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Content Manager Overview

DRAFT DOCUMENT FOR BETA EXTENSION

Introduction

This document provides an overview of Content Manager. Content Manager combines with Control to allow for more fined grained access to frontend editing of articles in Joomla.

The Control extension is used to add new user groups and to assign users to those groups. Within Content Manager you are able to set up rules and roles to allow users in particular groups permission to do certain operations. These operations include the following:

Create articles
Edit articles
Published articles
Trash articles
Change the author of an article
Change the access level of an article
Change the parameters of an article

It is also possible to give permissions to anonymous users, such as only being allowed to create articles.

Note: Content Manager is still beta. Use at your own risk.

System Requirements

In order to use Content Manager you must have:

Joomla 1.5.6 or higher (if your site is less than this version, upgrade now due to serious security issues)
The JXtended Libraries version 1.0.6 of higher
JXtended Control version 1.0.4 or higher

Installation

Download the JXtended Libraries, Control and Content Manager.

Using Joomla's extension manager, install the JXtended Libraries, Control and Content Manager.

Setting up Control

In the Joomla Adminstrator, select Components -> Control from the Menubar.

Select Manage User Groups in the Linkbar.

This pages shows you the User Groups that are set up for Joomla by default. Please note that you cannot edit these groups as this may adversely affect the operation of other Joomla extensions or the application itself.

Your first step will likely be to create a new user group. Click New in the Toolbar.

This page allows you to add a new User Group to the system.

Select Registered as the Parent Group. Type in a Group Name and then press the Tab key to automatically generate the Group Value. The Group Value should never be changed after you have added it and it should also be unique within the user groups. The Group Name can be changed at any time.

Click Save in the Toolbar when you are ready.

You should see that your new group has been successfully added to the list and you can come back to edit this at any time.

The next step is to assign a user to this group. Select Assign Users to Groups in the Linkbar.

This page shows you the list of users in your Joomla site. In this way it is similar to the normal Joomla User Manager. In this site we have a registered user named Peter. Click his name to edit the groups this user is assigned to.

This page will show you a list of the user groups defined in the system. You cannot change the normal group that a user is assigned to (like Registered or Administrator). However, you can add the user to additional groups. Check the box next to the name of the group that you just created and click Save in the Toolbar.

When the list page returns, you will notice that the user Peter is now in two groups.

Note that there is an extra user that will not show up in the Joomla User Manager. This is the Public User. This is a special user that is assigned to the Public Frontend group. You should never change this user nor its group assignment.

Strategies for Setting Up Groups

You will need to set up a group for each set of permissions that you want to have. This will depend on your internal business processes for content management but the following outlines some hypothetical grouping strategies:

News Authors - this group could be given permission to create content in one or more news categories.
News Editors - this group could be given permission to create, edit and publish content in all the news categories.
News Reviewers - this group could be given permission only to edit and publish content (but not create) in the news categories.
Content Master - this group could be given permission to create, edit, publish and trash any content in all categories (sort of like a frontend Super Administrator).

Access Levels in Control

With Control, it is possible to set up new access levels over and above the default Public, Registered and Special. Unfortunately Content Manager cannot take advantage of any additional levels because extensions such as the Menu Manager, the Module Manager and the main Joomla Article Manager is unaware of them.

Setting Up Content Manager

Now that we have set up the user groups and assigned the appropriate users to them, we can move to Content Manager.

The basic principles for setting up Content Manager are:

Initialiase the access control after you first install.
Give user groups frontend access to Content Manager as a whole.
Give user groups selective permission to perform actions on selected article categories.
Create splash page layouts for the frontend Control Panel (some layouts are provided).
Add the Content Manager Toolbar module to an appropriate module position.

Initialize Access Control

After you first install Content Manager select Components -> Content Manager from the Menubar. On the Dashboard you will see a link to Initialize the ACL. Click it.

Setting Up Rules and Roles

Select Components -> Content Manager from the Menubar then select Access Control from the Linkbar.

This page allows you to set up all of the rules and roles that will given what user groups have permission to perform various frontend actions.

Now, Rules are simply actions that a user can do, more or less like a global configuration setting. There is currently only one Rule permission and that is Access. This permission allows you to access the Content Manager from the frontend. By default, a single rule is set up when you install Content Manager that allows the Administrator and the Super Administrator groups access to Content Manager from the frontend.

Click the name of the rule (Content Manager - Access in our case) to edit it.

This page shows you that the select permission is applied to the selected user groups. Check the new user group you create in the previous steps and then Click Save in the Toolbar. This will give any user you have assigned to that group frontend access to the Content Manager Control Panel.

You can now see in the list that the user groups Administrator, Super Administrator and Content Editors all have the Access permission. There are no items listed because rules do not apply to items.

To set up our fine grain access for articles, click New Role in the Toolbar.

This page is very similar to the rule, but now we have a list of the article categories. The screenshot above shows that users in the group Content Editors can Create Articles and Edit Articles in the selected categories. You may select any combination of user groups, permission and items but you are advised to keep roles simple where possible. When you are done, type in a Note about the role and then click Save in the Toolbar.

When the access control list returns you will see a summary of the new role that you have created.

Setting Up the Content Manager Toolbar Module

As mentioned previously, most other Joomla extensions do not know about custom access levels, therefore, we need to apply some trickery to leverage our new user groups in the frontend. To faciliate this, Content Manager has a special Toolbar Module that is aware of the new permissions system used by Control and Content Manager.

Select Extensions -> Module Manager from the Menubar, and then click New in the Toolbar.

Select the Content Manager - Editor Toolbar from the list of available modules.

Give the module a title but do not show the title (click No next to Show Title).

Select Registered in the Access Level list.

Place the module in a Position that near the top of the template.

Keep the module assigned to All for the Menu Assignment.

In the Parameters area, select Typical Editor from the Page Template list (this is the Splash Page that the Control Panel will use for display).

When you are done, click Save in the Toolbar.

The module list will show the new module as you would normally expect.

That completes the bare minimum required for backend setup. We can now move to the frontend to see where the real magic happens.

Frontend Control Panel

After completing the backend setup, pogin to your frontend site as one of the users that has been assigned to the new group that would have been created in the previous steps.

We've used the Peter user that we created for the exercise, and we can see that the Content Manager Toolbar Module is active and displaying. Only the users with the Access permission can see this toolbar.

Click Content Control Panel (you can change this text in the toolbar module or via custom language files) in the module.

While in need of some styling, the Typcial Editor splash page automatically load four other modules:

The Search module - allows you to search for articles.
The Categories module - allows you to add an article in a category to you have permission to create in.
An Articles module - the top module on the right is configured to show articles you have created sorted by newest first.
Another Articles module - the bottom module on the right is configured to show articles you have recently edited.

Let's look at another feature of the Toolbar Module.

If you navigate to an article that you are able to edit, the Toolbar Module will automatically show an edit link. Likewise, if you are able to create article in the category of the article that is on display, that link will also be shown in the Toolbar.

Click Edit Article in the Toolbar Module.

The edit page automatically expands to full width.

Note: we have not unified the Introtext and the Fulltext as it is in the backend yet.