PhpCMS Features

From phpCMS

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1 Features of phpCMS
2 New Features

[edit] Features of phpCMS

The following paragraphs will show some of the innumerable features of phpCMS. This list does not claim to be complete - it is but an overview.

[edit] The parser-module

The parser is the most important part of phpCMS. It combines several elements (like the menu structure, a layout template and the content file) into the web site. phpCMS does not need a database connection, as all necessary data gets saved in flat, pure text files.

For a visitor of your web site, phpCMS works invisibly in the background. Unlike many other CMS and portal systems, phpCMS-driven websites do not use (ugly) URLs like http://www.example.com/index.php?name=news. Thanks to the stealth mode of phpCMS, visitors (and search-engines) access the website just like a normal, static HTML page - not even the search-engines notice that it is a dynamically generated site.

Another highlight of phpCMS is the automatic recognition of static HTML pages within the site - static and dynamic pages can easily be mixed. If phpCMS encounters a static page, it simply passes it to the calling user - that way, one can easily replace static pages with dynamic ones step by step, without having to worry about either version getting incompatible with the other ones.

[edit] The cache-module

phpCMS is very flexible and fast because of its multi-level caching. The duration of allowed caching (either on a proxy or in the user's web browser cache) can easily be configured using the graphical administration-interface of phpCMS. Additionally, phpCMS offers an intelligent server-side caching, where pre-parsed (dynamic) as well as completely assembled (static) pages are saved. phpCMS automatically chooses the optimal method - completely static sites are cached as pure HTML code, and directly served to the user on a reocurring request. For sites with dynamic content (like embedded php scripts or php code in the template), phpCMS caches the static part of the web site (e. g. the header and footer, the menu etc.) and adds the dynamically created content at runtime.

HTTP requests issued by browsers (or proxies) are of course properly handled as well. If a page is cached (statically), phpCMS can check for changes and send a "not modified" response if applicable. This diminishes the traffic on a website with many static pages.

Using gzip compression for data transferred to the user, the webserver's traffic can also be reduced and the load-time for visitors can be shortened. phpCMS automatically recognizes a browser's ability (or disability) to handle compressed data and sends the page accordingly.

Of course, everything regarding caching and compression is fully configurable by the administrator of the website from within the phpCMS administration gui.

[edit] The menu-module

The menu structure of a website can be defined in a single menu file. The same file can hold the main menu level, optional submenus and sub-submenus. Like web pages are split in layout and content, the menus are too. In addition to the menu content, there's a separate menu layout file that defines the formatting of the menus. It's even possible to build graphical menus, or JavaScript-based drop-down-lists that act as navigation helpers.

The advantage of a central menu system is the fact that there's only one file to change, should there ever be the need to add a new menu item or rename one. After the change has been done in the main menu (content) file, all pages within the site will get the new item automatically - no need to edit every single page.

The menu module of phpCMS can also provide a full sitemap - built from the same menu (content) file the menus are taken from, but (of course) with its own layout definition, which is freely configureable

[edit] The full text search

phpCMS includes an indexer that creates the index file used by the fulltext search. This indexer can be set up toeither scan only the content files or the completely generated websites (including static, non-phpCMS pages). Special tags within a page (both own tags as well as robot meta tags) can control the indexer's work. This makes it possible to e.g. exclude the menu items from the indexer.

Like the other components of phpCMS, the indexer (and thus the fulltext search) doesn't use a SQL database but a (plain) text-file. As the fulltext search uses indices, it's quite fast. Once the index is created, every search is performed on it. A website can have any number of indices. It is possible to update the indices either with the administration GUI or scheduled by a cron job.

[edit] The online editor

It is possible to declare certain parts of a website (e.g. the 'News' section) to be online-editable. Thus prepared, everybody who knows the access-code (password) can now change the website news as long as he/she has access to an internet connection and a webbrowser. For this, the requested page can easily be brought into the edit mode, where editable sections are replaced with text input boxes.

[edit] The statistics module

phpCMS has its own statistics module. Sometimes you don't have access to the log files of your webserver, or don't want to run analyzing programs all the time. In this case, the statistics module can provide information like the number of visitors per day and suchlike.

[edit] The file manager

With the integrated file manager, it is possible to edit every (writable) file on the webserver or even copy, move or delete files and directories. This feature is - of course - configureable and secured against misuse (only available for people knowing the right password)

[edit] The Spider module

The spider module provides a possibility to grab a statical copy of the website. Every absolute URL will be translated into a relative one. After that, the result can be copied to another webserver that might not have PHP (and thus no phpCMS) running, or burned onto a CD-ROM.

[edit] The administrator GUI

The Graphical User Interface is the connection between the administrator(s) of a website and phpCMS. Within the GUI, nearly all relevant settings of phpCMS can be checked and changed - including the statistics, the file manager, the index tools and much more.

[edit] The WebGrab module

The Webgrab module allows to include external content into a website (like a forum, a guestbook, ...). With Webgrab it's possible to integrate PERL, Java, Python and (nearly) everything else that's available online into the calling website.