# New ajaxy CMS on Rails: adminpages **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [March 8, 2006, 7:28pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/new-ajaxy-cms-on-rails-adminpages/78596 "2006-03-08T19:28:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![msojka](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/b5a626/32.png) [@msojka](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/msojka)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2006, 7:28pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/new-ajaxy-cms-on-rails-adminpages/78596/1 "2006-03-08T19:28:02Z")
hey, i’ve created a basic content management system using rails and scriptaculous. I posted a first version last week, but I heavily extended it since then. Features: Pages are arranged in a sortable tree (sortable by drag and drop) Pages have “nice” URLS (no /index?articleid=97361496 or something) Cacheing on page basis every page has a layout with a number of columns page elements can be put into the columns by drag and drop (sortable lists) Each page element has its own view and controller. Up to now I have created Title, raw HTML, rich text editor and rails component, but adding your own elements should be easy You can check it out under [http://adminpages.flowdev.de](http://adminpages.flowdev.de) Source: [http://www.flowdev.de/adminpages\_0.2.tar.gz](http://www.flowdev.de/adminpages_0.2.tar.gz) Of course there are many rough edges, but come on, second version! And yes, it is BSD licensed. I would love it if any of you are interested in joining me in the development. Mail me, then I will put it on rubyforge Cheers, Martin (Username wooyay on #rubyonrails) ---
**Author:** ![msojka](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/b5a626/32.png) [@msojka](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/msojka)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2006, 11:46pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/new-ajaxy-cms-on-rails-adminpages/78596/2 "2006-03-08T23:46:34Z")
Martin S. wrote: > hey, i’ve created a basic content management system using rails and > scriptaculous. I posted a first version last week, but I heavily > extended it since then. > > Features: > Pages are arranged in a sortable tree (sortable by drag and drop) > Pages have “nice” URLS (no /index?articleid=97361496 or something) > Cacheing on page basis > every page has a layout with a number of columns > page elements can be put into the columns by drag and drop (sortable > lists) > Each page element has its own view and controller. Up to now I have > created Title, raw HTML, rich text editor and rails component, but > adding your own elements should be easy > > You can check it out under [http://adminpages.flowdev.de](http://adminpages.flowdev.de) That looks quite usable, nice interface! I will take a look at the code. Stan ---
**Author:** ![msojka](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/b5a626/32.png) [@msojka](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/msojka)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 3:25am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/new-ajaxy-cms-on-rails-adminpages/78596/3 "2006-03-09T03:25:48Z")
Hello Martin, Very nice work on what you have so far - it’s amazing at what can be accomplished with little added code with Rails, still gets me every time… Best I get to the point eh? What I wanted to remind you of is to post on the Rails Wiki - Your work with this, if you haven’t already. I just looked and hope that I didn’t somehow miss it. [http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/Ruby+on+Rails+based+CMS](http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/Ruby+on+Rails+based+CMS) ---
**Author:** ![msojka](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/b5a626/32.png) [@msojka](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/msojka)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 10:29am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/new-ajaxy-cms-on-rails-adminpages/78596/4 "2006-03-09T10:29:14Z")
It is very nice and useful too. Only problem I have is this: I created a simple table for news. I also created the controller and views using scaffold. But when I try to “add render component” I get an error that controller news with action list does not exit. Martin S. wrote: > lists) > And yes, it is BSD licensed. I would love it if any of you are > interested in joining me in the development. Mail me, then I will put it > on rubyforge > > Cheers, > Martin (Username wooyay on #rubyonrails) – Alexander A. Information Systems Department Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Chania Tel.: +30 28210 35000 718 Email: removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid ---
**Author:** ![msojka](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/b5a626/32.png) [@msojka](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/msojka)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 1:31pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/new-ajaxy-cms-on-rails-adminpages/78596/5 "2006-03-09T13:31:31Z")
Joe ManFoo wrote: > Hello Martin, > > Very nice work on what you have so far - it’s amazing at what can be > accomplished with little added code with Rails, still gets me every > time… > > Best I get to the point eh? What I wanted to remind you of is to post > on > the Rails Wiki - Your work with this, if you haven’t already. I just > looked > and hope that I didn’t somehow miss it. > > [http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/Ruby+on+Rails+based+CMS](http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/Ruby+on+Rails+based+CMS) Hi Joe, yes, I will add it as soon as I have uploaded it to RubyForge. Alexander, Yes, it was a typo. In page\_elements\_controller, change render\_component\_to\_string to render\_component\_as\_string. I did some other minor changes, you can get the newest package at [http://www.flowdev.de/adminpages\_0.2.1.tar.gz](http://www.flowdev.de/adminpages_0.2.1.tar.gz) ---
**Author:** ![msojka](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/b5a626/32.png) [@msojka](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/msojka)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 1:11am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/new-ajaxy-cms-on-rails-adminpages/78596/6 "2006-03-10T01:11:47Z")
Martin S. wrote: > hey, i’ve created a basic content management system using rails and > scriptaculous. I posted a first version last week, but I heavily > extended it since then. > > Features: > Pages are arranged in a sortable tree (sortable by drag and drop) > Pages have “nice” URLS (no /index?articleid=97361496 or something) > Cacheing on page basis > every page has a layout with a number of columns > page elements can be put into the columns by drag and drop (sortable > lists) > Each page element has its own view and controller. Up to now I have > created Title, raw HTML, rich text editor and rails component, but > adding your own elements should be easy > > You can check it out under [http://adminpages.flowdev.de](http://adminpages.flowdev.de) > > Source: [http://www.flowdev.de/adminpages\_0.2.tar.gz](http://www.flowdev.de/adminpages_0.2.tar.gz) > > Of course there are many rough edges, but come on, second version! > > And yes, it is BSD licensed. I would love it if any of you are > interested in joining me in the development. Mail me, then I will put it > on rubyforge > > Cheers, > Martin (Username wooyay on #rubyonrails) I took a look at your cms. It would be great if there was a way to define the relative position of the columns in the editor. Is that possible? ---
**Author:** ![msojka](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/b5a626/32.png) [@msojka](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/msojka)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 3:04am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/new-ajaxy-cms-on-rails-adminpages/78596/7 "2006-03-10T03:04:40Z")
Looks pretty interesting - but I could use a couple sentences worth of documentation. A very short README file would do. I downloaded the tar file, created a mysql database, loaded the datamodel, and started Webrick. Then I couldn’t find any pages. After looking at your demo site, I deduced that I need /page/$STUB to find the pages I see in the database. That gives me the “show” part. But how do I find the admin pages to do editing? On your demo site, that’s what you get at /. Clearly that isn’t what you want on a real site, but reading routes.rb and poking around in app/views/ didn’t enlighten me about where to find the login and admin pages. Thanks, ---
**Author:** ![msojka](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/b5a626/32.png) [@msojka](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/msojka)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 1:20pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/new-ajaxy-cms-on-rails-adminpages/78596/8 "2006-03-10T13:20:12Z")
Cynthia K. wrote: > Looks pretty interesting - but I could use a couple sentences worth of > documentation. A very short README file would do. I downloaded the tar > file, > created a mysql database, loaded the datamodel, and started Webrick. > Then I > couldn’t find any pages. After looking at your demo site, I deduced that > I > need /page/$STUB to find the pages I see in the database. That gives me > the > “show” part. But how do I find the admin pages to do editing? On your > demo > site, that’s what you get at /. Clearly that isn’t what you want on a > real > site, but reading routes.rb and poking around in app/views/ didn’t > enlighten > me about where to find the login and admin pages. Thanks, Hi Cynthia, you probably downloaded the 0.2 version, I changed the routes.rb in the 0.2.1 version. It now looks like this: ActionController::Routing::Routes.draw do |map| map.connect “#{ADMIN\_PAGE\_DIR}/\*name”, :controller=\>‘view\_pages’, :action=\>'show\_page ’ map.connect ‘’, :controller =\> “admin\_pages”, :action=\>“edit\_pages” map.connect ‘:controller/service.wsdl’, :action =\> ‘wsdl’ map.connect ‘:controller/:action/:id’ end You are right, there is no documentation yet, but that will be my next step. I just received my Rubyforge account for the project, I will upload everything to the CVS later in the day. First I have to earn me some money 🙂 Martin ---
**Author:** ![msojka](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/b5a626/32.png) [@msojka](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/msojka)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2006, 5:27pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/new-ajaxy-cms-on-rails-adminpages/78596/9 "2006-03-11T17:27:51Z")
OK, I have uploaded the project files to RubyForge. The project page is [http://rubyforge.org/projects/adminpages/](http://rubyforge.org/projects/adminpages/) So if you are interested in joining the project, drop me a note and I can add you as a developer. The demo is still running at [http://adminpages.flowdev.de/](http://adminpages.flowdev.de/) . What is coming next: Better integration with FCKeditor (upload images) RMagick integration - an element type image better cache clearing algorithm (at the moment the whole cache is cleared every time the page tree changes) A way to add custom data fields to page layouts (like header image or meta keywords or whatever) I added a small readme. This is the text: * * * Adminpages Readme Project description: A content management system on Rails. Use it to administer design-heavy sites in a user-friendly way. Features: Manipulate pages and content with Drag n Drop, “Nice” URLs, Caching, FCKEditor, multiple columns per page, custom content types Aims of the project: - Create a system that can be used to add pages to a web site and add content to these pages. - The interface should be usable by non-technical persons. - Each page has a page layout. The page layout defines the content of the page, for example the number of columns, a header image and a page title. For each con tent element, the page edit mask should provide a way to change this element. The page layouts should be editable through the web mask, but maybe not by the end user - Integrate a rich text editor. At the moment there is a content element which uses FCKEditor, but there is no way to upload images yet. - Should work under Mozilla FireFox and IE6. Safari and Opera are a problem, because there are no rich text editors that support these browsers. NOT aims of the project: - change templates over the web interface. The adminpages interface is only for end users, not for designers or programmers - add dynamic elements like comments or polls. Stuff like that can be integrated by adding a content element “render\_component”, which can be used to integrate dynamic stuff. - Backwards-compability to ancient browser versions INSTALLING Create a new mysql database Import adminpages/db/development.sql to that database copy adminpages/config/database.yml.default to adminpages/config/database.yml and change the content Get the FCKEditor from [WYSIWYG HTML Editor with Collaborative Rich Text Editing](http://www.fckeditor.net/download/) Uncompress the editor to adminpages/public. You should have a folder adminpages/public/FCKeditor Edit the file adminpages/config/routes.rb to define the URL that will be used to access the pages. Default is /pages/. !!!Watch out:!!! Don’t mount the pages to the root of the web server or to an existing folder. The cache clearing algorithm would delete any content of these folders!!! Starting the application: like any other rails app. * * *