Content Management System

Design Documentation for a Webpage Portal/CMS

(Content Management System)

Goal

• Learn to use HTML, PHP, mySQL, CSS, security.
• Create my own personal webpage for fun, experience, resume builder, ($profit?)
• Give friends and family the opportunity to have a quality built website for cheap
• Gain experience as webmaster of a site with actual users/clients
• Explore the possibility of a small business hosting pages for people

Design

The idea is to set up a portal/CMS that will support multiple users and are independent. A user could: add a blog, news posts, forums, and a poll to his page. Then he can add blog posts, news posts, add polls, and a forum would be accessible. He could use his admin panel to change what modules he uses and so could add a gallery. Everything will be controlled from an HTML interface. The layout and visual design would all be controlled from a CSS page, which the user could edit. There would be several “templates” that he could choose from. Modules would be added as they are written.

There will be a complete suite of modules for a personal website. The user will have a control panel available for interacting with each of these modules, turning them on and off, changing options and appearances. The suite will be designed in a way that adding more modules is seamless and easy.

The suite of modules will include things like:

Content Modules

• Blog
• Comments
• Gallery
• Forum
• News Posts
• Links
• Mini Blog Posts
• Polls
• Most Popular
• Downloads
• Latest Posts
• Page stats

Administration Modules

• Online Users
• User List
• Template Chooser
• Module Chooser

Timeline

Work towards a functional site, then release into “beta,” allowing people to use it for free and try it out. Continue adding modules and functionality. At the end of beta, reevaluate.

Feedback

Ultimately this would be built for the user/client. So I want to know what people think is important. Please give me feedback: criticism, encouragement, ideas, offers, criticism.