PUC 2.0

There are a few things that are on my list that I would like to implement into our Admin Tools. Well, maybe more than a few. But right now, I need to focus on making everything functional, then add the bells and whistles.

I figure that I will focus on the Announce Admin, and use that as a model for my other editing interfaces. I am also playing with the idea or having a structured root node selector, so that there will be one "Admin Editing" area, and it would allow the changing of the root node, which would change what content could be edited. This is probably the route we will go in the future.

My ideas for future additions are:

• Ajax Asset Builders, including multi-step Builders


• Auto saving of content


• Inline editing of content


• Sorting using Ajax


• Ajax form validation


• Drag to re-position content boxes if desired


• File Type Asset Builder, Upload Progress Bar


• jTip, if needed

Those are just a few off the top of my head, I will update that list as more come to me. Feel free to give me any suggestions or comments.

Posted by Nic Hubbard at 9:43 PM 0 comments

Tags: admin tools, ajax, asset builder, jquery

Here is an example of the newly added Ajax for loading in configuration options for each Announcement. This is much better than the previous method, which used display:none; to hide and show content. This was a problem because all code for each Announcement was loaded, but only shown when needed. This put a strain on the server, and added a wait time for users.

Also in this update is a visual change when the user updates attributes. Name, Contact, Email, and Status all change on the fly, and can be seen changing as you type.

View the Ajax video here 1.5 MB Quicktime

Posted by Nic Hubbard at 12:21 PM 0 comments

Tags: admin tools, ajax, mysource matrix

We had a problem. We needed to create Announcements, that needed to be part of a Type category, and also a Department. I had built this all using tags, but this quickly became a problem, as there is really no support for tagging in asset builders or the front end editing interfaces. Tags can be added and removed with triggers, and also passed a dynamic variable, but there still was no way to show the name of the tag that a specific asset had, and there way also no way to know if that tag had really been added or removed.

I decided that I needed to take a different approach to this. I looked into using the linking manager, which in the end turned out to be an amazing asset. Our users are first taken to an asset builder, there they have a choice of two create locations. The first is required, as it is the "Type" of Announcement, this will set which category it will go into. The second create location is not required, and is used to set a "Department". This will be used to show relevant Announcements on Department pages. The create locations for "Type" are just folder assets, while Standard Pages are being used as the create locations for the Department categories. (There is a reason for this which I will explain further down.)

Once the user fills out the required info on the page, they are taken to the Admin area for Announcements. One big challenge was how to show which "Type" groups, and which Departments each Announcement was linked under. For this I used two nested asset listings in the type format. The asset listing uses dynamic parameter, with a session variable of list_current_asset_id for "Replacement Managed Asset for the listing". The asset listing is then set to look up the tree 1 level, so that the listing will see all of the parent assets that it is linked to, on level 1. (This is why I used Folders for the "Type" category, and Standard Pages for departments, because I wanted to keep those two separate, so we let the two different asset listings separate the lists by linked asset type.) So when both of these asset listings are printed, they show under each category, which section they are linked under. Each Announcement can be linked under multiple Types and Departments. If the user wants to change they they just click the button which takes them to a link manager page, which allow them to add or remove links. When they return to the Announcement Admin, their changes are shown. We also show how many links each Announcement has in each section.

Posted by Nic Hubbard at 9:59 PM 0 comments

Tags: asset builder, asset listing, dynamic parameters, mysource matrix

Here is the first look at some of the admin interfaces that we have built for puc.edu. Most of these are used to distribute adding and editing of content. We chose to not use the _edit simple edit interface in most cases, as the limitation of only one layout per asset is the deal breaker for us.

When a user is logged in, they see the Admin Interface banner at the top of any page they are visiting. That way the have a drop down menu with quick links to any of the admin tools sections. They also have the option of changing their user details be clicking their username.

This is a look at our Announcement Hub Admin, which is where Announcements are edited, status updated, linking changed, deleted, previewed, etc. This lets us quickly make changes to many assets in a short period of time. Rather than taking the time to enter simple edit for each asset, this is much faster for us.

This is the interface for adding "Campus Emergency" mode to our PUC website. This was created in response to different campus emergencies across the country. When activated by a user with the correct permissions, it will change the design of the homepage. This new design will contain all the relevant information pertaining to a campus emergency.

This is our asset builder for creating new Users/Employees in our Matrix site. There is the option of creating Academic users or Non-Academic users, each of which will be linked into their selected section.

These images show our News Item builder. It uses two different asset builders. The first creates the news item into a dynamic create location. The second asset builder will upload an image under the newly create news item. It uses the news items ID passed as a GET variable to create the image under the correct news item.

This is just a few of our Admin Tools that we are currently using. I hope to add more soon to give you a better idea of how we are letting users manage assets.

Posted by Nic Hubbard at 4:49 PM 0 comments

Tags: admin tools, asset builder, mysource matrix, puc

I just thought I would let everyone know that I will be posting details and images of our admin tools that I have been building for the new PUC website. It is pretty cool some of the stuff we are able to do with triggers, and I am excited to share my experiences.

Stay tuned...

Posted by Nic Hubbard at 12:40 PM 0 comments

Tags: admin tools, mysource matrix, puc

Just wanted to make a quick post. I wanted to say that we are well under our way with the new website for Pacific Union College. It will be replacing the very old and dated site that can be found at puc.edu. We are using MySource Matrix as our CMS, which is the most amazing piece of software that I have ever used.

We started the project back in June of 2007. The scope of the project has unfortunately grown, but we are working to bring our focus back, and we plan to launch within the next few months.

I have been using MySource Matrix for almost 2 years now. When I started out we were using version 3.8 and are now running 3.16.6 which is quite a big step from when we were on 3.8. Matrix is a content management system (CMS) that uses PHP and PostgreSQL. It has changed the way that I look at content, and has changed much of the way we built and designed our site because of the amazing things that can be done with this product. I will be posting details of different features that I wanted to build, and how I accomplished those with Matrix. Some of them are quite interesting, stay tuned.

Posted by Nic Hubbard at 11:51 PM 0 comments

Tags: cms, mysource matrix, puc, squiz