Typo3 Content Management System

Typo3 Content Management System College of Natural and Social Sciences Website Abstract In our modern society, there is always a need to communicate and do things quickly through the use of a computer. Having the ability to create static and dynamic websites is one of the main components that the TYPO3 Content Management System offers. Content Management Systems are growing in popularity. The TYPO3 Content Management System allows non-programmers to create their own web sites with little to no problem. Many companies and organizations in the industry are adapting to this new system since it saves them time and a considerable amount of money. Sophisticated Content Management Systems such as TYPO3 will possibly take over the computer industry in the near future. Let me show you how valuable it is by discussing and guiding you through how I created the College of Natural of Social Sciences Website. 1.0 Introduction Content Management Systems (CMS) will become critical to future companies and organizations as they will not have to rely on investing money into a website of their own. TYPO3 is a free open source content management system for enterprise purposes on the web and in intranets. It is fully flexible, extendable and it features set of ready- made interfaces, functions, and modules.TYPO3 web applications are programmed in PHP, but note that it is not an application in the usual sense (Windows or Linux). The TYPO3 installation on a web server including PHP helps you work through a web browser such as Internet Explorer or Mozilla. There are certain requirements to run TYPO3 successfully for both server and client (user) that must be met. (See - System Requirements) The TYPO3 Content Management System helps save time. An administrator has the ability to create, modify, delete, and upload anything in the webpage. A new change to the website can take place at a moment instance. The administrator has complete control of specifying the exact date and time he or she will like a change to take place. (i.e. post up a new page or any modification of the site they may wish to implement, user permissions, etc.) You can do virtually anything you want to do on the web with TYPO3. (See - Features, Modules)

TYPO3 Content Management System 1 College of Natural and Social Sciences 2.0 Technological Background

PHP4 / MySQL

Fast PHP4 scripting language combined with MySQL. A basic TYPO3 installation can be used with most ISP's today.

Sound code base

Strict project guidelines, naming convention policies and a full overview of system globals provide a clean code base. All relevant source code is encapsulated in classes which can all easily be extended by a PHP-programmer.

Relational Database

Storage of content is done in a very fast relational database. Check out www.MySQL.org for benchmark information.

Security

Secure file downloads can be configured. Password submission and storage (backend) is md5-encrypted. IP-filtering can be applied for intranets, extranets and administration sections. Multi-state login-notification by email provides effective “burglar alarm”. True encryption of data-transfer available through standard web server Secure Socket Layer (SSL).

3.0 System Architecture – (Requirements)

Operating System: Unix (i.e. Linux), Windows or Mac

Web server: Web server Apache, IIS

Middleware: PHP4

Database, core system: MySQL

Database, user extensions: Support for Oracle, MS-SQL, ODBC, LDAP - virtually any external data source. Achieved through PHP4.

Hardware: Web server setup, including at least 256 MB Ram.

Client (user):Recommended: Internet Explorer 5+ on Windows.

Required: Any graphical browser on OS

Hardware: Modern computer

TYPO3 Content Management System 2 College of Natural and Social Sciences 4.0 Features

Users (content authors)

Creator of content who is in charge of public relations, you are in marketing, a journalist, an author, a secretary, etc. Tasks: writing articles, providing images and multimedia content formats like video and sound files. Produce and manage what the website will have to offer to the audience.

Authoring

Platform independent, publish everywhere: The website can be edited through any computer connected to the internet with a current web browser - wherever you are, no other software needed.

WYSIWYG editing

A Rich Text Editor (RTE) allows users to format text, insert images and create internal and external links just like in Word or any other word processor. Currently, only accessible through Microsoft Internet Explorer on Windows PC's. (All other browsers do not support RTE yet, but otherwise work fine)

Content Management:

All kinds of content types are to be added through easy to understand forms. No technical limit to the amount of items accommodated by the content structure per site, per category or per page.

Page tree structure

Pages are arranged in a clear hierarchic tree structure well known by any computer user from the local computer file system with folders and files.

File and media management

The internal file manager allows users to upload, rename, copy, move, delete and even edit files online. Backend users and groups can be assigned private home-directories on the server. Any file path on the server - internally or reachable from the internet - can be “mounted” in TYPO3.

Multiple Page Editing

TYPO3 Content Management System 3 College of Natural and Social Sciences Any level of pages can be loaded into an editing form specifying parameters like name, date online/offline, etc. to be edited at the same time!

Preview content online

Hidden, time- or access restricted content can be easily previewed in its real environment.

Personalization

Through PHP, user logins and the unique speed-optimized integration of dynamic content, you can personalize the web experience for the visitors to the website.

Plugins

Many default plug-INS are available such as forums, calendars, guest books, sitemaps, banner-controls, email-forms, polls, ratings, faqs, glossaries, news, and online shop systems. The list of user contributed "install-in-one-click" plug-ins is growing daily in the online extension repository.

Direct Mail module / Newsletter system

A Direct Mail system is able to send highly personalized emails to newsletter subscribes. A unique filtering technology allows a batch of thousands of rich media emails to be customized in one billion combinations and tagged with personal recipient information. Response-tracking gives a detailed image of campaign success.

Indexed search engine

Indexed full text search in TYPO3 pages and external media files like TXT, HTML, MS Word and PDF-files. Includes advanced options for searching only parts of a website and intelligent relevance rated display of results. Direct search in SQL database tables is of course possible as well.

5.0 Administrators

Creates users, assigns responsibilities, creates and supervises workflows. You are also in charge of the web server and the technical infrastructure and security.

Detailed user management & customization

Ready-to-run defaults combined with an extreme level of customizing options (defined in TypoScript syntax) provide the possibility to fine tune the backend authoring environment for every user or whole groups and subgroups.

TYPO3 Content Management System 4 College of Natural and Social Sciences Permission control.

Access control of pages is available on user, owner and group scheme (similar to UNIX). Additional security provided by locking users to certain mount points in the page tree.

User management and overview

Authorize backend users and groups to access and edit only certain objects and modules in certain sections of the website. Simple or complex roles can be assigned to users. An overview tool makes it easy to analyze the permissions of large amounts of users. The system scales from a handful to thousands of users and groups with ease.

Page view statistics

Statistics are available ranging from simple internal hit-counters to advanced analysis of standard or extended log files written out by TYPO3. Furthermore, page impressions made by previews from staff members can be excluded, so only true page hits from customers are written to log files: You get a precise picture of your success on the web.

Workflow engine

A straight line workflow engine makes production and approval of content a breeze in a workgroup of authors, editors and reviewers.

Task Center for workgroup collaboration

A powerful Task Center provides administrators, authors and editors with a To-Do list, messaging system, notepad, and shortcuts to recently processed objects.

Logging

All backend activities are logged and changes can be monitored, tracked and rolled back. This prevents accidental loss of information.

Version control and unlimited undo's

Sub-version control - called “history” - allows unlimited levels of undo for all objects. Also, TYPO3 offers "difference" analysis between current and previous states of an object allows reviewers or editors to quickly identify changes in objects through the workflow process.

Raw database access

TYPO3 acts like an advanced database manager with a high-level front-end for manipulating database content. Another popular PHP-application, the database manager phpMyAdmin, has been integrated into TYPO3 and preconfigured with the current

TYPO3 Content Management System 5 College of Natural and Social Sciences database. TYPO3 automatically handles the access to phpMyAdmin. With phpMyAdmin administrators, are allowed to do really low level operation of the database.

Advanced multilevel caching

Demanding processes such as generation of menus and image scaling is done only once due to the caching capabilities of TYPO3. Calculations are made on the first request and subsequently served from the internal cache.

Staging System included

TYPO3 can be configured to be used in a Live-/Production Server Environment dividing the Production Server from the Web server for maximum security and web server performance.

6.0 Developers Initial creators of the website and the TYPO3 wizards. Typically, this task is performed by a web agency that designs, plans and implements the TYPO3 solution. You expect powerful creation and management of the website on a metalevel and complete division of content and structure/design.

TypoSript Meta Language

TYPO3 has an advanced template technology based on its own configuration language, TypoScript, which is parsed by the system to build the actual pages, including graphical menus, headers and more.

Cascading Templates

TypoScript is arranged in templates in the built-in editor (complete with online reference and debug tool) and provides a powerful possibility to control and design the complete site on all levels from a meta-perspective, instead of configuration on page-level. Templates can be cascaded and allow overriding of values on further levels. Standard TypoScript templates allow easy entry by providing working out-of-the-box configurations.

Html-Templates

Other template types are HTML-files for swift configuration of the display of news, a message board, etc. HTML-Templates can also be used for the complete site.

Template analysis tools

Along with the TypoScript engine comes a dedicated module for template creation, featuring a Constant Editor for general design options and an Object Browser for a

TYPO3 Content Management System 6 College of Natural and Social Sciences precise look into the TypoScript object hierarchy. A Template Analyzer provides an overview of the nested order of included templates.

Reduced redesign times

Redesign times are seriously reduced - central changes in templates affects whole sections of the website at once. Last-minute changes are easily incorporated due to the flexible technology and server side image creation/manipulation.

Extension kickstarter wizard

The extension wizard kickstarts the making of plug-ins and guides the developer to follow the recommended guidelines for making plug-ins and modules. This ensures adherence to the TYPO3 architecture standards allows for easy updates by dividing core and extension files. It will even help you to easily share your work with the friendly TYPO3 developer community.

Own PHP4 scripts

It is still possible to have every imaginable connection to external data sources by integrating your own PHP-scripts through TYPO3. Needing to display an XML newsfeed, or querying a database. If it's not already available in the extension repository, you can make it yourself using this world standard web scripting language.

Multimedia integration

Integration of multimedia elements like video, audio, flash animations, Java applets etc. Custom HTML code can be included easily.

Metatag content

Meta data such as description and keywords can be entered generally for a template and for individual pages. Further meta data can easily be applied through custom extensions

Output formats

Template engine allows for browser detection, printable versions, versions for PDAs etc., use of CSS stylesheets, WML for mobile phones, XML for data exchange, SGML for print. Any output format can be generated by PHP-extensions.

7.0 Modules

Page content

TYPO3 Content Management System 7 College of Natural and Social Sciences Allows you to create and edit web pages, view page hit statistics, manage different languages and columns of content per page and access special page contents like guest books and shopping items.

View page

Let’s you view current page and lets you edit the content directly.

List of database-records

Provides low level access to records appearing on a page.

Page related information, (i.e. hit statistics, change log, record counts) Focuses on statistic information about pages. This includes statistics of page hits and a change log allowing browsing of page history changes. An overview of the number of records on each page as well as page settings presented in a classic tree structure is provided.

Page editing permissions

Allows setting page permissions and controlling backend user access to pages. You can assign a user and a group as owners of a page and set access permissions for each.

Advanced functions

General export and import functions in addition to specialized wizards enabling page sorting and batch creating of pages.

Template tools

Manage templates which give the website an appealing look on the front-end. It provides specialized features like an object browser, a constant editor and raw editing facilities.

Task Center with overviews, messages, To-Do lists

The task center provides access to your internal To-Do list, messages, Quick-note, actions etc. It also provides shortcuts to your available front-end modules and most recently edited pages. The Task Center is where you keep track of your daily tasks and workflows.

Database integrity check

Here you can check the integrity of the database tables configured by the $TCA. For instance all records must belong to a page record. In addition the existence of uploaded files attached to records (normally residing in uploads/* folders) are verified as well. You can also get a view of the total pagetree including deleted pages. Finally you've got

TYPO3 Content Management System 8 College of Natural and Social Sciences access to a global database search facility.

Install Tool

Provides a simple link to the Install Tool. Notice the Install Tool (in typo3/install/) must be enabled.

Viewing log

Allows you access to the full backend change log in TYPO3.

phpMyAdmin Database administration

This allows ground level access to the database tables. The access to phpMyAdmin is authenticated through TYPO3. But this is the only interference whatsoever - phpMyAdmin allows you to modify whatever you wish.

TYPO3 Content Management System 9 College of Natural and Social Sciences 8.0 User Manual (Modules) Administration Log-in Page

Edit Page TYPO3 Content Management System 10 College of Natural and Social Sciences Show Page

TYPO3 Content Management System 11 College of Natural and Social Sciences TYPO3 Content Management System 12 College of Natural and Social Sciences List Database Records

TYPO3 Content Management System 13 College of Natural and Social Sciences Access

TYPO3 Content Management System 14 College of Natural and Social Sciences Functions

TYPO3 Content Management System 15 College of Natural and Social Sciences Template

TYPO3 Content Management System 16 College of Natural and Social Sciences Task Center

TYPO3 Content Management System 17 College of Natural and Social Sciences Db Check

TYPO3 Content Management System 18 College of Natural and Social Sciences Log

TYPO3 Content Management System 19 College of Natural and Social Sciences PhpMyAdmin

TYPO3 Content Management System 20 College of Natural and Social Sciences 9.0 User Manual (College of Natural and Social Sciences Website)

TYPO3 Content Management System 21 College of Natural and Social Sciences Template (Create Template)

Template (Constant Editor)

Template (Info/Modify)

TYPO3 Content Management System 22 College of Natural and Social Sciences Template (Header Layout)

Main Page (Menu Link and Pages)

TYPO3 Content Management System 23 College of Natural and Social Sciences Main Page (Page Content Control Panel)

College of Natural and Social Sciences Main Page

TYPO3 Content Management System 24 College of Natural and Social Sciences College of Natural and Social Sciences Main Page Layout

College News Page

TYPO3 Content Management System 25 College of Natural and Social Sciences College News Page Layout

Prospective Students Page

TYPO3 Content Management System 26 College of Natural and Social Sciences Prospective Students Page Layout

Research Programs Page

TYPO3 Content Management System 27 College of Natural and Social Sciences Research Programs Page Layout

Dean’s Office Page

TYPO3 Content Management System 28 College of Natural and Social Sciences Dean’s Office Page Layout

Student Advisement Page

TYPO3 Content Management System 29 College of Natural and Social Sciences Student Advisement Page Layout

Student Advisement Deadlines Page

TYPO3 Content Management System 30 College of Natural and Social Sciences Student Advisement Deadlines Page Layout

Campus Directory Page

TYPO3 Content Management System 31 College of Natural and Social Sciences Campus Directory Page Layout

Mathematics Department Page

TYPO3 Content Management System 32 College of Natural and Social Sciences Mathematics Department Page Layout

Mathematics Department (BA, BS, Credential, Minor, Courses, MS)

TYPO3 Content Management System 33 College of Natural and Social Sciences Mathematics Department Page Layout (BA, BS, Credential, Minor, Courses, MS)

Comprehensive Exam Page

TYPO3 Content Management System 34 College of Natural and Social Sciences Comprehensive Exam Page Layout

Flow Chart (BS)

TYPO3 Content Management System 35 College of Natural and Social Sciences Flow Chart Page Layout (BS)

Flow Chart Page Layout (BA)

TYPO3 Content Management System 36 College of Natural and Social Sciences Flow Chart Page Layout (BA)

Full-Time Page

TYPO3 Content Management System 37 College of Natural and Social Sciences Full-Time Page Layout

Staff Page

TYPO3 Content Management System 38 College of Natural and Social Sciences Staff Page Layout

Chair.AssocChair/Advisors Page

TYPO3 Content Management System 39 College of Natural and Social Sciences Chair.AssocChair/Advisors Page Layout

Contact Us Page TYPO3 Content Management System 40 College of Natural and Social Sciences Contact Us Page Layout

TYPO3 Content Management System 41 College of Natural and Social Sciences 10.0 Conclusion

This project is intended for the College of Natural and Social Sciences program website here at California State University of Los Angeles. My mission is to help the College of Natural and Social Sciences by taking into consideration my version of their website and implementing it using the essential TYPO3 Content Management System. Administrators, students, and staff will have no problems navigating through the site as well as making any modifications when needed. The new website will be a nice way to keep students and faculty well informed about anything that goes on in the College of Natural and Social Sciences. This professional site will become the administrator’s best friend since he or she will not have to worry about programming. 11.0 References

Apache http://www.apache.org Drupal http://www.drupal.org Google http://www.google.com LiveJournal http://www.livejournal.com Microsoft http://www.microsoft.com/downloads MySQL http://www.mysql.com PHP http://www.php.net Typo3 http://www.typo3.com Typo3 http://www.typo3.org Yahoo http://www.yahoo.com

TYPO3 Content Management System 42 College of Natural and Social Sciences