As a web developer I use a variety of Content Management Systems (CMS), either a bespoke solution I develop myself or more commonly an off the shelf (normally) Open Source platform.

I’ve been using the excellent CMS Made Simple for a couple of years now with great results (don’t let the “simple” in the name fool you, this is a feature-rich application) so when I was asked if I would like to review a copy of CMS Made Simple 1.6: Beginner’s Guide by Sofia Hauschildt I jumped at the chance.

Embarrassingly, I’ve had this copy of the book sitting by my desk for a couple of months but have been so busy with work I’ve not had the chance to flick past the first few pages.  However, now I’ve got some new CMSMS projects in the pipeline I’m looking forward to getting into the book and seeing what it can offer.

As anyone that has read a “teach yourself” software book will know, it’s hard for the authors to target the reader as everyone has different experience levels and coding for the web has many pre-requisites that can be taken for granted.  CMS Made Simple 1.6 is titled a “Beginner’s Guide”, so I’m expecting to skip at least a few pages but it will be interesting to see what new features I can learn along the way.

If you’re interested in getting a copy of this book yourself, download and read a pdf extract.  I’ll also write a review when I get the chance (hopefully in a couple of weeks).

Publisher’s notes:
CMS Made Simple 1.6: Beginners Guide is a new book from Packt through which, webmasters will learn to implement their own design into CMS Made Simple to create a professional and fully functional website. They will learn how to integrate an e-commerce shop with PayPal checkout, enrich the website with features like a photo gallery as well as implement You Tube videos into templates or pages thus helping users create engaging, effective, and easy-to-use CMS websites for businesses, clubs, or organizations.

The book is out now and is available from Packt. For more information, please visit : https://www.packtpub.com/cms-made-simple-1-6-beginners-guide/book

CMS Made Simple is a great content management system.  It’s free, easy to get to grips with, quite powerful and the forums are fairly helpful when you need help.

There are obviously quirks with it (as there is with all off the shelf software) such as tables inserted within the WYSIWYG editor lacking any outlines, making placement quite problematic (think “invisible table”).

Thankfully there is an answer with at least the current versions of CMS Made Simple (1.4.1 at the time of writing this) having an option to turn table outline borders on and off.

Method

From within the CMS Made Simple admin control panel, go to: Extensions > TinyMCE WYSIWYG > Advanced (tab)

There you should see a checkbox for the option “Include only screen CSS”.  Tick that, update the settings and give the WYSIWYG editor a whirl.

If all has gone well, you should now see the outline borders when editing page contents.

If you’re scratching your head on how to get an HTTP redirect with CMS Made Simple, then save your scalp and scratch no longer!

All you need to do is create a User Defined Tag (UDT) within your CMS MS admin (Extensions > User Defined Tags), call the tag “redirect” and paste the following code:

if( isset( $params['to'] ) )
  {
    global $gCms;
    $manager =& $gCms->GetHierarchyManager();
    $node =& $manager->sureGetNodeByAlias($params['to']);
    $content =& $node->GetContent();
    if (isset($content) && is_object($content))
       {
         if ($content->GetURL() != '')
         {
            redirect($content->GetURL());
         }
       }
    else return '<!-- redirect udt - page not found: '.$params['to'].' -->';
  }

To use, add {redirect to=”page_alias”} into one of your pages, or somewhere intelligently placed in your template.  If it’s going into a template then you should have an if statement around this, or you’ll get some nasty redirection loops!

Credit to calguy1000 for writing the function.

Further reading:

• http://wiki.cmsmadesimple.org/index.php/Share_your_tags_here#A_Redirect_UDT
• http://forum.cmsmadesimple.org/index.php/topic,14440.0.html

Update

I don’t know if they have always been there but I’ve since noticed the CMS Made Simple tags redirect_url and redirect_page

To use, insert into your page or template:

{redirect_page page="some-page-alias"}

or

{redirect_url to="www.cmsmadesimple.org"}