Planning an example site: the club portal
The book ends its content chapter with a planning exercise, and it is a good one. The project: a portal for a nature photography and astronomy club. Use it as a template for your own planning, with the order the book follows: requirements, classes, structure, sections, groups, roles.
1. Requirements
A public part: documents, members' pictures in galleries, discussion forums, a calendar of activities, logbooks, news with a subscription service, and a few personal features for registered users. A private part for the club's management: statutory documents, meeting reports, actions and private discussions.
The book's point: with a flexible model you often have more than one way to do it. Reduce the number of classes. Ask for each: is it the same thing with a flag, or a different thing?
2. The classes
| Class | Attributes (datatype) |
|---|---|
| Document | Title (text line); Intro (rich text); Body (rich text); Attachment (file); Keywords (keywords, an automatic "related documents"); Related items (object relation list); Allow comments (check box); Show on the home page as news (check box) |
| Logbook entry | Subject (text line); Body (rich text); Related items published elsewhere (object relation list). The logbook itself is a folder. |
| Image | Title; Description (rich text); Image; Caption (text); Equipment used (rich text); Date and time; Location (rich text); Keywords |
| Forum message | Subject; Message (plain text); Type (selection: question, remark, important news ...). The forum is a folder. |
| Calendar item | Subject; Description; Location; Start and end date and time; Keywords; Category (selection); Related items |
| Dummy object | Name (text line). Used as a hook for special pages such as the home page, with a template of its own. |
| Link | The standard link class: title, description, link. |
The datatypes are in the datatypes tour; to create a class see creating a content class. Comments are added with templates (common template tasks). Today you could also use the shipped classes of the site package you installed (article, folder, image, file, link, comment) and add only what is missing.
3. The tree
Home (dummy object: aggregates news and other items)
News (with an archive navigator)
Documents: Technical documents, Meeting reports, Miscellaneous
Calendar of events
Links: Astronomy related, General photography
Galleries: Astronomy, Nature
Forums: Announcements, Astronomy related, Nature related
My site (personal)
Restricted part: Forum, Statutory documentsThe structure is plain on purpose. The visual experience comes from the templates (content and presentation). Check your plan by drawing the tree and walking one visitor through it.
4. Sections, groups, roles
Next: users, groups and roles in the example.
Source and license
Adapted from chapter 2, "Content Management with eZ publish", of Learning eZ publish: Building Content Management Solutions by Paul Borgermans, Tony Wood, Paul Forsyth, Martin Bauer, Björn Dieding and Ben Pirt (additional material by Bruce Morrison), second edition, 2024, Book-Learning-eZPublish. Copyright (c) 2004-2024 7x and Graham Brookins. Licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License, version 1.3 or any later version, with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts and no Back-Cover Texts (the license). Changes: rearranged and shortened; settings, labels, datatypes, tags and URLs checked against Exponential 6 and corrected; links to the current guides added.