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V.Pilyugin
Nekki CMS – Dialogue tools for web development
Since
1990’s, Web development has been one of the fastest growing industries in the
world. Every day the number of web sites and the amount of information grows
larger. Requirements for websites and their content also increase. New
functions appear, websites become more interactive. Developing them using standard
methods becomes less and less effective.
One
of the main problems of web development is managing content. As far as site
grows, much of the content becomes out-of-date or inaccurate, updating site
becomes complex. And if you are not the developer, you should ask your
webmaster to make changes, and these updates are piling up in his task list.
The
solution for such problems is a content management system (CMS).
“A
content management system is a computer software system for organizing and
facilitating collaborative creation of documents and other content. A content
management system is often a web application used for creating and managing
websites and web content.” – Wikipedia
Nowadays
CMS systems are used not only for managing site content, but also for fast and
low-cost site development. There are hundreds of content management systems on
the market, they have their lacks and advantages.
Classical
CMS is a set of templates – various site blocks, which can be used by the
developer to create the website and manage it’s content. For example, there are
templates for news, articles, polls, image galleries, blogs.
Such CMS gives an opportunity for any user to create and manage a simple site,
without knowing any programming language.
But
such sets of templates usually are not enough for big sites. More universal
systems have options for the creation of user-defined templates manually, using
some programming language, implemented in the system. So you need to find a web
programmer, who knows the language of the CMS you are using to create
professional website using such system.
The
development of complicated websites without using programming languages (by the
means of graphical dialogue interface) still remains perspective and
interesting researching area.
Nekki
CMS (developed by Dmitry Terekhin)
is a system, based on these foundations.
Like
classical CMS, it has a big set of templates which can be used for website
development (website menus, structure management, users and privacy
permissions, user groups, news, articles and announcements, working with
images, photo gallery, blogs, search, site map,
polls, registration, authorization, document workflow, site statistics,
advertisement management, forum, guest book, chat, personal mail, sms services, wap-version, files
storage, news subscription, online shop, payments system, localization and etc).
The system consists of several modules: content management, forms creation, tables creation, graphics module, database management module. The main features of the graphics module will be described later in this article.
Like
universal CMS, Nekki CMS has it’s own XML-based language for easy
templates creation. There are 5 kinds of templates: “formatted text” (can be
created using a WYSIWYG text editor), “form” (user-defined fields of different
types and buttons, sending data to the database), “table” (list of data in
user-defined style, getting data from the database), “mix type” of table and
form and finally “action” template
(user-defined action, for example deleting of the chosen record from the
database).
Dialogue
tools for creating templates without using programming languages are the main
advantages of Nekki CMS. These tools are based on the structured but
flexible format of the templates markup language and can be used either by
professional web developers or by the beginners.
Graphical dialogue interface
The
graphical interface helps you to manage the site structure. It shows the
hierarchy of site menu items which can be moved, added, edited, deleted or
translated using graphical icons. Pages and menu items can be added using the
dialogue interface where you enter the name and the title for the page, choose
the design template, parental menu element, menu position and url.
Site structure management
The
content of the page can be edited using the graphical WYSIWYG (what you see is
what you get) editor. Like Microsoft Word, it has icons for text formatting,
adding tables and images.
WYSIWYG text editor
For
more complicated pages (interactive or using the database) you can add
user-defined templates. These templates (data forms, tables or actions) can be
created and edited using a dialogue interface.
Here
is the example of such template:
The example of content management form with different field types and
localization fields
The
template shown is the example of a user-defined form with the widgets of
different types: text, string and numeric fields, comboboxes,
image upload and editing tools, localization fields, buttons and etc.
Graphics module
One
of the main modules of the system is the graphics module. It consists of such tools,
as:
§
Image resize
§
Image format convertation and background color change
§
Cropping tool
§
Images mixing
§
Photo gallery template
§
Downloading images using
SMS
Image cropping tool
Resizing
and cropping are useful tools for media sites, where you use images in news or
articles. Resizing is needed, because all images should fit the same width or
height, depending on the site design. Cropping tool helps to cut the needed
part of the image. It is often used for generating the image preview.
The
image format tool is used to change image format from JPG to GIF and back. If a
transparent GIF image is converted to JPG, you can choose the color of the
background.
Images
mixing is a useful tool for adding copyright information to the image, or some
design elements.
Image mixing tool
Photo gallery is the Nekki CMS template using the graphical tools described. It supports
multiple galleries, images resize and mixing, separating big galleries, storing
information about the images name, description and author.
Photo gallery template
Projects
already released using Nekki CMS: www.fcdinamo.ru
(official website of FC Dynamo Moscow), www.soccer.ru
(online mass media), www.butsa.ru (online
browser game), www.nekki.ru (LLC Nekki corporate
site). The release of Nekki CMS is scheduled for spring 2007.
Website created using Nekki CMS