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hints for the portal

Posted: Thu Nov 29, 2001 9:24 am
by tanis
I have been following the discussions about the portal and now I'm going to give yoy my 2 cents.

I've been developing both intranet and internet portals in the last few years and I've got a good grasp of what's involved in this kind of work.

The first thing you really need is a strong framework built upon core functions. Somebody already discussed which those functions are, but mainly they are authorization, personalization and modules functions.

One of my projects now includes a modules system that allows to drop a directory with sources (written following some specifics) into a "modules" directory and the system will auto-magically see them. All the modules are object oriented and built upon one or more classes.

Modules expose some "rendering" functions that are callable through a standard "portal" API call. You just tell the system which tag represents a slot in the template, what rendering function to call and an array of parameters for the function and you get your "portlet" deployed in that slot on the page.

It's really easier to use it than to write about it :D

Most of the templating work is done by the Smarty library which is the best templating library IMO. And it's got a quite good caching system that allows for good performances even on high traffic sites.

If you need a hand with all the modules stuff, I guess I can be of some help. Just let me know.

Posted: Thu Nov 29, 2001 4:12 pm
by Jay
i'd love to see your system.. is there anyway to see it?

Posted: Thu Nov 29, 2001 4:50 pm
by tanis
Today SourceForge is having some problems.. and I lost all the message I wrote you.. damn!

I'll summarize it again now.

I want to clean the code up a bit and package it in order for you to have a look at.
But the main problem is that all the portals made with it have been made for our customers and are under copyright, so I cannot give the code around.

I need to build a sample application to show you how it's used.

Please note that this framework is in no way similar to PHPNuke. There's no right & left blocks to move around. You've got to create your own page templates in HTML and put tags where you want "portlets" to go.

I'm going to add a page creation facility later on when one of our customers will ask for a full-featured CMS. ;)

Posted: Thu Nov 29, 2001 11:27 pm
by BartVB
Damn, what the hell is SF doing today?

Anyway, sounds good, Tanis!

At the moment we're mostly gathering basic ideas of how we can implement the modules. Some pseudo code would suffice I guess ;)

Just evaluating options at the moment.

But sounds interesting!
Would love to hear more ;)

Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2001 12:20 am
by Pit
ATM, sourceforge is as buggy as the underside of a flat rock.

Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2001 11:48 pm
by Hercules
tanis wrote: Today SourceForge is having some problems.. and I lost all the message I wrote you.. damn!

I'll summarize it again now.

I want to clean the code up a bit and package it in order for you to have a look at.
But the main problem is that all the portals made with it have been made for our customers and are under copyright, so I cannot give the code around.

I need to build a sample application to show you how it's used.

Please note that this framework is in no way similar to PHPNuke. There's no right & left blocks to move around. You've got to create your own page templates in HTML and put tags where you want "portlets" to go.

I'm going to add a page creation facility later on when one of our customers will ask for a full-featured CMS. ;)

I love the fact that you don't have to have left and right 'blocks'. I hate those damn things, they make the page so bland!!!

Posted: Mon Dec 03, 2001 2:51 pm
by tanis
I guess I'll be able to show you something at the end of this week. I'm using my own personal site as a model to replicate using my new framework.

Posted: Tue Dec 25, 2001 2:50 pm
by tanis
I finally got around releasing something and setting up the project on SourceForge.
You can have a look at my Portal API framework at https://sourceforge.net/projects/portalapi/ in order to check for some of the ideas I described before.

What I'm going to do next is to fix all the bugs that are still around and then write a simple module to transparently integrate phpBB within the framework.

Posted: Wed Dec 26, 2001 5:04 pm
by TC
veeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrry nice. :):):)

Posted: Wed Jan 09, 2002 10:30 am
by Des
I;ve got only one question - how to make it work? Is here any manual or sth out there? Thx for any info!

Posted: Wed Jan 09, 2002 10:47 am
by tanis
I know it lacks documentation :)

There's a README that explains in a very fast way how to setup the sample applications.
But if you need help, just mail me your questions and I'll help you.

Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2002 3:40 pm
by Brassfire
It would be nice to know ahead of time what to grab from the downloads page - all three of them? Just the api? Just the api and the admin?

I've downloaded the api, guess I'll find out...

Oh, and your sourceforge home page has a lot of header problems. But you probably know that already. :)

Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2002 4:25 pm
by TC
well, now that this has been bumped, how's the progress coming along, tanis? it's been almost two months since we've heard from you here.

thanks! :)

Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2002 4:28 pm
by tanis
You're right. I've got to put some work into the stuff at sourceforge.

If you want to have a look at an example of how to use Portal API, I suggest you to grab the 3 packages in a whole and install them this way:

Code: Select all

/site-+-/portal
      |
      +-/admin
And put the example site in your "site" dir and the admin and portal inside of it.

Let me know if you manage to let it work.
It's a bitch to setup at this time.

Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2002 4:31 pm
by tanis
TC: it's coming along pretty well. I've put a lot of time into this project and now it's giving its fruits ;)

My own site now is running with it as the backend.
If there's interest in it, I'm going to make a "demo" site for you all to play around with the admin.