http://www.vanillacms.com/rss.php Vanilla is a lightweight Content Management System built around PHP, MySQL and jQuery. Its speed and portability make it an ideal candidate for white label CMS solutions. en-gb Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:36:46 GMT Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:36:46 GMT http://www.vanillacms.com info@vanillacms.com info@vanillacms.com http://www.vanillacms.com/?pID=180 http://www.vanillacms.com/accessibility-triple-a Thu, 24 Jun 2010 05:01:42 GMT Accessibility - Triple-A CMS Out of the box, Vanilla CMS adheres to the strict guidelines set out in Priority 1, 2 and 3 of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (WCAG 1.0).  However, this does not mean that your site will always pass such validation; achieving Triple-A on every page of a site is no mean feat, especially a content management system.  In order to maintain such a claim, you'll have to generate your page content very carefully and have a good understanding of accessibility techniques. Vanilla's Front-End Accessibility Features Persistent resizeable text on all pages Menu navigation and page content supports full keyboard control Persistent Hi-Vis mode displays content in high contrast colours Easy access to common links such as search, print, home page and site map Logical mark-up with well-defined attributes Full Text-To-Speech (TTS) plugin available from jTalk Accessibility and Keyboard Shortcuts The navigation menu and page links can be traversed using the keyboard alone on most modern browsers.  Furthermore, all links, both in regular and hi-vis display mode, show prominent borders and background colours to aid those with visual impairment. Keyboard Shortcuts: [TAB] - skip forwards through menu items/links [SHIFT + TAB] - skip backwards through menu items/links [RIGHT ARROW] - open sub menu [ENTER] - visit menu link (same as a mouse click) Common Triple-A Pitfalls If you're trying to validate this (or your own) site and it fails, it may be because of the following: The text content of each h1 element should match all of part of the page's title content Links on the same page pointing to the same place should have the same anchor text Test Vanilla's Accessibility Now! Accessibility Report Mode Section 508 WCAG - Priority 1 WCAG - Priority 1,2 WCAG - Priority 1,2,3 Emulate Browser Cynthia 1.0 MS Internet Explorer 6.0 MS Internet Explorer 5.5 MS Internet Explorer 5.01 MS Internet Explorer 5.0 MS Internet Explorer 4.4 MS Internet Explorer 4.01 MS Internet Explorer 4.0 MS Internet Explorer 4.0 Compatibility Mode MS Internet Explorer 4.0 Solaris Netscape 6.0 Netscape 6.1 Netscape 4.5 Netscape 4.5 Mac PPC Netscape 4.0 Netscape 4.0 OS/2 Netscape 4.0 Win 3.x Netscape 4.0 Linux Netscape 3.0 Netscape 3.0 SunOS Netscape 3.0 OS/2 Netscape 2.0 Opera 3.0 Opera 3.1 Opera 3.2 Opera 3.21 Opera 3.5 Opera 3.6 Lynx WebTV   http://www.vanillacms.com/?pID=205 http://www.vanillacms.com/theme-engine Sat, 19 Jun 2010 16:34:18 GMT The Theme Engine Yet another template-like feature of Vanilla is the Theme Engine - a system similar to WordPress themes whereby the whole look and feel of the site is contained within its own folder on the server.  Themes can be applied across all pages (global), on a per-page basis, or as the link below shows, overridden via a query string value. Click here to load this page with a different theme. Revert to default theme. What's Makes a Theme? Each theme consists of: A config.php file - to tell Vanilla about the theme (name, number of layouts etc.) Any number of 'layout' files (similar to a template) A 'css' directory An 'images' directory A 'js' directory (for JavaScript) What are Layouts? Each theme can have any number of different layouts - 'single column', 'two columns' or 'newspaper' for example - you can call them whatever you want.  Layouts are defined in the config.php file and take the form of an array containing: ID - should start at zero and increment by 1 for each layout Title - the title of your layout design - e.g. 'My Layout' File - the actual name of the physical file - e.g. 'my_layout.php' NavCSS - the navigation css file for this layout CSS - the main CSS file for this layout Logo - the name of the logo image file for this layout - e.g. 'logo.gif' Note - Every theme should have at least one layout defined in its config.php file. Adding New Themes To add a new theme to the system, simply upload your files into a new directory within the 'themes' folder.  If anything goes wrong, you should receive various helper messages explaining what the problem might be. The __Syntax__ We've used a simple syntax to denote placeholders within theme engine layout files: __example__.  This allows users to combine themes with other Vanilla placeholder types such as {Smart Tags}, [Mail Form], [Media Gallery], [List Directories] and FooBank™ variables. PHP Theme Support All theme layout files are written in PHP. This means that you can include extra server-side code into your theme files, along with JavaScript, to manipulate page elements at runtime.  For example, in this alternative theme, we've added jQuery to change the menu behaviour (animation), hide the breadcrumbs and accessibility toolbar and change the positioning of the logo.  The majority of the styling is achieved via the theme's CSS file. Failover Support If a theme file cannot be found or loaded, the system falls back to the default theme.  If this too fails, the system will quit the Theme Engine and serve up regular, non-themed pages. http://www.vanillacms.com/?pID=182 http://www.vanillacms.com/public-distribution Thu, 08 Apr 2010 00:48:40 GMT Public Distribution We've had a busy year, not just building Vanilla, but we're finally streamlining the codebase and squishing those inevitable cross-browser bugs (*cough* Internet Explorer *cough*).  We're also currently working on setting up a demo installation at a separate domain so folks can test-drive Vanilla in various controlled environments.  This should be ready by summer 2010 with a view to an official launch and 'in the wild' distribution by autumn.  We're doing this in order to try and release the most bug-free product possible. We also need to finalise testing on the latest incarnations of Safari and Opera. A Word on Licensing We're also receiving a growing number of enquiries regarding the licensing schema that'll be attached to Vanilla.  We've thought long and hard about this and at this moment in time - and as Vanilla is still strictly in a beta state - we're only offering hosted solutions in order to keep an eye on things and iron out creases that may occur in a production environment.  There are also a few extra features that we intend to bundle into the core distribution (verbose logging, database restoration, a discrete blog and social networking plugin to name the main ones). When released, Vanilla will be a paid-for, licensed product - there will not be a free or open source version (at least not for the foreseeable future). Watch this space. http://www.vanillacms.com/?pID=138 http://www.vanillacms.com/multimedia-support Wed, 23 Dec 2009 08:48:06 GMT Presenting Multimedia You might not always want to show multiple objects using the Media Gallery plugin. By using the 'MP3 Player' or 'FLV Player' buttons on the WYSIWYG editing toolbar, you can generate the necessary code and embed media files in your page content with a single click. Images Images can be presented in a variety of ways: Uploading and embedding via the AJAX File Manager By copying and pasting direct from another website By editing the source code and manually crafting the HTML By using the Media Gallery A combination of the above, with additional built-in jQuery lightbox functionality Audio Using the MP3 Player button on the WYSIWYG you can insert a Flash-based MP3 player with the minimum of fuss. // You can also use a URL to a remote MP3 file as long as begins with http://. The Title and Artist fields are automatically extracted from something called ID3 tags - a range of useful data that is embedded within MP3 and other modern media files. Video The video player works in a similar manner to the MP3 player above. It support FLV files (as used by YouTube etc.). // Video Shortcut Keys (only when NOT in full screen mode) Spacebar - Stop and Start Up Arrow - Volume Up Down Arrow - Volume Down Left Arrow - Scrub Rewind Right Arrow - Scrub Forward Enter - switch to full screen Escape - Exit full screen Double-click - Enter/Exit full screen Mouse Wheel - Volume up and Down (only in full screen mode) Flash Vanilla can use the SWFObject method to embed Flash movies within its pages. We've always found it to be a reliable cross-browser solution with a simple-to-use syntax and good support for variables. An alternative method is to use the 'Insert/Edit Flash' button on the WYSIWYG editor's toolbar. However, this method, which uses object tags, is not W3C valid and may not always yield the desired results in Internet Explorer. http://www.vanillacms.com/?pID=123 http://www.vanillacms.com/w3c-valid Wed, 23 Dec 2009 07:51:59 GMT Perfectly Parsed Pages Vanilla CMS passes W3C validation with flying colours. However, this does not mean that content you generate yourself will always be compliant - you may, for example, insert some malformed or syntactically loose javascript or mark-up. In this scenario, we take no responsibility for invalid compliance claims. Valid RSS The RSS feeds generated by Vanilla CMS also pass standards validation. What does this mean for clients? Well, for starters, you're displaying a welcome sign to visitors that may have physical or visual impairment. W3C valid code also means: Your visitors are getting the 'best' browsing experience Search engines will parse your error-free pages quicker Improved accessibility for those with disabilities Pages will be more efficiently parsed by screen readers Syndicate websites can rely on you for valid content That little extra touch of prestige and professionalism Vanilla CMS is suitable for deployment in public sector environments http://www.vanillacms.com/?pID=45 http://www.vanillacms.com/media-gallery Fri, 18 Dec 2009 00:13:05 GMT // Vanilla likes to boogie. The achilles heel of many content management systems is the lack of a decent way to upload and present multimedia files - mainly audio and video. Vanilla comes loaded with a stylish and extremely easy-to-use multimedia gallery plugin. You simply create a new gallery and upload your files. You can embed the gallery within any of your pages by typing [gallery:gallery-name] where gallery-name is the name of the your gallery. Gallery Plugin Features: Bulk upload of media files Automatic thumbnail creation MP3 and Flash Video (flv) support Fancy lightbox interface Flat-file system - no database Store captions for all files Full-screen video with HD support (mov, mpeg-4) Drag and drop ordering File Type Support Galleries currently support jpeg, gif, png, swf, html, mp3 and Flash video (flv) files. Example Galleries You can place galleries in-line, seamlessly integrating your multimedia showcases with your normal page content. Here's how it looks (check out the audio and video files): [gallery:example-gallery] And here's another gallery: [gallery:billy-childish-stills] And here's a final one: [gallery:harmonium-restoration] It really couldn't be much easier! http://www.vanillacms.com/?pID=90 http://www.vanillacms.com/jquery-features Thu, 17 Dec 2009 14:09:05 GMT "...and slide, two three four" jQuery is a JavaScript framework that helps speed up development by providing content creators with a wealth of HTML manipulation and AJAX methods. It can greatly enhance simple web pages with dynamic effects and content using very little syntax. Vanilla's layout features such as sliding sidebars and the navigation menu all rely on jQuery, as do many of the administrative functions. It's jQuery that allows you to save content without page refreshes and it's partly thanks to jQuery that Vanilla is so fast. Every page that is created using Vanilla CMS includes the jQuery core file. This allows you to access hundreds of functions simply by giving your HTML elements a special ID or class attribute. For example, the word HTML in the previous sentence uses a jQuery tooltip class to show a hovering message when the mouse is placed over it. This link opens and closes the paragraph below and was achieved by adding id="para_to_hide" to the paragraph tag. The link has an onclick handler: onclick="$('#para_to_hide').toggle(200);" To extend the functionality of the core jQuery library you can include your own functions and libraries at runtime. We've conveniently placed a button on the editing toolbar that allows you to scan your JavaScript folder and select which ones you wish to import. Vanilla also has its own lightbox-style image features. To open an image, link or media file in a lightbox window, simply add 'lightbox' to the link element's class attribute. Click the image below to see it in action. Feature Update - We've now added a feature to convert every image on a page to a lightbox image. You simply tick an option box and every image on the page is turned into a link which opens the image in a swish-looking window. If you have multiple images, they'll be displayed as a manual slideshow. As a regular link: With an additional title: Check out the Media Gallery feature for even more jQuery multimedia shenanigans. Once you start using jQuery, we can almost guarantee that your programming quality and the speed at which you develop will increase. It's an incredible framework and it's hugely popular. http://www.vanillacms.com/?pID=46 http://www.vanillacms.com/php-extensibility Thu, 17 Dec 2009 08:13:44 GMT 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, pages can be set to contain pure PHP code, thus hooking into any external scripts, functions or includes. Power Up Your Pages Examples of typical usage might be calendars, calling and displaying database recordsets, MySQL-powered widgets or feeding dynamic back-end XML to Flash movies and apps. 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. Available Variables Check here for a list of variables available within Vanilla. 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.   http://www.vanillacms.com/?pID=68 http://www.vanillacms.com/friendly-urls Wed, 16 Dec 2009 18:02:58 GMT SEO-friendly URLs What is a friendly URL? A friendly URL looks like this: http://www.yourdomain.com/about-us A regular URL looks like this: http://www.yourdomain.com/index.php?pID=1 Friendly URLs are more logical, more memorable and they give search engines something more semantic to get their teeth into. With a single click, Vanilla can switch between friendly and regular URLs. This is achieved with a cunning mixture of Apache directives and jQuery which converts every relevant link, at runtime, to a friendly one. Compared to many other friendly URL techniques, ours seems to be less hassle, more flexible and more reliable. Not just the URL... Vanilla also parses the navigation menu and all the internal links within the current page's content, and if it finds any, it'll convert those to friendly links too.  Coupled with the ability to drop internal links (links that point to another page on your website) into your content with a single click, creating link-rich content which is semantically friendly has never been so simple.  It's surprising how much these small features speed up your overall workflow. Graceful Degradation If a regular URL (using page ID) is typed into the address bar or if the visitor has JavaScript turned off, the system automatically falls back to using regular URLs. This fall-back also occurs if the page has no friendly title saved (although this should very rarely happen as they are generated automatically - similar to page slugs in WordPress). http://www.vanillacms.com/?pID=2 http://www.vanillacms.com/features Sun, 15 Nov 2009 11:10:25 GMT This is a top level page. This page (features) is a menu-only item and cannot be clicked on from the menu - it simply acts as a placeholder on the menu so that sub pages are shown when you hover over it. The menu link can also be configured to jump directly to any URL. Showing a Table of Contents If a page is also a parent, you can choose to have a sidebar which contains a table of contents (TOC) listing its child (sub) pages. You can enable the table of contents feature for all parent pages which have at least one child page.  The table of contents supports an infinite number of nested pages. http://www.vanillacms.com/?pID=4 http://www.vanillacms.com/layout-and-style Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:03:04 GMT Mix 'n' match your markup. We hate to be fenced in. Designers and programmers especially hate to be constrained by hard-coded methods and templates. With this in mind, we've tried to make Vanilla as flexible as possible when it comes to both behaviour and look and feel. Main Style Features Vanilla has the following features to aid in styling your website: A built-in Theme Engine for standalone themes AJAX File Management allows editing of core CSS files Custom HTML and CSS includes for every page Preset WYSIWYG Content Templates - build your own Special page layouts for news-style presentation Auto-creation of Table of Contents (TOC) for parent pages (see right) Custom header images - static, rotating, none or page-specific Dynamic Sidebars - configurable on a per-page basis The Theme Engine You can see that Vanilla is very flexible on the design front and you can delve in and get your hands dirty in multiple ways. However, by far the best method for styling your site is The Theme Engine. WYSIWYG Layout Templates For convenience, we've also included a small collection of content layout templates. A single click allows you to populate new pages with well-styled and logical markup. Edit Core CSS Files All of Vanilla's associated HTML and CSS files can be edited right there within the browser using the built-in AJAX editor. Custom Includes For über-flexibility, you can totally skip the built-in page structure and include your own custom HTML pages and CSS files on a per-page basis. Substitute custom HTML files can also hook into site and page variables using PHPs echo or print function. Using this very flexible technique, you could quite easily build your own template system. For technical extensibility, Vanilla supports both Embedded PHP and the use of external PHP files using the Custom HTML method outlined above. Custom Header Images As you can see, this page has also been given a custom header image. You can choose between four types of header image on your website: A static image - the same for every page A random image from a designated folder Custom header images a per-page basis No image Get styling!   http://www.vanillacms.com/?pID=35 http://www.vanillacms.com/ajax-search-engine Wed, 04 Nov 2009 03:27:57 GMT Real-time search results. Vanilla's search engine utilises AJAX and MySQL's powerful FULLTEXT feature to rapidly return, in real-time, any pages that match your search query. This is extremely fast and can search through tens of thousands of pages within milliseconds. 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. You can also highlight items in the page via a specially crafted URL: Click here to highlight the words AJAX, MySQL and FULLTEXT on this page Page highlight URLs are appended with &q=your+search+words. This method also works with Friendly URLs. Boolean Mode The Vanilla search feature also supports MySQL's boolean option. This allows the inclusion of the following search switches: "term" search for exact match - exclude term, e.g., music -classical + must contain term, e.g., musical +classical * search for term beginning with, e.g., class* would return words such as class, classroom, classic etc. Search Exclusion We've engineered the search so that orphan pages, inactive pages and their children (whether active or not) are excluded from any search results. This prevents folks from looking at pages that are hidden, outdated or not ready for publishing yet. http://www.vanillacms.com/?pID=87 http://www.vanillacms.com/automatic-breadcrumbs Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:57:11 GMT Breadcrumbs? Breadcrumbs are the small > cascading > links that you can see at the top of every page. They allow visitors to see exactly where they are on your website and back-track their way up the page and category hierarchy. This functionality can be turned off via the admin panel. Ooh...Special Breadcrumbs! If the page you are visiting has other sibling pages under the same parent, a quick click on the final breadcrumb link will show a list of those siblings as links - it essentially acts as another mini navigation menu. Unlinking Breadcrumbs Should you wish to prevent visitors clicking on empty parent breadcrumb links, but still want to show their child pages, you can configure the breadcrumb link for that page to always be un-clickable. http://www.vanillacms.com/?pID=10 http://www.vanillacms.com/create-and-edit-pages Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:47:34 GMT 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. 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. http://www.vanillacms.com/?pID=100 http://www.vanillacms.com/for-developers Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:41:49 GMT