-tos, tutorials, and introducing/interviewing designers. You should be familiar with all the elements of theming for PostNuke CMS including the Xanthia and AutoTheme. Your articles/publications will include your picture, a short bio, and a link back to your site.

Special Content/Documentation
We are looking for someone to compare/contrast the features of PostNuke CMS to the following software: PHP-Nuke, Mambo, and Drupal. The person should be familiar with both software CMS's to do a clear, concise comparison of features, functions, etc. Also you would have access to the PN team to review the comparison to offer technical feedback and information for accuracy. And the document would be included on the main PN site to help potential users decide which package to use. You would also be provided with a matrix of specifics to compare with guidelines so you wouldn't have to start from scratch. Your articles/publications will include your picture, a short bio, and a link back to your site.

For more information about the volunteer positions contact us at: vanessa at postnuke dot com

Note, because we had such a great response to Steffen's article calling for wrtiers (thanks Steffen) we wanted to make sure we

Generated on July 13, 2005.

PostNuke Community User Survey Results   (News)

http://www.designs4nuke.com/results/

PostNuke Site Navigation
We are currently working on improving the navigation and look/feel of the main PN site. And with all things it doesn't always go as quickly as we'd like but we expect to launch a preview of a new site in the very near future.

Documentation
This is constant concern for everyone involved in the project. There have been some nice additions to the documentation project over the past few months and I think more than not having documentation, the real issue it is difficult to find. So as we improve the main site we are paying close attention the issue of documentation. So look for improvement in this area in the near future.

Module/Block Repository
Some users requested a "full and complete list of all available modules/blocks/themes" - and we would like to say this is nearly impossible and it it were possible, it would be alot of work to keep it up-to-date. Several years ago we setup PostNuke's NOC as a centralized place to support any PostNuke related project for FREE.

The site offers the following developement tools: CVS (including a web interface), mailing lists, discussion forums, bug/feature tracking, document mgmt, task lists, and a website that provides usage statistics, including the project members, the number of mailing lists, CVS statistics, the number of items in the discussion forums, etc.

We encourage anyone, developers and designers, with a PostNuke related project to register their project.

Register a Project
Check out the Current Projects

UPDATE: The NOC is not perfect. The team knows it has flaws and that support there was lacking so we've added additional admins so no one should have to wait for weeks for project approval any longer.

Current NOC admins Drak Valerio, Frank Schummertz (pnCommerce.com) and IIRC Franky Chestnut (pnConcept.com).

This is our attempt to build a module, block, and theme repository for all PostNuke related projects.

Module Info
There are so many modules claiming to be PostNuke modules and were only half heartedly ported it the first days of PostNuke so beware there have been so many changes in the development over the past four years some modules may not work with the most up-to-date versions of the PostNuke CMS.

Better Forum Support
First let's agree the forum is quite helpful but we recognize there are some areas we can improve. We appreciate the feedback and are looking into ways we can optimize the technology to help us provide better forum support. But don't be shy, once you learn to do something or have an answer/response to a question get involved.

Summary
Finally as mentioned in the comments there were design errors in this initial survey but even with these errors the results are valuable and has shed light on several areas of the project. Again, it's our first survey and we will improve as we create more surveys in the future. There's no such thing as a perfect questionaire but we intend to get closer to perfection in the future. :)

Get Involved
We are looking for volunteers for several positions listed below:

1. Module Review Reporter: Responsible for testing and reviewing new and older modules to publish on the main PostNuke site. Your articles/publications will include your picture, a short bio, and a link back to your site.

2. PostNuke Community Reporter - not every module developer writes his own news at PostNuke and we're looking for someone who is interested in writing up announcements, interviewing developers, and looking for exciting developments in this specific area of the community.

3. International Community Reporter: As a project we want to build relationships with the wonderful international sites and communities. The person who takes on this position will be responsible for writing announcements, and conducting interviews. Your articles/publications will include your picture, a short bio, and a link back to your site.

4. PostNuke Theme Reporter: Responsible for theming news, short how-tos, tutorials, and introducing/interviewing designers. You should be familiar with all the elements of theming for PostNuke including the Xanthia and AutoTheme. All your articles/publications will include your picture, a short bio, and a link back to your site.

5. Special Content/Documentation : We are looking for someone to compare/contrast the features of PostNuke to the following: PHP-Nuke, Mambo, and Drupal. The person should be familiar with both software CMS's to do a clear, concise comparison of features, functions, etc. Also you would have access to the PN team to review the comparison to offer technical feedback and information for accuracy. And the document would be included on the main PN site to help potential users decide which package to use. You would also be provided with a matrix of specifics to compare with guidelines so you wouldn't have to start from scratch. Your publications will include your picture, a short bio, and a link back to your site.

For more information about the volunteer positions contact us at: vanessa at postnuke dot com

Generated on July 12, 2005.

Kevin Hatch, Author of PostNuke Book   (News)

Question
Vanessa Haakenson: Kevin first let me thank you for taking the time to answer my questions. Tell us about yourself and what attracted you to PostNuke. How long have you been using PostNuke? Why didyou choose PostNuke?
 
Answer
Kevin Hatch: Well for what it’s worth, I’m a professional web developer. I’ve worn a lot of hats over the years with different sometimes-fancy titles, but overall I’ve mainly been a front-end UI guy in most of the teams I’ve been with. Lately I’ve been doing more programming and database development than Photoshop graphics, but I also freelance as a designer to help balance out the creative side.

I was first introduced to PostNuke early in 2003. My workplacewas primarily Microsoft when it came to web development, and my background at the time was much more with VB/ASP and early .NET. But we were starting a change to Linux servers, and it seemed clear ASP was on the way out. It was a coworker friend of mine that originally suggested PHP as a more universal solution, and without any particular preference for ASP I was happy to give it a shot. My experience with C++, Java, and JSP allowed me to pick up PHP pretty easily, and I quickly feel in love with language.

My first PostNuke site was actually an intranet portal. I’d converted all our other sites’ ASP pages to PHP, but we started looking at different PHP content systems to make the intranet development a little easier. I tried early alternatives like PHP-Nuke and phpWebSite, but PostNuke impressed me as a more mature system that also possessed a strong community of users.


 
Question
Vanessa Haakenson: What is the easiest and/or most difficult thing you encountered building your site?
  
Answer
Kevin Hatch: Funny thing, the most difficult thing about my current site was the choice of methods for publishing the content. There were too many options. I struggled with a number of different combinations of stock and third-party modules like PageSetter. I went all out, creating complex layouts and forms for my pages, but ultimately my needs just didn’twarrant all the trouble. I came back to the basic Sections module for most of the content, and the simpler solution gave me more raw control.
The easiest thing had to be my solution for the column layout using AT-Lite. My original theme was done with Xanthia, but I later tried it in AutoTheme to see how the layout features would work for what I needed. I found AT’s AutoBlock objects to be anabsolute dream for easy block-to-page assignment, and that’s what I ended up using.

Question
Vanessa Haakenson: When did the idea of a PostNuke book happen? What's the back-story?
  
Answer
Kevin Hatch: Early on as I worked with PostNuke I knew it was a project under development. It didn’t solve all my development needs, and I quickly started hacking and extending the code to get the extra features and customization I needed. In order to reproduce those hacks later as needed for other installs or upgrades, I documented the steps I took. I quickly had a great deal of good content collected, and I decided it ought to be posted online in case anyone else wanted to make the same custom changes I had. I wrote up the hacks as walk-through articles, and added them to my website.
I did post links to the guides now and then when answering a forum post that could use them, but just having the articles online ultimately prompted the book. The publisher Pearson Ed was looking to do some books on Content Management Systems, and in searching online for PHP-Nuke and PostNuke resources the editor came across my site. They liked the style and content of the articles, and asked if I’d be interested in writing a full book along those lines. I also have a formal writing background, and said I’d be happy to do it. That was back in November 2003.
After the approval of the book proposal I'd put together, the book itself was written over the course of the next ten months. Things were going fine with it till the surprise release of version 0.75. Sweeping changes were made to the content to add in the 0.75 changes, and some of the existing sections were no longer relevant and had to be cut. In the end there was also an overall length issue, where some of the other third-party modules I wanted to cover were also dropped. There are a lot ofgreat modules out there, but there just wasn’t the room to do them all.

Question
Vanessa
Haakenson: How
is
the
book
selling?
Are
you
going
to
do
a
follow-up/update
when newer
versions
of PostNuke
are released?
  
Answer
Kevin
Hatch: I
know
that in
the first
month over
two thousand
copies
were
sold, but
I don’t
know the
overall
sales figures
yet. I
did secondary
edits earlier
this year
for the
second
printing,
so the
first runs
seems
to have
done better
than their
initial
expectations.
There was
also talk
of doing
a German
translation
of the
text, but
I’ve
not heard
back from
that department
to know
if it’s
gone through.
I've been
very swamped
with
work lately,
so I've
honestly
not been
following
it closely
the last
few
months.
Whether
there’s
a follow-up
will probably
depend
more on
the long-term
book sales.
I’m
up for
writing
it if it
works out.
I’ve
also considered
doing a
shorter
book that
picks up
where PostNuke
Content
Management
left
off. I
think it
would be
useful
to have
a step-by-step
walk through
on the
development
of an API-compliant
module.
In the
first drafts
of my book,
there had
been a
section
at the
end just
on module
development,
but all
that made
it into
the book
was the
short API
functions
appendix.
The book
was targeted
well to
reach a
large audience,
but I do
with I’d
done even
more on
the advanced
side. I
think PostNuke
is a great
core
product,
but I’ve
never built
a site
with it
that didn’t
have third-party
modules
and custom
hacks.
It’s
like how
Firefox
is a great
core product,
but having
the right
few extensions
can literally
change
the way
your
browse.
PN already
does that;
there is
of course
the NOC
and many
great
developers,
but I’d
definitely
like to
see even
more. You
shouldn’t
have
to be a
coder to
get it
to work.
PostNuke
can become
anything
you want
it
to be,
but it’d
be easier
to have
all those
options
possible
in simple
add-on
modules.

Question
Vanessa
Haakenson: You
have
a great
site,
KevinHatch.com.
Tell
us
a little
bit about
the site
and how
you customized
it. What
modules
are you
using
for the
site? What
modules
were customized
or built
from scratch?
  
Answer
Kevin
Hatch: Well
my main
site’s
running
on PostNuke
0.75. As
I said
earlier
I’d
used a
variety
of third-party
modules
during
the development,
but I’m
currently
only running
AT-Lite
for the
theme.
The pages
have two
main content
areas,
and while
I began
with both
areas in
the “body” area,
my desire
to reuse
the side
column
for navigation
elements
prompted
me to
set it
up as a
separate
block area.
I created
an AT AutoBlock
object
for
each area
I wanted
to isolate,
like "Links" or "Homepage" for
example.
The
AutoBlocks
are displayed
in the
same place
in the
theme code,
but I
control
the visibility
of those
blocks
from within
AutoTheme
on a page
by
page basis
using the
AT Custom Modules
feature.
The
site does
have some
custom
code hacks,
but for
the most
part they
have
been used
to simplify
the PostNuke
install.
I normally
don’t
need most
of
the core
PN features
for my
personal
site, so
I removed
what I
didn't
need. The
links page
is the
most obvious
example.
That is
just the
core
Web Links
module,
but I changed
the display
of the
content
and removed
all
the user
features
that were
not needed
anymore.
I’ve
considered
writing
a
new links
module
from scratch
as well,
but for
the moment
just editing
the
core’s
working
fine, and
I do have
enough
other projects
to keep
me busy.
The KevinHatch.com
site is
really
not finished.
I’ll
be adding
a PNphpBB2
forum for
the application
support
in the
next couple
months,
and I need
to
finally
set aside
a weekend
to edit
and upload
some of
my other
guides
and
tutorials.
I plan
on expanding
the old
programming
guide content
to
include
information
on UI design
and Photoshop.
The site
is also
currently
a hybrid
of PostNuke
and raw
PHP using
server-side
includes
to pull
in the
PN theme
elements.
It was
simply
faster
at the
time to
set it
up that
way,
but eventually
the site
will be
completely
PostNuke.  

Thank You
Vanessa
Haakenson: Thank
you
for
sharing
your
thoughts
with
the community
and readers.
  
Answer
Kevin
Hatch: I’d
just like
to say
thanks
again to
all the
developers
who’ve
put in
so much
time to
keep this
project
going.
The open
source
movement
for me
has really
re-energized
my love
of online
development.
I
know things
don’t
always
get released
as quickly
as users
might want,
but
the focus
on producing
a quality
product
is quite
admirable.

  
About
Kevin Hatch
Kevin
Hatch is a
professional
web developer
specializing
in user
interface
design.
He has
more than
a decade
of
experience
in Internet
development
and has
worked
in a variety
of roles,
ranging
from graphic
designer
and interface
systems
analyst
to webmaster
and network
architect.
These days
he mainly
programs
in PHP
as a webmaster
and application
developer,
and freelances
as a graphic
designer
for select
projects.
He
has a combined
degree
in Computer
Science
and English.
He's experienced
in technical
writing
and is
the author
of a book
on the
PostNuke
CMS. He
currently
lives in
eastern
Iowa with
his wife
and their
nine pets.  
Related Links: KevinHatch.com
Purchase the book: PostNuke: Content Management System  

About
Vanessa Haakenson
Vanessa
Haakenson
brings
several
years of
experience
in developing
web based
instructional
products.
She is
an Open
Source
advocate
and contributes
her free
time to
managing,
promoting,
and working
with the
PostNuke
content
management
system.
She has
used PHP
for three
years and
has conducted
workshops
on PHP
basics.
Related
Links:
Designs4Nuke.com
(http://www.designs4nuke.com)
   



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

 

Generated on April 25, 2005.

Latest Stable Release Now Available: A Major Step on the Road to 1.0   (News)

Upgrading from Older Versions?

Backup, backup, backup.

Before you upgrade we'd like you to keep in mind much of the core code has been changed. For example, there may be modules, blocks or themes that do not work with this release. So as usual, we recommend you create a test site before upgrading and/or backing up your files and your database. Also, when updating it's a good idea to document which modules work and don't work with the new version so we can help mod devs know the bugs. We suggest you post this information to the forums so module developers will have immediate feedback about which of their modules work with this latest version. Note, if a module is abandoned then you might be able to find a developer who is willing to update it too.

Finally, the upgrade functions have been tested in as many scenarios as possible so you can safely upgrade from any version of

Generated on September 2, 2004.

OSCOM.4 with ApacheTrack   (News)

Press Release

http://oscom.org/events/oscom4/registration

The Open Source content management community is rich and varied
with many projects such as OpenCMS, Plone, Midgard, Cofax, Apache Lenya,
Drupal, Typo 3 and many others. Almost all Open Source CMS rely on software
from the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), and we look forward to lots of
cross-pollination between the Apache and CMS communities.
In addition, market awareness is rapidly growing, with several
Open Source CMS and ASF projects being mentioned favorably
in recent analyst reports.

OSCOM.4 features a wide range of talks and tutorials. Keynotes by Roy Fielding
and Rolf Auf der Maur are followed by talks and tutorials from members of the W3C,
the Apache Software Foundation and the open source community at large.
The ApacheTrack focuses on Apache technologies, while the OSCOM tracks focus
on content management issues.

The program is separated into 3 tracks.

1) OSCOM Technical / Community Track
2) OSCOM Business Track
3) ApacheTrack

OSCOM.4 is a place for developers, vendors, integrators and
users to mingle and learn from each other. Register today.

http://oscom.org/events/oscom4/registration

Generated on August 24, 2004.

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