CMpro Content Management Professional was derived from the well-known Subjects module written by Jaroslaw Gilewski and then modified by EasyWeb Team, but it differs from it in many aspects and features.
This work comes from my experience (with the collaboration of my colleague Lucia Papini) working for Centro Servizi Informatici dell'Ateneo Fiorentino (Università degli Studi di Firenze) in the context of a project aimed to offer a unified and standard site format for all the research and teaching sections of the university, with a particular interest in accessibility, usability and easy administration.
We needed a module to manage a huge amount of web pages and other documents organized in a tree-like fashion. Our first choice was Subjects, but very soon we found that it had many more features than we needed but lacked many others that we do need.
Massimiliano Tiraboschi aka TiMax helped us with optimization, testing, permissions and in modifying the MDMenus module to work with CMpro. Sjahrazad aka sjah added Channel features and included CMpro as core module in MD Channel distribution package.
Consequently, CMpro is the result of a lot of development work and "pruning"; it is now very different from the original module that was the inspiration for it.
All elements of CMpro (generated pages, administration forms and block) verify both HTML 4.0 test N and level A of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 by W3C.
Installation
CMpro Module Installation
ATTENTION, PLEASE!
Automatic upgrade from Subjects module is possible only from release 2.02 (present in distribution 1.07 of MDPro).
That upgrade does preserve categories and reviews in their respective database tables, but they are no longer taken into consideration by the new module.
Automatic upgrade has not been tested with Oracle databases.
Please read upgrade procedure carefully.
First installation
Unzip compressed file in the main directory of your site. All the files will be stored into modules directory, with exception of includes/search/cmpro.php.
Enter "Administration - Modules" and click on "Regenerate".
Locate CMpro and click on "Initialize” and then "Activate".
In UNIX (and other 'Nix systems), verify that directory /upload/cmp (or other directory used to store static files) has write and execute permission by the user that runs the web server (or set all permission to everybody with chmod -R 777). If MDPro has already been installed everything is probably correctly set.
Upgrade from CMpro 1.0 or 1.1
Backup your database and directory modules/CMpro.
Unzip compressed file in the main directory of your site. All the files will be stored into modules directory, with exception of includes/search/cmpro.php, overwriting their previus versions.
In "Administration - Modules" click on "Regenerate".
Find CMpro and click on "Update" and then "Activate".
ATTENTION: check your previous permissions, because they are completely changed (and improved).
Upgrade from Subjects 2.02
Backup your database and directory modules/Subjects.
Enter "Administration - Blocks" and delete all Subjects' blocks previously created.
Unzip compressed file in the main directory of your site. All the files will be stored into modules directory, with exception of includes/search/cmpro.php
In modules/CMpro rename file pninit.php as pninit_old.php and then rename file pninit_upgrade_subjects.php as pninit.php.
In "Administration - Modules" click on "Regenerate".
Find CMpro and click on "Initialize" and then "Activate".
In modules/CMpro rename file pninit.php as pninit_upgrade_subjects.php and pninit_old.php as pninit.php.
If you use extended admin, in "Administration - Edit admin" assign CMpro to the section you prefer (usually "Contents").
In "Administration - Blocks" you can now create your CMpro's blocks in substitution of the previously deleted Subjects' blocks.
In "Administration - Modules" find Subjects and click on "Deactivate"
Delete directory modules/Subjects, but BE SHURE it doesn't contain important files; if that is the case, store them in the right new location (for example upload/cmp or upload/sub).
In "Administration - Modules" find Subjects and click on"Remove".
In UNIX, verify that directory upload/cmp (or other directory used to store static files as upload/sub) has write and execute permission by the user that runs the web server (or set all permission to everybody with chmod -R 777).
In "Administration - CMpro - Module configuration" verify that "Path relative to webserver-root" is correctly set.
Database tables containing the old Categories and Reviews (yipically md_subcategories e md_subreviews) are still present, but they will not be used anymore. You can manually delee them in the database, but BE SHURE they don't contain important informations.
Quick start
Quick start
What you have to know about CMpro
CMpro works with two kind of objects: Subjects and Pages.
Subjects are just containers of Pages and have no content.
Pages host the documents proper, with their content, author name and many other attributes that you can choose to insert or not.
Each Subject can have as many Pages as you wish, but no sub-Subjects.
Each Page can have as many children Pages as you wish and each of these childrend can have children pages of its own. The resulting "tree" can be wide and deep as you wish.
Your first Subject with CMpro
After having installed CMpro, go to the addreess http://www.your_site/index.php?module=CMpro&type=admin.
As you can se, there are no Subjects, but a form called "Add a new subject".
Insert a title in the field Title (for instance: "First subject") and click on the Add subject button.
You will find yourself in a page identical to the previous one, but now displaying a table with just one row describing the Subject you have just created.
Your first page with CMpro
In the column called Actions of the Subjects table, click on the rightmost icon that will take you to the Pages section for this Subject.
You will find yourself in a page telling you that there are no Pages for this Subject, but displaying a form to insert a new Page.
Insert a title in the field Title (for instance: "First page"); write some text in the Content field, if you wish, and then click on the Add page button.
You will find yourself in a page identical to the previous one, but displaying a table with the title and some attributes of the Page that you have just created.
Your first CMpro block
Go in Administration -> Settings -> Blocks and click on the New block link.
In the form give a name to the new block (for instance: "First CMpro block"), chose "CMpro/Content management menu" in the Block compbo box. Choose the block Position and Language and then click on the Update button.
You will find yourself in a form where you can specify the properties of the new CMpro block. In this example choose the Vertical - with pages radio button and click on the Update button.
Enjoy your work
Go to your home page and find the block you have just inserted: it will display the links to the Subject and the Page that you have created; Click on them to examine their contents.
Congratulations, you have entered the CMpro world!