e107 is a content management system written in php and using the popular open source mySQL database system for content storage. The purpose of this article is to provide an introduction to the e107 content management system and it's features.
Introduction
e107 is a content management system written in php and using the popular open source mySQL database system for content storage. It's completely free and totally customisable, and in constant development. It is an Open Source Project hosted at sourceforge.net. The purpose of this article is to provide an introduction to the e107 content management system and it's features.
The typical usage for a content management system (CMS) is to provide a framework to generate, administer, distribute, and process information for a web site. CMS applications remove the need for web designers to work at the pure, raw code level and focus the content, layout, and presentation of their dynamic web sites rather than the back-end code that drives the web site.
Administration of e107 CMS and the presentation of the content is based on PHP, Javascripts and other supporting scripts, image files etc., that are the physical files at your site. The content is stored in a MySQL database. This includes your membership data, menu items, news, articles, calendar entries and just about everything else that is not coded in a physical file at your site. You use Themes, Menus and other features such as News, Articles and Content pages to present the content in the way you want your website to look like, i.e. the layout of menus, colour, images, etc. The combination of physical files and the content in your database allows you to create and maintain your website.
At the heart of e107 is the core system that provides the base functionality to manage your site. The base e107 install package also includes a list of plugins to provide additional functionality. With the ability to add plugins, other developers have coded "add-ons" to enhance e107 functionality. You have a lot of flexibility to choose which features you want to use at your site.
e107 provides a number of standard themes you can use to change the look of your site. There are many other themes created by others who are quite willing to share, while some people prefer to customize their own for a unique look. You can preview a theme before enabling it for your site,and you can change the theme at will. Unless you plan to do a lot of customization, you can literally manage your site by using the features described in this article without writing a single line of code. Knowledge of PHP, javascript, or MySQL is not required.
Key Features
User Management
Membership
Using this feature is not mandatory, however, it allows you to invite visitors to signup, with an option to provide a "members only" website. Members can post chats, comments, forum postings, news articles, etc. Member profiles includes name, custom title (shows on forum postings), email address, birth date, popular online chat identity (ICQ, AIM, MSN), website, and extended fields that you can add if you want to capture more user information.
You may allow users to upload a photo or avatar, it will be displayed with their profile. You have the option to send email notifications to new registrants to validate their email address and advise them to activate their accounts. You can choose to hide passwords in the email notifications for account activation. You can also choose to allow anonymous postings at your site.
User and user classes
You can assign user classes to control what area of your site that each user class has access to. You can make certain users adminstrators with selective permissions, e.g. forum moderator. You can also allow other administrators to manage user classes.
Banlist
Not entirely "bullet proof", of course, but you can decide who you want to ban from your site, by registered user name, or ip address of any visitor. You can also ban specific email addresses from registering at your site.
