As of February 2007, there are 13,241 PHP scripts listed at hotscripts.com. Of these, 641 are content management system (CMS) scripts, all with the ability to manage your online content and make your site dynamic. Out of these 641, e107 has been voted second in popularity in a recent survey. It's growing legion of fans like it for its ease of installation, powerful diverse features, well written code, and built-in security features.
E107 doesn't have a flashy name and you can't install it through a control panel such as Fantastico DeLuxe, which is probably why it is not the number one CMS. Nevertheless, downloading and installing e107 is a very easy straightforward process. One of the things that make e107 unique is its modularization. Many CMS take the one-size-fits-all approach and for smaller businesses in particular, they are a waste of resources. As opposed to this, e107 has a core program with many additional features available by activating a plugin (an additional set of scripts). This gives you the control to determine what features you need for your particular site.
While this book was written with entrepreneurs, small office/home office, and small businesses in mind, it will prove to be a great resource for anyone wishing to use e107. I would also like to stress that while targeted towards small business users, e107 is perfectly suited for personal sites as well as large corporations. This book is a primer to get you started and familiar with using e107. It is not a complete reference. However, it does contain references to resources for learning those features not covered in the text.
Don't panic if you have never created a database or installed a script, or have no knowledge about file permissions. In this book we will work together, step by step, to create a website for a small business. The book is a quick-paced tutorial and contains lots of screenshots so you need not try to second-guess what you should be seeing in your browser. This book will get your e107 up and running quickly and save your hundreds if not thousands of dollars in web-design and maintenance fees.
Chapter 1 introduces us to e107 and provides a brief history of content management systems, how content management systems work, a brief history of e107, and an introduction to the development team.
Chapter 2 covers the requirements for running e107, uploading to the server, setting file permissions, creating the database, running the installation script, securing your installation, updating e107, and what to do and where to go when things don't go as planned.
Chapter 3 takes us to our new website and covers the various components of the screen layout, creating and activating usernames, and registrations. After covering the front end of our new website, we will get to the heart of our website—the back end—where we will learn the various preference settings options, learn about emoticons, creating static and dynamic front pages, and different front-page views for different user groups.
Chapter 4 deals with the themes—the site theme, admin themes, how to select a different theme, core themes, additional themes, and custom themes. We will learn where to find additional themes and how to make them available for installation. We will cover customizing our theme through the selection of menu items, and learn how to use the WYSIWYG editor and file upload manager, create and delete custom menu items, and make the navigation of our site multi-lingual.
Chapter 5 takes us into the world of e-commerce with our website through the use of plugins. We will learn the difference between core and non-core plugins, where to obtain plugins, and how to install and uninstall plugins. We will learn how to create banner advertising campaigns and display banner ads on our site using the Banner plugin. We will create the Paws R Us store using the Shopping Cart plugin and finally we will learn about the FAQ plugin.
Chapter 6 transforms our e107 website into an e-business powerhouse. In this chapter we will learn how to create user groups and how to use them to control access to the various functions of our system. We will cover the installation, setup, and maintenance of forums and polls.
Chapter 7 will no doubt be the most referred to chapter in this book as we learn how to use the Content Management plugin, which is a very powerful and versatile content organizer. We will also learn how to set up the PDF plugin so our users can download documents in their original formatting. Last but not the least, we will cover how to use the Coppermine photo gallery plugin.
Chapter 8 covers information dissemination. We will learn how to install, configure, and write a newsletter, communicate with our users with the calendar plugin, update users about our business by means of RSS, and learn some basic things we need to do to get our site listed in the search engines.
Chapter 9 shows us how to keep our database running in top condition, and use e107s self-diagnostic features to allow it to help us find problems so that we can make corrections. We will also learn security procedures.
Appendix A provides a list of e107 resources from around the world as well as resources for Apache, PHP, MySQL, XAMPP, Easy PHP, and WAMPServer
The prerequisite for this book is a working installation of e107. To run e107 the typical environment requires a web-hosting account, PHP 4.3.0 (or newer), MySQL 3.22 (or newer), and a minimum of 25MB of storage space. We cover the details of prerequisites and installation of e107 in Chapter 2.
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
There are three styles for code. Code words in text are shown as follows: "Each section is clearly marked, such as $HEADER, $FOOTER, etc."
A block of code will be set as follows:
$HEADER = "<div id='page'>
<div id='header'>
<h1><a href='".SITEURL."' title='{SITENAME}'>{SITENAME}</a></h1>
<h2>{SITETAG}</h2>
{UL}
</div>
<div id='content' class='narrowcolumn'>";
When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items will be made bold:
</div>
<hr />
<div id='footer'>
<p>{SITEDISCLAIMER}<br />{THEMEDISCLAIMER}
</p>
</div>
</div>
";
New terms and important words are introduced in a bold-type font. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in our text like this: "clicking the Next button moves you to the next screen".
Note
Tips and tricks appear like this.
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