Blog about concrete5 cms

The Tables addon v2.1 adds an important feature – pagination option for large tables. Now it allows to choose how many rows should be displayed per page.

Here is an example of Countries table with 10 rows per page displayed:

We believe this update should be really useful.

Another update relates to “Image” field type: it now allows to set width and height for image:

Thanks to Frank Perryman (aka wizardontherun) for both ideas.

Don’t forget to backup your website (including database) before upgrading the addon!

The tables addon at concrete5 marketplace: http://www.concrete5.org/marketplace/addons/tables/

Following the previous update we did another one:

In Downloads List 1.2 we added the “getSearchableContent” method to block controller. It includes file name, file title, file description and file tags into the “searchable” page content, which is used when concrete5 prepares search index for its internal search engine (based on Zend search).

It is not indexed automatically, the “Index Search Engine” job should be run either manually or by cron to make concrete5 index website pages for its internal search engine.

The last week we updated the Downloads List addon to version 1.1 in the concrete5 marketplace.

In new version (1.1) you can choose the sort order for the downloads list:

• Default
• Date: newest first
• Date: oldest first
• Filename
• File size: largest first
• File size: smallest first
• Number of downloads (most popular first)
• Attribute

By default it is set to “default”, which in the newest concrete5.4.1 means the same order as defined on the file set page in admin backend.

Sorting by attribute allows to choose any file attribute for sorting. You can choose direction as well (ascending or descending).

Also, we added an option to use file attributes of boolean type (i.e. checkbox) to filter the downloads list instead of just file sets.

Addon URL: http://www.concrete5.org/marketplace/addons/downloads-list/

Some people might have noticed that Google sometimes indexes websites’ directories even though that was not supposed to be shared. For example, if you install concrete5, the /themes, /packages, /concrete and other directories might get indexed by Google. Also, some malicious people can open that directories and view the list of its contents, for example, they can see what packages are installed on your website if they type the URL in browser like yourdomain.com/packages/
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Following the request from user wizardontherun we added an extra option in our free CSV Displayer addon, the option allows to split the long tables in separate pages by setting the “Lines per page” limit (in the block add/edit popup).

Please don’t forget to backup your website before upgrading CSV Displayer 1.0 (if you are using it) as the upgrade will overwrite view.php and other files of the package, so if you customized the files of CSV displayer, you changes might be lost. Remember that concrete5 allows to edit templates independently without touching the core code of concrete5 or addons. For example, to customize the template of CSV Displayer, do not edit /packages/swp_csv_displayer/blocks/swp_csv_displayer/view.php, you’d better copy it to /blocks/swp_csv_displayer/view.php and do anything you want with the file (upgrade will not overwrite your file then).

Doing backups is always good. If something crashes, you can restore the website from backup. If your website is changing dynamically, even a backup made a week ago might be too outdated and you will lose a lot of information and efforts restoring the website from that state, that’s why it is important to make backups often enough to keep the loss of information as low as possible. If you backup your websites manually, you might spend a lot of time (especially if you often do it), so let’s try to automate this process as much as possible.

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We have just updated the tables addon for concrete5.

What’s new in Tables 2.0:

Some bug fixes:

– when new column was added, the default value was not automatically added to existing rows. Fixed. Thanks to Steven Braun for bug report;

– table was not deleted properly when “Delete table” button is used (the record was not removed from swpTablesTables table in the database). Fixed. Thanks to Steven Braun for report.

Small improvements:

– translation function was changed from custom swp_table_t() to standard t() of concrete5.

Major improvements:

Field types functionality was added. This actually allows to set a specific field type for each cell in the table. The following field types are available at the moment:

– Text field. This is the default field type, which in fact was the only field type available in the first release of our addon;

– File. This field type allows you to choose a file from concrete5 file manager and the table cell will display the link that allows users to download the file;

– Image. It allows you to choose an image from the file manager. That image will be displayed in the table cell.

– Rich text content (with TinyMCE WYSIWYG editor). It allows you to embed rich text with extra formatting provided by TinyMCE editor (just like the “Content” block)

– Block from scrapbook. This one allows you to choose a block from your scrapbooks that should be displayed in the table cell. In fact this allows you to embed any concrete5 block inside table cell.

For customers using Tables 1.0

Even though upgrade should go smooth, we recommend to backup your website and database before upgrading.

Demo

If you are interested in the Tables addon and want to see it in action, including the admin dashboard, please contact us and we will provide you with access details.

Just a quick tip for concrete5 users: When you are moving blocks on the page (from area to area, or just arranging blocks inside one area), try to point your mouse  closer to middle of the block (vertically). This way it will be easier to target destination space, than if you take the block close to the bottom or top border.

Take a look at the picture.

This behavior possibly depends on which browser you use, I don’t know, but taking block at the middle works in any browser perfectly. I mean modern browsers and not IE 6 🙂

In fact it is very easy to copy pages in concrete5, but many people (especially those who use concrete5 for the first time) don’t know how this can be done.

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Maintenance mode disables website frontent for usual visitors, however admin backend is available for website owner. Enabling maintenance mode is recommended on high-traffic websites while doing backups and other maintenance procedures.
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