PHP Sidebar

Embed PHP Code

Sidebars can also contain raw PHP code, enabling you to hook into any script, function or include file. This provides limitless scope for extensibility.

The server date and time below is created on the fly using PHP's gmdate() function.

Date and Time: 11/03/10 15:43:50

Code is locked down and secured via multiple mechanisms.

Extending with PHP

If you're a developer, integrating custom routines and scripts into an existing content management system can be a pain in the back-end. With Vanilla, you can designate pages that are pure PHP code, thus hooking into any external script, function or include.

Examples of such pages might be calendars, calling and displaying database recordsets, MySQL-powered widgets or feeding dynamic back-end XML to Flash widgets. Remember, using this method will allow you to tap straight into your server's OS and perform any number of server-side functions.

You can mix PHP and regular HTML within these special pages. For a better chance of successful W3C validation, you may also want to URL encode certain entities such as ampersands, currency symbols and punctuation symbols.

For safety, all PHP-only pages are locked down via multiple security mechanisms.

Custom Include Method

If you'd rather create your pages offline, Vanilla CMS also supports the integration of custom HTML or PHP files on a per-page basis. This method could be used to provide the framework for a template system. Read more about custom HTML files here.

Further Extension with FooBank

You can further extend Vanilla via the The FooBank™ System.