To service the needs of our corporate customers, we have started work on an advanced version of CCK or the Content Constructor Kit. CCK is a very useful CMS feature which makes content richer by letting you add new fields to articles.
For example, an event listing would be enhanced with location details, weather forecast, Ticket purchase number, photographs, driving directions etc. as well as the more standard event description available in the standard Article format. Using CCK, these additional fields can be added to create more informative content without the need for custom coding. CCK is a standard aspect of Drupal CMS and it is the main reason Drupal is sometimes chosen over Joomla for complex CMS implementations.
Joomla already has a limited version of CCK with K2 but the Jentla implementation extends further than K2 and over the course of the next month will reach past Drupal’s implementation in the types of fields which can be used, the option to inject Merge Tags into fields and more advanced drag and drop advances in the display options.
In the first cut of development, we have achieved the ability to Set up a Field Group, Add fields to a Field Group, select the Categories where the Field Group can extend, Add the fields to Articles, Publish and view the Articles. It is also possible to restrict the Contributors, Approvers, Publishers and Moderators who can access the Field Group to use it in the Categories assigned to them.
CCK fields prior to adding to article
CCK Content tags added to an article
K2 gives the field types of "Text Field", "Textarea", "Drop-down selection", "Multi-select list", "Radio buttons" and "Links".
We will be extending that with additional/filtered fields of:
- Images
- Numeric
- Date
- Future Date
- Fixed Length Numeric (for phone numbers and zip codes)
- Currency
- Fixed (for a generated field the user cannot change)
- Hidden (for a generated field the user cannot see).
- Email address
- Percentage
- Time
- Embed video link
- Internal Link
- Video (for a integration with the Jentla Digital Asset Manager)
- Flash (for Flash content)
In Addition to this, we specify if a field is mandatory or not, and it’s default value.
The default value of a field could be a fixed value or generated from a (%%merge tag%%), the value of the current specified category level (eg default = Category level 4), the site name, the site URL, or today’s date. And as mentioned, we include optional restrictions on user groups who can view the field, and optional restrictions on user input to the fields.
To reassure those wanting a well integrated implementation, as always, there will be no hacks made to the Joomla core in our implementation of this feature.
As has been found with CCK in Drupal and to a lesser extent the list of potential uses for CCK is quite wide ranging. We’ll talk more about the additional features, being an integrated forms builder and the display elements as well as the process of development we are undertaking in future posts.
Soon, it will no longer be necessary to look to Drupal for this feature in particular and provide all the more reason for corporates to rely on Jentla and its underlying Joomla to fulfil their online goals.