Pages, layouts, navigation, variables and redirects in the Total.js CMS

CMS · cms@8071e48 cmspageslayoutsnavigationredirectsvariablessitemap

The CMS keeps the HTML of every layout and page as a file and its data (address, title, layout...) in the metadata of the site. A request to the public site finds a page by its address and renders it inside its layout.

Layouts

A layout is a full HTML document. The element with id="CMS" marks the place where the content of the page goes:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
	<meta charset="utf-8">
</head>
<body>
	<header>$SITE</header>
	<div id="CMS"></div>
	<footer>@{year}</footer>
</body>
</html>

Layouts/save takes name, icon, color, html and a list of scripts that are added to every page of the layout. In the HTML, $NAME is replaced by the variable of that name (see below) and @{year} by the current year.

Pages

A page has a name, a layoutid (required), an address url, and optional title, description, keywords, language, parentid, icon, color and the flags disabled, auth, pinned and nocache. Its HTML (saved with pages_save_html) is what goes inside the id="CMS" element.

If you leave url empty the CMS makes one from the name: Hello World becomes /hello-world/, and under a parent page the address starts with the address of the parent.
The public site serves a page when its url equals the requested address, it is not disabled and its language, when set, equals the language of the request.
The response gets <title> (the title, or the name, followed by the name of the site for every page except /), the description and the keywords, a script that counts the visits (/visitors.js) and the style of the widgets that the page uses.
auth pages are served only to a signed-in visitor. The CMS asks your code who the visitor is: define FUNC.auth = function($) { ... } (for example in a file of definitions/) and call $.success(user). Without that function everybody is anonymous and an auth page answers 404.
A disabled page, an unknown address and a page of another language answer 404. The sitemap /sitemap.xml lists the pages that are not disabled.

Variables

The plugin Variables keeps a list of NAME: value pairs (Variables|save with vars). Any $NAME in a layout or a page becomes its value when the page is served, which is useful for a phone number, a company name or a link that appears in many places. An unknown $NAME stays as written.

A navigation is a menu described in the admin (a name and a tree of links with name, url, title, icon, color, target, hidden, highlight and children) and drawn by your layout with a template written with Tangular. Put a script in the layout:

<nav>
	<script type="text/navigation" name="main">
		{{ foreach m in value.children }}
			<a href="{{ m.url }}"{{ if m.url === value.url }} class="on"{{ fi }}>{{ m.name }}</a>
		{{ end }}
	</script>
</nav>

When the layout is saved, a navigation called main is created if it does not exist; then edit its links in the plugin Navigation. In the template, value.children is the list of visible links, value.url is the address being served. Give the script a name; with only an id the compiler accepts it but saving the layout does not answer.

There is also <script type="text/breadcrumb"> for the trail of parent pages.

Redirects

A redirect has a url, a target and permanent. The public site checks the redirects before the pages: /old/ answered with the page of /about/ when its target was /about/.

Cache

Compiled pages are cached; saving a page, layout, widget or variable clears what depends on it, and a service that runs every two minutes also clears the compiled views.