September 9th, 2010
Points of Interest is a jQuery plugin written to replace the once commonplace interactive maps implemented with Flash. Using one image and two unordered lists, the plugin creates over the image clickable areas which display overlay panels of detailed information. Read the rest of this entry »
September 8th, 2010
First of all, when is the last time you’ve heard the internet referred to as the “information super-highway”? It’s really quite a dumb phrase, but it was at least somewhat accurate for a while. Recently though, I’ve noticed that the tool we once imagined would be a streamlined source of important international information has become a giant cluster of inane snippets and desperate attempts at grabbing attention. Read the rest of this entry »
July 19th, 2010
Following up on last week’s post about things I never want to see online again, I’ve compiled a list of the 5 great new technologies which will help make those old atrocities obsolete forever. Read the rest of this entry »
July 16th, 2010
The only thing worse than a friend overstaying their welcome is an odd acquaintance you never really liked overstaying their welcome. The same is true when it comes to web technologies and design practices. Some things are just so awful it’s tough to imagine them ever being conceived, much less sticking around for a decade. Here are the top 5 things I’d like to see go away forever. Read the rest of this entry »
July 13th, 2010
Recently I’ve been tasked with creating tons of graphics, ads, and sites that need to read “Click here to…” just about everywhere. This really got me thinking on how inane that text really is, and how much I’d like to see it eradicated from the web. My reasons are… Read the rest of this entry »
July 8th, 2010
For seasoned vets or first-time plug-in authors, here’s my basic template from which I start every jQuery plugin. It’s not all that much, but it does save some set-up time and helps to make sense of the “});” soup that tends to occur at the end of every plug-in. Read the rest of this entry »
June 29th, 2010
(Latest release, v1.1 on 02/09/2011)
VerticalTabs organizes images or blocks of markup into a simple, attractive, and easily styled tab layout. The markup only requires a div and two unordered lists so the plugin degrades gracefully when JavaScript is disabled. This extraordinarily lightweight plugin is ideal for maximizing the content’s impact on the user when screen real estate is at a minimum. Read the rest of this entry »
April 23rd, 2010
I posted a full review of CMSMS 1.6 – A Beginner’s Guide on Amazon: Read my review of this book.
April 21st, 2010
The final two chapters of the book deal with advanced topics that can enhance a site that’s already up and running. The first extra feature to be examined is enabling a site for multi language capabilities with user submitted, not automatic, translations. I can’t say I’ve had a need to do this yet, but when creating a site for an international corporation this would be a vital step. The next items of interest I felt were way out of place as they should have been dealt with much earlier in the book in the chapter on creating templates. Creating additional editable content blocks and optimizing the site for search engines really should be thought about when the site is first being coded and are far more instrumental than multi-language capabilities. After taking a look at user defined tags and an events dispatcher there is a study on integrating jQuery into a site which is yet another item I feel better belongs in the chapter about templates. In today’s world jQuery and other JavaScript libraries are becoming so widely used that they really are part of a template and not just extra functionality.
Chapter 11 closes the book with a rather dull read on creating site and database backups, which must be done with two modules, seeking help on any CMSMS problems, and performance tuning. These are important concepts, but it was a dreary read and I think perhaps the advanced functionality or a case study of a really well done site would have been a better way to end the book.
Overall though, this is an incredibly useful and easy to digest manual for getting started with one of the best CMS applications available today.
April 20th, 2010
Chapter 9 dives into the <sarcasm>wonderful</sarcasm> world of eCommerce. The chapter wisely begins by explaining that for a site which is mostly eCommerce with only a few other pages, CMSMS is not the solution. Even with this little preface though, I think the merits of CMSMS as an eCommerce platform were not addressed in full enough detail. Also notably underrepresented in the opening pages of the chapter were an overview of the myriad eCommerce solutions available for CMSMS and the fact that they are incredibly incompatible with each other – as in they will actually destroy your entire website.
So, after the far too sparse overview and warnings the book dives into the Products module which sadly needs a custom field added for image. Creating templates and categories is covered and detail and the CMSMS eCommerce solutions start to look acceptable.
The next module to integrate is the Cart module which thankfully is easy to connect to Products. After Cart comes Orders which has tons of dependencies and templates to worry about and also needs to be integrated with Self Registration. This is where the eCommerce solutions begin to get very annoying to work on as there are so many forms to style – login, billing info, shipping info, etc.
The last step discussed in detail is setting a Paypal gateway. The book makes sure to explain the work one must do outside of CMSMS, setting up dev PayPal account, connects the CMSMS Shop to PayPal using IPN.
Optional modules for taxes, shipping, promotions, and gift baskets are also mentioned but not really explained. If you’re looking to use features like these, it’s better to just use a dedicated eCommerce platform as getting all of these independent modules to communicated with each other can be misery.
Overall the chapter does a good job introducing and explaining the eCommerce setup in CMSMS but it really glosses over the more important aspects such as choosing the right eCommerce platform, building a secure environment, fulfilling orders, and more.