Newbie -- Bead Database Question

Sunday 06 February 2005 4:04:16 am

Hi, and welcome to the community!

It looks like what you need is to make your own class(es). This is a extremely nice feature in ez, that enables you to make what you describe as "a database". It's done easily in the admin-interface.
Take a close look at
http://www.ez.no/ez_publish/documentation/ez_publish_basics/content_management_in_ez_publish
and
http://www.ez.no/ez_publish/documentation/building_an_ez_publish_site/the_guestbook/creating_the_content_class

- Roy

Tuesday 08 February 2005 10:32:41 am

When you get 100% admin rights you'll find it at the setup-tab, then choose classes from the left menu. (Well, Im not into 3.5 yet, but at least it used to be there :-)
Now, create a new class, and add the attributes you would like. The actual data is stored using the attributes, so you choose them carefully. Your list at the link you provided in the first post will serve as an exelent guide to the attributes you'll need to add to the class. The datatype is choosen based on what data that is to be stored. http://ez.no/ez_publish/documentation/incoming/appendices/appendix_c_ez_publish_datatypes lists the built-in datatypes you can choose from.

It takes some time to get used to the system. I found the tutorial (http://www.ez.no/ez_publish/documentation/toc/(from)/36647) extremely helpful.

Roy

Thursday 10 February 2005 2:14:44 am

> Here's a curiosity question -- is it possible to create a very good website,
> just by picking the standard options within eZ? or do you have to be able to
> 'program' in html, php, etc.? Just curious, if I will hit a 'wall' as I have
> limited proficiency in html & none in php et al.

This is a really excellent question my friend. ;-)

The answer is that yes, you will hit a wall when working with eZ Publish at some point. The bad news is that there isn't a publication platform out there truly supports really easy low or no website language knowledge development as I like to call it (don't be offended, I don't intend to be critical -- I think you're question is a fine one).

If that's what you're looking for (truly), I'm not sure which solution to reccomend. IMHO, every solution I have laid my hands on requires touching the code at some point if you go far enought with it. But don't worry, it's not as hard as it looks (or as hard a skill to develop as you might imagine)

The fact is that you can build a tremendously powerful website with eZ Publish without picking up a code editor. You can use the default templates, and the techniques described in this thread, to build out a database driven website. The way that eZ Publish makes itself unique from other platforms is in the way that everything it handles is as an "object".

This is an "object platform" for developing objects. The website content is put into "nodes", which are nothing more than "objects" that exist in a website tree. You can attach different nodes based on the different things you want to build -- a node that is a forum, a node that is text, a node that is a form.

But the real power of eZ Publish is actually in the ability to make new nodes, which is what this thread is actually describing and you are trying to do. Instead of building a "custom database" or something that has to be adapted, like you would if you were starting with a php/mysql website application like Mambo or another lower end CMS, you can actually use the node model to create a database out of the blocks that are already built into eZ Publish.

This is kind of a hard concept. eZ works like this: you tell it you want a new object, you tell it the properties of the object, and it creates the ability to store and manipulate the object.

Let's take your bead example. You have a bead. It's brown, round, and solid, and costs $2.99. The bead is the object, and the brown, round, solid, and price are it's properties.

What eZ Publish would let you do is create a custom content type for beads as easily as defining their properties. Think of it as building the database on the fly based on the properties of the object you tell it to store.

Now that the new object is in the system, you can do many things to it. You can sell it in an online store, make a database of beads for customers, etc.

eZ Publish is very, very powerful, but it will take some time to learn. It's not as simple as slapping together a website based on Mambo or another low end system. But it's an Enterprise class system, so you could really build your business on it, and keep running on it as you grow.

eZ Publish presents that age old question about whether it's better to give a man a fish, or or teach a man to fish.

I would say that you would find it very helpful to learn at least html and CSS before you think about developing any website (especially a website based on a Content Management System). But since you know html, I'd say go for it! You'll find that eZ Publish can do tons more stuff than most CMS solutions out of the box, and after you figure out how to do templating, you'll find that you can do 98.2% (actual number ;-) of what you need to do with templates and custom objects without having to write your own php classes or even really touch php code.

Best,

Jonathan

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