AJAX Search

The built-in search engine utilises AJAX and MySQL's powerful FULLTEXT feature to rapidly return, in real-time, any pages that match your search query.

When you click on a returned result, the visited page will highlight the search terms until one of them is clicked on. Try searching for 'ajax' and clicking on a returned result.

Search results appear here in real-time.
Example Sidebar

Create and integrate sidebars on-the-fly.

You can create and add as many of these sidebars as you want. Sidebar content is generated via the same easy to use WYSIWYG editor as regular pages, allowing you to insert and format text, HTML, forms and images. Each sidebar has the option of a toggle link which expands and collapses the panel. The sidebar's toggle state is recalled upon susbsequent visits to the same page.

You can even create a sidebar that contains raw PHP code - thus providing unlimited extensibility via functions, libraries and includes. Smart.

Familiarity breeds content.

Below is a screenshot of the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editing page and the word-processor type toolbar. The shot below was actually taken whilst creating this very page. Click for a larger view.

WYSIWYG Editing Page

The toolbar will be familiar to anyone that's ever used software such as Microsoft's Word or Office.

Toolbar Features

  • Format the colour and size of text, paragraphs, titles etc.
  • Easily insert links, images, documents and files
  • Paste from Word and preserve formatting
  • Find and replace function
  • Insert Flash and multimedia objects
  • Present tabular data
  • View HTML element placeholders such as p, div and li
  • Edit in source code mode for advanced scripting
  • Insert a one-click slideshow
  • Insert web forms for back-end processing
  • Switch between simple and advanced toolbars
  • ...and much more

Additional Page Options

Along with custom tools on the toolbar - which is enough to create rich, dynamic content on its own - every page also has a host of additional options governing its content and behaviour.

You can also configure:

  • The page's title
  • The friendly title (used for Friendly URLs)
  • Parent page
  • Custom META tags
  • Page tags (for search hooks)
  • Comprehensive navigation options
  • Breadcrumb options
  • Whether to display tags and date etc.
  • Whether to flag for RSS inclusion
  • Whether the page is active (live)
  • Password Protection (on a per page basis)
  • Whether the page is hidden (for custom error pages etc.)
  • Whether the page can contain Smart Tags
  • Whether the page allows PHP Extensibility
  • Sidebar options with drag and drop sorting
  • Custom layout options (news, table of contents etc.)
  • Access Control based on user roles
  • The publication date of the page
  • Versioning and autosaves
  • ...and much more!

With such flexibility, there's no excuse not to have dynamic and fresh content on all your pages - and all without the need to worry about linking everything up - it's all taken care of automagically by Vanilla's first-class content and navigation architecture.