Book Image

Building Websites with Microsoft Content Management Server

Book Image

Building Websites with Microsoft Content Management Server

Overview of this book

Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 is a dynamic web publishing system with which you can build websites quickly and cost-efficiently. MCMS provides the administration, authoring, and data management functionality, and you provide the website interface, logic, and workflow. Once your website is up and running, your content contributors can add and edit content on their own, without the need to work with developers or the IT department. First time developers of Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 face a relatively steep learning curve. Not only are they expected to be conversant in the Microsoft .NET Framework, they are also required to be familiar with the concepts of MCMS 2002. Many beginners to MCMS start out by looking at the example site that ships with the product; tweaking it, dissecting it and turning it inside out using the obscure code comments as markers. However, when it comes to starting their own website from scratch, many are baffled ? where do they begin? This book exists to answer that question; teaching the essential concepts of MCMS 2002 in a clear, straightforward and practical manner. Containing answers to some of the most asked questions in developer newsgroups, this book is a treasure trove of tricks and tips for solving the problems faced by MCMS developers. This is a unique resource focused exclusively on the needs of developers using MCMS. It doesn?t waste time and pages on user or administrator level information that is well covered in other documentation. It?s a distillation of practical experience that developers need to get results, fast. The authors carefully structured example project complements and extends the knowledge gained from an initial look at the examples that ship with MCMS.
Table of Contents (28 chapters)
Building Websites with Microsoft Content Management Server
Credits
About the Authors
Introduction

Why Build Custom Placeholder Definitions?


The standard placeholder definition and placeholder classes are usually sufficient to cater for most kinds of content ranging from HTML to XML. Usually, you would not need to write your own custom placeholder definition/placeholder pair.

Even if you do find a situation where you may need to modify the properties and attributes of the placeholder, customizing the placeholder control to massage the data as authors save or retrieve content for display would usually suffice.

The choice of implementation is yours. Generally it is more common to find solutions based on custom placeholder controls as they are easier to build and distribute than custom placeholder definitions and placeholders.

Consider writing a custom placeholder definition and/or placeholder when you want to:

  • Expand or change the list of constraints and properties of the basic placeholder definitions that ship with the product

  • Provide an API that includes the business logic to retrieve and...