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#1 2011-02-02 11:14:08
- baltona
- New Member
- Registered: 2011-02-02
- Posts: 1
Book catalog, custom data structure. Is Textpattern the right tool?
Hi,
I building a book catalog site. Basically it should be something like online bookstore but without prices, cart or buy option. I prepared a database structure and wrote simple crud in PHP (using CodeIgniter) but it’s far from complete and I’ll need to add new features like ads support, comments, news, forum. All data needs to be editable by non-technical users – this is a must.
So I thought that I should adopt a CMS. I don’t have a lot of experience using CMS systems but I’m a programmer and I know PHP. I need a system that would be easy to learn and adopt and that will let me preserve my data structure. It would be ideal if it would be possible to design site and data structure without any coding, so non-technical users could customize it. I’d prefer to store the data in database in structured form. I don’t want to store items as blog posts or wiki pages and I don’t want my data structure to depend on specific api/solution.
Is Textpattern right for me? Would it be easy to adopt? Maybe someone has done something similar or know a guide or article about it?
Thanks in advance.
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Re: Book catalog, custom data structure. Is Textpattern the right tool?
Well, the thing is that Textpattern can easily be used as a kind of PHP-CMS-Framework.
You can build the site around your book catalog items. Textpattern can be a wrapper around your PHP database application.
I’ll need to add new features like ads support, comments, news, forum.
- ads support: You can place ads where ever you want.
- comments: AFAIK the classical comment form feature is depending on having single articles, below which you add and show comments.
- news: Easy. Basically you create a new section and add news articles.
- forum: No. A forum has to be integrated via
<txp:php>. Standard solution is to add a stand alone forum in a sub-directory or sub-domain.
IMHO: You should migrate your data structure to fit into the Textpattern article data structure. Only then you’ll be able to use all the Textpattern whistles & bells.
Use the advanced search form and look for catalog to check if your topic was already covered.
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Re: Book catalog, custom data structure. Is Textpattern the right tool?
Like Markus said, it can be done using Textpattern’s article as the basis for each record and using the custom fields to built out your data model (use glz_cf for even greater flexibility). TXP even offers considerable flexibility to customize the admin theme for your non-technical users— or you can use plugins like ign_password_protect to integrate minimal publishing options in the site’s front-end.
When I built a site like what you’re describing, I thought that using a framework like CodeIgniter would be better suited to agile development around a custom data model, but I didn’t and don’t have the PHP (or Ruby or Python) chops to do such things. That project only came off because Textpattern has an agile and responsive development community represented on these forums, that was crucial to helping me overcome several roadblocks along the way.
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