AV Blog Script - A first look at AVCMS
Hi everyone,
Today I want to give a first look at the content management system I've been building for well over a year that will form the foundation of all AV Scripts in the future.
AVCMS
AVCMS is the name of the base content management system that all the scripts will run on. It's built in a way that means all my scripts will share 90% of the same code. Meaning that if I update or tweak the comments system for example, any new features and updates will automatically work with all of my scripts.
The shared codebase also means that translations, templates and add-ons will also work across scripts. So a template for AV Arcade will work just fine with Wallpaper Site Script.
The Code: PHP
The underlying code of AVCMS is entirely new and coded in a vastly different way to anything I've released before. While I am still using PHP, I'm using a much more modern coding style that is entirely object-oriented rather than procedural. At the foundation of this are components from one of the biggest and most popular PHP frameworks around, Symfony.
Symfony is a very powerful framework that can be used as individual components. These components are used in some of the biggest PHP projects around including the upcoming Drupal 8 and in future versions of PhpBB. This includes a templating language called Twig which will allow for huge customisability of templates by template designers. Absolutely every template can be overwritten by a template without modifying the original files.
The Code: Frontend
On the frontend, AVCMS uses Bootstrap. This means both the main website & the admin panel are responsive and work great on both desktop and mobile devices.
The Admin
The responsive admin panel works great on mobile and desktop, meaning you can manage your site on the go. It features an entirely new interface for managing and editing content that works as a split-pane on desktops, a UI never really seen in CMS admin panels. The best way to really understand the new admin panel is to give it a go!
Menus & Modules
A couple of core features of AVCMS is customisable menus and modules. Modules are small blocks that can be added to certain sections of the site. Most obviously in places like the sidebar throughout the site, but also in places like the admin dashboard and user profiles. These modules come with customisable settings & templates plus the ability to hide/show them to certain users and order them as you wish.
You can also now create, edit and re-order items in the menus throughout the script. These menus are totally dynamic so they won't show features that have been disabled or items a user doesn't have permission to view.
Users, Groups & Permissions
Users can belong to groups and those groups can be allowed/denied permission to do certain activities. So you can have an admin that is only permitted to edit blog posts or a moderator who can only manage comments. The full customisability of groups and permissions is still in a work in progress so for now as the groups are pre-set with only a few permissions. This will be expanded later.
AV Blog
To test out the work I've completed so far, today I'm releasing a blog script. The blog is what will replace the "News" sections in AV Arcade & Wallpaper Site Script. The blog features a number of aspects that are reusable throughout future scripts such as comments, reporting, tags, scheduled publish time, custom URL slugs and more.
Give it go
AV Blog requires PHP 5.4 or above and an Apache-based web server with mod_rewrite enabled.
To install:
1. Download AV Blog.
2. If you can, upload the zip file to your site and unzip it on the server. If you cannot unzip after uploading, unzip before uploading.
3. Visit the site in your browser and you should be redirected to the installer to being the install process
That should be it
Hopefully everything works, though there's a chance you may face permissions issues. Make sure the script has write permissions to the /blog, /cache and /web folders and all their sub-directories.
This is early software and really intended for testing so I can find out if there's any issues with the script so far. So you are very likely to experience issues. Don't use the script on anything that really matters.
2015 will be full of many new things and will be an exciting year for AV Scripts.
Thanks for all your continued support,
Andy
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Maybe I'll make a video or something.
Originally Posted by Andy
