[Discussion] Page Management System

[Euan T]

I wanted to bring this discussion to the community after having discussed it as a staff team. We're hoping to start doing this much more frequently for major features in order to gather feedback on what we've decided so far and to promote suggestions for changes and enhancements. Below is the current draft of what we (as a team) would expect the attachment system in 2.0 to do/change.

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Many forums tend to have additional pages, which are often managed by either an external Content Management System (CMS) or by manual creation of PHP files to create new pages. For 2.0, we are considering adding a page management system into the core to allow the easy creation of pages integrated with the main forum that contain both static and dynamic content.

However, we are not sure whether this feature should be implemented within the core, or as a separate officially managed plugin. Though we expect the system would be used a bit, we have no real way of judging just how much it would be used by the majority of forum administrators, so we'd like your feedback on whether you'd like to see it as a core feature or not.

Some of the expected functionality of such a system would be as follows:

• Ability to write a page in pure HTML.
  
• Ability to write a page linked to some Controller action, allowing the processing of PHP.
  
• Ability to write a page using the Twig templating language.
  
• Role based permissions to view pages.
  

Any feedback (including whether you would use such a system) is extremely welcome here as this feature is still very on in the feature proposal stage.

[eNvy]

I think this is better on a separate plugin, supported and maintained by the team of MyBB.

[rgmm]

As a long time user (but not the biggest MyBB expert obviously) I would say that I am much more likely to setup something like WordPress for extra pages and content.
IF the MyBB team is going to spend resources for something such as this issue perhaps it is best to provide an official well maintained plugin that plays well with external tools such as WP. Things like single logins to even "including" the forum inside WP (or other CMS) pages.

[jshort]

I would use a page management system either way, so my preference would be to have it as a part of the core. I'm especially excited about the prospect of being able to use PHP within the pages.

Would these pages only be editable through the ACP or would there be options to make them editable through the MCP as well?

[Euan T]

They'd probably be ACP, but if there are enough people who want it to be editable via Mod CP then we might provide access via a permission.

[VirusZero]

I'd love to see this as part of the core functionality. Having this ability gives admins an easy option to make extra pages without having to add extra files and link them in. (I've seen these types of pages used for everything from rule pages to FAQs to affiliate links to showing wiki pages and etc...)

I'd also love to see the option for mods to be able to edit pages (defined by admins). I could see such a feature being useful for a number of different sites/reasons.

Out of curiosity, could there be support for the ability to embed these pages into other locations? For example if you have a page for HTML could it be embedded in the forum rules section or templates? (On another host/software there was a similar ability where pages could be linked into templates by using <% page_name %> )

[andrewjs18]

I wouldn't mind it either way, but it'd be a nice thing to have, for sure. seo for the pages would be nice as well.

[Euan T]

Out of curiosity, could there be support for the ability to embed these pages into other locations? For example if you have a page for HTML could it be embedded in the forum rules section or templates? (On another host/software there was a similar ability where pages could be linked into templates by using <% page_name %> )

In that case you'd be better off creating a custom template and including the template wherever you want.

[martec]

if possible easily using plugin so better in plugin i think...
i can't support new feature like this why there are things that are not possible using plugin.
need worry more and spend more time in thing that not possible using plugin, like multiple poll questions, if not thing that not possible in 1.8 It will continue also impossible in 2.0.

[erich199]

I think this is a great idea to include in the core function of MyBB. I also hope with it is the inclusion of Xthreads as core functionality.