Rails - May 2005 - Model design for CMS

Hi

I''m in the process of designing a CMS. I/we/the client want to be able
to manage not only the main content of a given page, but also the
secondary blurbs of contents which may be positioned in different
places of a layout. I was hoping some of you may have ideas of how to
design the Models to achieve the kind of flexibility I''m going for. In
my opinion, most content management systems are either too complicated
or too simple when it comes to configuring content <--> page.

Here''s what I''m currently considering (trying to figure out if
it will
work): http://photos7.flickr.com/12335610_2ff33f465e_o.jpg

(I realize immediately that the graph in the above image won''t work,
since all instances of a Layout can''t use the same channels/content,
consider it a rough sketch (should Page be derived from Layout instead
of having a relation to it?)).

The bottom line is: When creating a new page (which is categorized
(each category reflecting a section on the website)), the user would
select what kind of layout it should use, and would be able to choose
from various pre-defined ones. The user cannot create new layouts,
only select one from the ones already available. These layouts would
primarily consist of an area for "main content" and zero or more areas
of "secondary" content (depends on the layout, a three column layout
might, for instance, have two slots for secondary content).

A Page''s slots for secondary content can at any time be configured to
contain data from a News category (or several ones), a blurb from a
specific Article, an Image, or, perhaps, something else.

As you can see from the image I mentioned above, a Page is not the
same thing as an Article. Content comes in various forms (articles,
news, events, maybe more), and is visible through a Page. This may or
may not be too much micromanagement, but we need this kind of
flexibility (besides, it doesn''t necessarily mean that a Page must be
created separately from an Article in the web user interface).

Any feedback on a Model design to allow this kind of configuration (to
be able to route content to various slots of content on a page,
depending on its layout) from the web interface is appreciated.

Regards,
Tomas Jogin

Hi Tomas.

I''m trying to build something similar.  My CMS would definitely fall
into
your "too complex" category.  :)

One thing I''m doing is implementing "content elements" as
rails controllers.
So a page would build the page however, and then callout to the content
elements to render themselves.  E.g., in a page rhtml file:

<div id="leftCol">
  <% leftColElements = @controller.get_content(:region_name =>
''left'') %>
  <% leftColElements.each { |e| %>
    <p> <%= @controller.some_render_component_wrapper(e) %>
</p>
  <% } %>
</div>

The content elements are just rails controllers so they do things in the
normal rails way.  Of course, I''m leaving out all sorts of details
(like
trapping the creation of links and redirects so that they do the correct
thing in the context of your cms).  But I think I''ve given enough for
you to
get my point.

-Tim