3 Replies Latest reply on Feb 25, 2004 9:18 PM by jae77

    Pluggable Blocks and Modules

    jlward4

      I have been doing a bit of playing with Nukes and wanted to see what you all thought about an idea I have. I kinda wish that I could plug blocks and modules in to any level of the content tree. For instance... Let's say that I deploy a "Forum / BB" module. Well, I may want that module to be available at different parts of my content tree. Specifically for an Intranet I might have an Engineering content area and a Marketing content area. Now I want to have the Forum module in both areas, but different so that only Engineers see their forums and only marketing folks see their forums. Sure we could probably hack this, but I see more of an overall architecture here that we could use.

      Here is how it might work:
      Modules and Blocks have roles specified which can add them to the content tree. Each level of the content tree also has roles specified which can change the blocks and modules at the level of the tree. And each block and module can be deployed at any level of the tree (multiple places even) as long as the user adding the block or module has the correct role to write at that level of the tree and to add the block or module.

      This may look like this:

      Content Tree Location | Module
      --------------------------------------
      / | News
      /eng | Forums
      /marketing | Forums
      
      
      Content Tree Location | Read Role(s) | Write Role(s)
      ----------------------------------------------------------------
      / | Employee | Intranet_Root_Admin
      /eng | Engineer | Intranet_Eng_Admin
      /marketing | Marketing | Intranet_Marketing_Admin
      
      
      Module | Role(s) which can add this modules to the content tree
      -------------------------------------------------------------------------
      Forums | Intranet_Admin
      News | Intranet_Root_Admin
      
      
      Role Heirachy:
      
      Intranet Admin
       - Intranet_Eng_Admin
       - Intranet_Root_Admin
       - Intranet_Marketing_Admin
      
      Employee
       - Engineer
       - Marketing
      


      If a user has the role to write at a given level of the content tree, they will be given options on the screen to add or remove modules and blocks.

      So, what do you all think?

        • 1. Re: Pluggable Blocks and Modules
          jae77

          well - part of this idea would require that the bb module supporting the idea of user groups and i'm not sure if that functionality currently exists. (i just tried it on my install and couldn't find a way to do it).

          i like the rest of the idea, but what do you mean by content tree? is this equivalent to the menu options or something else?

          if it's menu options, it kind of goes along the same idea i had about being able to display options based upon if data exists, have sub-menu options, etc. there may be ways to do this now, but i haven't investigated.

          right now julien is working to get a 1.0 releae out and the primary focus is taking the current modules and getting them refactored, templatized, etc (i'm currently working w/ the news module) - so no work is being done to implement new features.

          • 2. Re: Pluggable Blocks and Modules
            jlward4

            By "Content Tree" I am referring to the directories which have been added to the CMS, like /projects, /eng, /marketing, /marketing/corp_info, etc.

            In Nukes, at any level of the tree users with the correct permissions should be able to add any type of content (like forums or html files or whatever modules and blocks there is available) or a sub-dir.

            • 3. Re: Pluggable Blocks and Modules
              jae77

              ok - i'm on the same page now as far as html type content, but i still don't follow how that could be done w/ modules/blocks.

              or is it that the block/module wouldn't be available unless the user had the correct privs?