CMFPublicator Example

The CMFPublicator tool has some examples of portlets to help you build your own portlets. Follow the ideas used in the portlets examples, customize them and do your own boxes.

CMFPublicator provide powerfull mechanisms to build portlets with all the needed resources as news, documents, articles, etc., and banners management too.

All portlets examples are placed in portal_skins/publicator/publicator_examples path where you can customize them. The existing examples are:

• news_slot: A clone of news_slot of Plone 1, adapted to CMFPublicator mechanisms.
• portlet_news: A clone of portlet_news of Plone 2, adapted to CMFPublicator mechanisms.
• portlet_example: Generic portlet template based on portlet_news with other ideas to CMFPublicator use.
• portlet_documents: Advanced portlet template with image embeded in first item.
• portlet_banners: Portlet template in which is possible control the site banners.

All the basic ideas are explaned in these presented templates, if you want more information, see Stored Items help page to obtain other metadata properties, or see Special Uses help page to get more non-default CMF metadatas.

To customize the "news" template follow these steps:

Go to portal_publicator and click the Configuration tab, fill in the follow fields:

• Id: news
• Name: News
• Content type: News Item

Leave the fields as default, then click Add buttom. Now, you have a publication box named news. Go to portal_skins/publicator/publicator_examples and cutomize news_slot if you use Plone 1 or portlet_news if you use Plone 2. If you use pure CMF maybe raise errors (you can correct them!). :-P

Go to Properties tab from the root site and check if this customized template has been called in left_slots or right_slots, i.e. here/news_slot/macros/newsBox or here/portlet_news/macros/portlet. Now you can select the news items clicking on the publications user personal bar.

To customize the "banners" template follow these steps:

Build a new publication box with the fields:

• Id: banners
• Name: Banners
• Number of items: 3
• Content type: Link
• With image?: Checked
• Images folder URL: banners (make this folder in the site root and put images and links)

Customize the portlet_banners and call it in left_slots or right_slots and go to publications link to select your links with the respective images.

To customize the "documents" template follow these steps:

Build a new publication box with the fields:

• Id: documents
• Name: Documents
• Content type: Document
• With image?: Checked
• Images folder URL: images (make this folder in the site root and put images)

Customize the portlet_documents and call it in left_slots or right_slots and go to publications link to select your published documents with the respective images.

To customize you own portlet based in the "example" template follow these steps:

Build a new publication box with the fields:

• Id: your_box_id
• Name: Your box name
• Content type: Select your content type
• Icon URL: relative_url_your_icon
• Box width: 200px
• With image?: Checked
• Images folder URL: your_images_folder

Customize the portlet_example and rename it i.e. portlet_name_you_like. In this template, in tal:define="box_id string:example; change example by your_box_id. Call it in left_slots or right_slots and go to publications link to select your published items with the respective images. This template has been build to CMF too (so free bugs).

--eof