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What's going on?   (News)

know the Core team released RC2 of Postnuke .8 - the Steering Committee's report we are just working on will deal with the details.

2. Jørn Wildt released a first version of his "Content" module:
"Finaly I have finished the first version of my new Content module. With this little goodie you get HTML editing, YouTube video, Google maps and more features out of the box. This module was inspired by Typo3 and the never-finished PostNuke module Publish!" -- elfisk.dk

Content is a module that you can use to create static pages. It supports several predefined layouts (1 column, 2colums + header aso) and you can also add your own templates. In the editor you then can drag and drop content items like texts, images, youTube videos or Google Maps around and place them anywhere you like within the layout.

3. Together with "Content 1.0.0" a new version of Jørn's Mediashare gallery is available. Yet it still needs an installed Topics module to run under .8.

4. pnForum 2.7(.1) is finally released. A test version served the German Postnuke community for months and now he fixed the last bugs and made a public release.

5. Sven Schomaker is about to release Scribite 2.0 - It includes openWYSIWYG v1.4.6c as new editor and new versions of Xinha (v0.94), TinyMCE (v2.1.2), FCKeditor (v2.4.3), a lot of new module plugins and languages.

6. Axel Guckelsberger finished his diploma thesis that discussed the use of model-driven software development (MDSD) for Postnuke and resulted in his "ModuleStudio". Although ModuleStudio is far from complete it is way ahead in terms of modern software development. And if it turns out right MDSD is one of the next big things after object orientation (OO).

7. User ftree started work on a new gallery (pnAlbum) some months back and now published an article about his work. In preparation of the gallery he programmed some basic functions which turned out to be suitable for everyone who wants to program a module. If you want to you can take a look at his work.

8. There's a new pnCommerce team in formation: Rüdiger Hahn, Jim Hatfield, Chris Candreva, Bernd Plagge and some others are long time pnCommerce users and all maintained their own fork of the module. Now they are trying to put all their code together and a new version out for public use.

9. Marco Kundert is still working on his .8 follow-up for Pagesetter called Pagemaster. His first release will be 100% compatible to the latest version of Pagesetter so that you can simply import all you Pagesetter content into Pagemaster. Pagesetter introduced many ideas into Postnuke that have now become part of the core: Postnuke .8 has Workflows system and the idea of Pagesetter's form framework (Guppy) can now be found as Forms API in .8 and the WYSIWYG-Editor is now in Scribite generally available - Pagemaster uses all these features and thus can be much leaner.

10. Robert Gasch is working on a commercial shop module. He allowed me to take a look at it and it looks really great. Robert made his living for the last few years by setting up shop solutions for customers and now uses this experience for his new module.

11. Mateo Tibaquirá released a first version of his port of the standalone Relay AJAX directory management application. Includes drag-n-drop files and folders, a dynamic loading file structure, thumbnail views, multiple users & accounts, batch uploads, shopping-cart/batch downloads.

I am sure I forgot some people and I know there's a lot more going on in Postnuke land. But I'd like to leave some news for further articles.

If you are working on a news-worthy Postnuke project please contact me via personal message

Generated on December 22, 2007.

What's going on?   (News)

holidays there was not much acitivty in the SVN but now that both Mark and SVN are back we are fixing the remaining bugs for the RC2.

2. A name for the rebranding has been chosen. The Postnuke Foundation is currently in the process of trademark- and domain registration. The legal stuff seems to take some time. It won't contain a P or a N - so if you plan any new modules you shouldn't call them pnThisAndThat.

3. Speaking of module development:

a) Axel Guckelsberger of the Steering Committee just presented his diploma thesis: Modulestudio will not only revolutionize the way of programming Postnuke modules. It is way ahead of other similar systems. There will be a free version available but this will be a limited version.

Modulestudio, Google Video

b) Jørn Wildt started the work on the content module we discussed some months ago here and at the pnMeeting. This module is simply called "Content" and it uses all the new stuff in .8. The principle behind "Content" is that you first choose the layout of the article you want to write (1 column, 2 colums, whatever you like) and then you place blocks of content inside this layout with a smooth javascript interface. These blocks can contain text, images, videos, Google Maps aso. More blocks can be included as plugins.
http://noc.postnuke.com/projects/content/

c) As Jørn Wildt ceased work on Pagesetter ("I does all I need and it runs with .8") German programmer "Kundi" has picked up this work. He completely rewrites Pagesetter in order to remove Jørn's Guppy form framework and to include .8's Form framework, workflows aso. His first release will do everything that Pagesetter 6.3 does and it will be able to import from Pagesetter. Kundi is currently looking for a nice new module name. Any suggestions?

d) Robert Gasch works on a shopping module which won't be GPL - I was able to take a preview and it looks very adult and I think it will be worth it's money.

e) The last time I looked at pnUpper it was kind of a niche module that I never really had any use for. Axel Guckelsberger is currently turning it into a full fletched media library for the central storage of any kind of media to be used in other modules. Thus he renamed it to MediaAttach.

MediaAttach

4. Now that the NOC seems to be kind of stable again we hope to have time to replace it with a less complicated software. We ar

Generated on November 20, 2007.

pnMeeting 2007: Mark West talks about .8/.9   (News)

system information module will make it easier for webmasters to collect the needed information in case they seek help in the forums.

The use of Ajax makes the handling of various modules far easier. You can drag and drop permissions or user information fields. And on the user side you can for example rate a content item using the Ratings hook using an Ajax function and not having to reload the whole page after rating it.

The new URL system add permalinks to .8 and make URLs nice and readable as you can already find them in other systems like Wordpress. The permalinks can be defined by the administrator and can be included into other modules. It already works for example with the News module and the Pages module. The Pages module in the Value Addons package is the successor of Mark's htmlpages.

Included into the new Theme module is a Theme generator that creates all the basic files and file entries you need to start working on a new layout.

A real enhancement compared to .7 can be found in the block control - Blocks can be dragged and dropped into place and various block setups can be set not only for modules but for single content items.

There are still 2 or 3 major bugs in the bugtracker that are already partly fixed but which must be fixed before RC2 can be releast. That shouldn't take too much time.

In his outlook on .9 Mark explained that all Postnuke releases after Feburary next year will at least require PHP 5.2 - so ask your hosting providers early enough for updates. The background of this decision is the move towards object orientation in the Postnuke codebase and the fact that PHP 5 is around long enough now to become standard.

The language system is the last big project on the roadmap towards Postnuke 1.0 - other PHP projects will be evaluated to find the best solution. In the same move the internationalisation of content will be improved. Direct translations for content must be possible - News articles with the same ID in different languages are the result. Again getText was discussed as a possible solution and the move to UTF-8.

One of the most complex parts of Postnuke today is the Permission system. It is powerful yet often to complicated. So soultions have to be found to solve standard permissions requirements.

Axel Guckelsberger requested an addition to the hooks system - hooks don't know the permissions a user has for the item they are hooked into. So if you want to download a files that is attached to a forum post the permissions to download would result from the a) the permission of the user to view the thread and b) the permission of the user to download files. Hooks are today blind for this. Mark agreed that this had to be changed for future releases.

While talking about hooks Frank Schummertz requested more hook types. Currently we have display, transform, create, update and delete hooks. A required new type is the init or pageload hook that hooks into the start of the system like the spam prevention system BadBehaviour for example that stops the loading of the page if it detects a spam bot.

Mark Ronchera asked for the use of OpenID in future releases which Mark West answered by explaining the flexibility of the .8 authentication module. You can easily inculde plugins for other authentication systems. Simon Birtwistle pointed out that he already produced a plugin for his university's auth system.

Generated on September 9, 2007.

pnMeeting 2007: Robert Gasch on CategoryUtil   (News)

contained. He explained the various fields that you find in the category administration an how you can use them in your own module.

The system was considered quite complex by the audience but Mark West and Robert assured that this will be taken care of. The use of basic categories will be as easy as possible.

But first of all the system works and can be used by the module developers. It is also their duty to create intelligent user interfaces for the categories in their modules.

There are basic plugins available that display category lists aso. Further plugin can be developed on demand of the community. So if you feel there's something missing - make it a feature request in the NOC.

During the discussion various ideas for simplification came up and will certainly be implemented among of which were the security domain, the custom data fields and the needed -1 value for main categories.

Robert also explained that it is also possible to put for example one article into several categories

Generated on September 8, 2007.

Jørn Wildt Proposes New Content Module   (News)

For the discussion see: http://community.postnuke.com/module-Forum-viewtopic-topic-53152-start-0.htm

Here is what Jørn has in mind:

[quote=Jørn Wildt]Dear PostNuke community

One of the things that always comes up when comparing PostNuke to other Content Management Systems is its lack of real content management. All we have is some old News, Pages and FAQ (and some more) management modules - nothing really fancy. You can add fancy modules like PagEd, Pagesetter, pnWiki and others but somehow they all lack, well, something - something which I find rather difficult to pinpoint. They are either too complex, too simple, impossible to extend and do not integrate well with each other.

I have been doing some thinking about this issue and would like to present some ideas for a new Content system in PostNuke. A framework that newbies can work with right out of the box, an extensible framework, and a framework with well integrated components that are aware of each other. My ideas are by no means rocket science and most, if not all, have been implemented else where - just not in PostNuke.

If you ask me then PostNuke is going to dwindle away unless something serious is done to add a good content framework. Here is my suggestion.

[b]Content Types[/b]
The core component is the "Content Type". For those of you that knows Pagesetter this is exactly the same as Pagesetter's Publication Type. This will be a separate module that takes care of defining content types, editing and displaying content items - but without user navigation! Think of an Article, with it's title, lead-in text, main text and image, as a content item of the type "Article". The type specifies the fields that are available for a single instance of the type - a single content item - a single Article.

Content Types are management by the site administrator (but can also be created by other modules). The admin can choose from an extensible (through plugins) list of field types. Here are some examples (mostly copied from Pagesetter):

- String (one line text), Text (non-HTML), HTML (using Scribite!)
- Number, checkbox, date
- Media files (using Mediashare)
- File uploads
- URL, email
- Computer code (text displayed with line numbers in mono spaced font)
- Category (using PN .8 categories), both single and multiple select.

Now you can create an article as a title (string), lead-in (text), main text (html) - and many other types of content. But there is still no navigation - neither on the admin side nor the user side. All you have is a Content module that allows you to create content types, content items and then display these - assuming you now the URLs. Navigation is delegated to other modules - more on that later on.

The core framework does also handle input form generation: it will auto-generate input forms (using pnForms in PN .8). These can then be copied to another location and re-designed using the standard Smarty templating system.

The core content module handles a few other things: for instance revision history (who changed what and when).

[b]Content Management[/b]
So far there's nothing new compared to Pagesetter. So lets take a look at the admin side of navigation - how to store and locate your content items. I suggest that all content items are stored in a folder structure identically to your standard disk drive. On the harddisk you manage folders and store files in them. In the CMS you also manage folders - but now you store content items in them - indifferently of the content type.

The first challenge is how to handle user contributed content since normal users don't have access to the administrative folder system. Now remember that the core Content system allows anyone (with the right permissions) to add content, but where should it be stored? I suggest a standard "incoming" folder is created for this purpose (much like your mail system). The editors can then keep an eye on this folder and move new content to the right folders.

Actually there should be one "incoming" folder for each content type and it should be possible to specify which it is. In addition to this the system should have a flexible workflow system a'la Pagesetter (now already in the .8 core). So that different editors and authors and admins can be notified when new submissions arrive.

[b]Content Structure[/b]
But there's still not much difference from Pagesetter. So what's the point? Well, enter CoType - this little module, which I'm rather proud of, has some nice layout features that I would like to copy. First of all you have Boxes - elements that can be floated left/right/top/bottom relative to the current content. In CoType you have boxes for media items, program examples, and general text. I would like to extend this so that you can put any content item inside a box. So you can display and Article and put one or more Media type items in boxes as illustrations.

Another thing to copy from CoType is the use of nested content - sections in sections. This concept should be extended, just like the boxes, with the ability nest any content item inside another item. The only problem here is how nested content should be displayed? In CoType you always have sections in sections (in a document) - and there's a well defined standard way to display this. But what happens if you sudden nest a Music album inside a FAQ inside a Media item ... and then box it? Well, that will have to be solved as we go.

I suggest the Content Type configuration lets the admin specify which types of content you can nest inside another.

The system could also enable boxing of other modules contents - assuming some kind of API/interface the external modules have to implement (just like PostNuke's search API).

[b]Content Layout[/b]
The proposed layout scheme is so far rather fixed - something like this:

- Top content item title is displayed inside ... tags.
- Nested content title is displayed in ... (and so on for further nesting).
- All nested content is displayed on one page.
- A small table-of-content is displayed at the top (linking to sub-content anchors).
- Each (nested) content item is displayed with a standard auto-generated template.
- Boxes floated to the left/right are displayed in 50% width (like CoType)
- Top/bottom boxes are displayed in 100% width (like CoType)

This will allow newbies to quick and easy created new content without having to also design their own templates. Assuming of course that the system comes with a suitable default set of content items.

Experienced users can edit and change the auto-generated templates. But these will be recreated everytime the administrator changes the Content Type configuration. So experienced users must copy the templates to another location and then edit them to fit their own needs.

[b]Navigation[/b]
So far I have ignored the concept of navigation between different content items completely. This is because it can be done in so many different ways - and this is mostly where the different types of PostNuke modules distinguish themselves. A media gallery has a completely different navigation paradigme than a News list, a Wiki and a Weblink collection.

So I propose to delegate navigation to other modules. This has already been done with success with a calendar (pgcalendar) and a news archive (pgarchive) for Pagesetter. These two modules takes a specific Content Type and displays it's items a calendar view and a monthly listing view. This combination is extremely strong - you can add all the fields you want on a Calendar item - and still display it using the standard calendar view. Throw in the nested content and the boxing ability and you get an extremely flexible and yet simple Content Management System.

[b]List Navigation[/b]
The basic navigation is simple a pageable list of items ordered by some criteria. You create different lists and then refer these in the URL. For each list you configure which content type(s) to include, the default sorting order, the display template to use for each item - probably more. Including more than one content type gives some problem with respect to sorting.

This implements the typical News list on the frontpage.

[b]Catalog Navigation (collections)[/b]
This is the typical Weblink and File Up/Download navigation through a collection. The hierarchy is mirrored directly from the content folders.

[b]Calendar Navigation[/b]
Displays content items by date in a calendar (see for instance [url=http://www.fgc.dk/index.php?module=pgcalendar&tid=40]http://www.fgc.dk/index.php?module=pgcalendar&tid=40[/url]). You need to specify which date fields to use as start/end date of the entries.

[b]Archive Navigation[/b]
Displays content in lists organized by month (see for instance [url=http://www.fjeldgruppen.dk/arkiv.html]http://www.fjeldgruppen.dk/arkiv.html[/url]).

[b]Menu Navigation[/b]
On thing that frustrates me with PostNuke is the horrible way you edit menus through the Block interface. No - lets allocate a complete module for menu editing and then just select which menu to display in which box (I believe Content Express does this). With the integrated content framework you can now let the editor select content items from dropdown lists or similar - and avoid having to copy/paste raw URLs into the menu editor (this has always been a intellectual bottleneck for the people I have created websites for).

I would also like to see editing of the menu directly in the front-end. The editor should always have an "add current page to menu" icon in the menu. He should also be able to drag and drop menu items without having to jump to the admin interface.

[b]Frontpage Setup[/b]
This is just another idea of what you can do - not necessarily something to actually implement. But the frontpage need not necessarily be a list of latest items as on most portal websites. It might also be a fixed setup based on a grid where you can assign different content items to different locations. For instance Articles to the left, Banners to the right, and a few images at the bottom.


[b]Where to go now?[/b]
Now who's going to implement all this? Good question considering the speed of the core development. I would love to be on the team (and will be) but my time is restricted (especially now that I got my first kid) so I work rather slowly.

Any volunteers?

There's also the question of organizing the code - we cannot have much more than one or maybe two developers on the core Content module. But as soon as that is ready we can take more people in - one for each kind of navigational scheme. Other people can then work on the default content types.

We also need to consider how a system like this fits into the PostNuke distribution. Does it have it's own release cycle? Is it integrated with the core?

Enjoy 8-)

/Jørn[/quote]

Generated on September 4, 2007.

pnRender cheatsheet   (News)

was espacially complicated: Some stuff you best read at http://smarty.php.net and you also always have to have an open pnRender plugins directory so you can open the plugins you need and look up the exact syntax.

I tried to put the basic smarty stuff and the most frequently used pnRender stuff on just one page. And the great thing is: I am willing to share it with the community.

Personally I already love the cheatsheet - It contains the syntax with the backticks! And the date specifiers!! And the parameters for pnmodurl, pnmodfunc, pnmodapifunc aso!!! And I always forget in which order truncates parameters are. That's all on that on sheet!

I hope you like it too.

Download: pnRender cheatsheet 1.

Generated on May 28, 2007.

DIY: Including Video in Your PN Site   (News)

complicated things there are. Netscape introduced the embed-tag with theit Navigator 2.0 but it never became part of the html standard.

Moreover a patent exists that forced Microsoft to implement embed even more complicatedly.. But there is an existing JavaScript-solution that functions as a nice work-around.

There are several reasons that make Flash Video the best choice for the video encoding: The quality is good enough for most purposes and the flash plugin is the most common. Every other method is limited to an operating system (wmv -> Windows) or to rarer plugins (Real, Quicktime aso.) Jeroen Wijering wrote a nice article about Flash Video.

I used Riva FLV Encoder 2 for the encoding. It is free and supports the codecs I needed.

Jeroen Wijering not only wrote an article about FLV he also wrote the Flash Video Player which can be used to embed the videos into your site.

I use Pagesetter to store the metadata. My publication type has three fields: title, description and filename. Filename is im my case also a string because the videos are too big to upload them via HTML forms. We upload them into a predefined directory and only enter the filename into the form field.

The flashplayer is stored inside the themes folder:
themes/myTheme/flash/flash_flv_player

And you have to add a javascript call to the site's header:
[code][/code]

The -list.html-template of the publication type looks something like this:
[code]

Generated on April 3, 2007.

Development Update, March 2007   (News)

Dot 8 evolving: language files progression and legacy functionality
Thanks to the testing of the community users (yes, YOU!), some legacy functions (residing in /includes/legacy/ have been updated by Simon to solve some bugs. This is another proof that we do need everyone to test the releases and help not only yourself to make this release a success! The following files have also been marked 'deprecated', with an accompanying comment in the DocBlock: admin.php, backend.php, banners.php, error.php, modules.php, print.php and user.php. These files shall be removed in the next (post-dot8) major release.
The overhaul of language files has also applied to the Groups, Theme, Users and Profile modules. These modules now have better multilingual options and (by using the pnML function), making it a lot easier to translate the package and showing better logic in grammar for localisations. Furthermore, lots of open bugs have been solved and the templates have been revised also. For example, the emails sent by the Users module can now be adjusted by just editing a template!
David Nelson has offered to completely review the language files for dot8, and we all have to thank Olaf Fichtner for helping revamp the current language constants. The PostNuke Languages Project is actively following the development!
Important change in the language strings is the use of the _CREATEDBY / _CREATEDON and the _UPDATEDBY / _UPDATEDON constants. For better support in other languages, these are replaced by the following:

'_CREATEDBY', 'Created by %username%'
'_CREATEDON', 'Created on %date%'
'_CREATEDBYON', 'Created by %username% on %date%'
'_UPDATEDBY', 'Last updated by %username%'
'_UPDATEDON', 'Updated on %date%'
'_UPDATEDBYON', 'Last updated by %username% on %date%'

and can now be accessed through the normal pnml plugin in the templates.

System modules: pnForm and PageLock
Jørn has moved the pnForm framework to it's own module location within the system directory. Major reason for this is to properly save some pnForm specific javascript and style files. Usage of the module should be quite the same. In addition, some new context menu plugins have been added. These plugins create a popup menu to be used as a right-click context menu. More information can be found in the added files in the pnForm plugin directory, and at the pnForm Wiki Pages.
Also introduced by Jørn is a new system module. The PageLock module is a module that helps enforcing single user access to a specific page, by blocking access to other users when one has it open.
Example: User A opens article X for editing. This is registered on the server. User B tries to open article X for editing too. But as soon as the article editing window is opened, it is overlayed with a transparent dark film and a box in the middle tells the user "Sorry this page has been locked by user A - please wait or come back later".
Functionality: The lock is maintained by an Ajax plugin that keeps pinging the server as long as user A keeps the editing page open. When user A closes the window then the pinging stops and the lock times out. If user B chooses to wait then his page keeps pinging the server for the release of the lock (also Ajax) - and when that happens he gains access to the page. The module can be used on all pages that edites a single item - articles, user data, news items, book pages, permissions settings - you name it.
To use this system, a module author has to use API calls in their own code for adding or releasing a block: pnModAPIFunc('PageLock', 'user', 'pageLock', ...) and pnModAPIFunc('PageLock', 'user', 'releaseLock', ...). To see al this in action, grab the latest nightly snapshot and play around with the HowtoPnForm module: edit a recipe in one browser, and try to edit the same in another browser.

ValueAddons modules: Members_List and EZComments
The Members_List module has been revised by Mark West, with some added configuration options. It is now possible to set the number of (allowed) registered users, and some new blocks (featured user last seen and last x users) have been added. Check out the latest nightly build to see the functionality and options.
Mark has now finished the integration of categories into the user side of the Reviews, Pages, FAQ and News modules. This way, migration of .7x categories into the new Categories module is now supported and can be tested by our users who want to upgrade their .7 site to .8.
Finally, there have been added configuration options for categorization and category titles in the permalinks with these modules.
One hot issue at the moment is the increasing amount of spam that is on lots of websites at this moment. More and more features are to be found on the internet to prevent spam showing on your site. Akismet / Bad Behaviour are one of these. As some already know, Akismet has been applied in EZCommnents for a while. For testing purposes, Mark has implemented a bad behaviour (http://www.bad-behavior.ioerror.us/) function also for testing purposes (as Steffen has found that this could also be a good application). It does need some code hacking to pnApi.php at this moment, so only advanmced users willing to help integreating this feature are invited to test this and report any iussues to the EZComments tracker at the EZComments NOC project page.

Core and API: ThemeUtil and Categories
The pnTheme system has now been converted to the ThemeUtil class. With this conversion, all occurences in the core were updated too. Both the old and the new file are loaded in pnInit for backwards compatibility, but the old file (onTheme) and its functions are now marked as 'deprecated' and will be removed in the next major release.
Also added to the new ThemeUtil is a getModuleStylesheet method which contains the logic from the modulestylesheet plugin. You can do PageUtil::addVar('stylesheet', ThemeUtil::getModuleStylesheet('modulename')) to include the value of pnModGetVar('modulename', 'modulestylesheet') or style.css (in this order) or PageUtil::addVar('stylesheet', ThemeUtil::getModuleStylesheet('modulename', 'special.css)) to include the special.css file in your rendered page.
While unnecessary for correct functioning of the website, one is now allowed to turn off session regeneration completely. This is added because it may be helpful with a couple of undecided bugs in the tracker at the moment.

Module Development: information for 3rd party Devs!
Axel introduced a very nice application called EasyDist. This allows you to create your own PostNuke package easily. You can find it at modulestudio.de. It is still in a very early stage, but you should get the idea. This is all still in development fase and is just for testing purposes at this moment.
A preliminary for the (automatic) creation of packages using EasyDist is that module authors package their modules in a standard way. Right now, there are different file structures in the ZIPs or TGZs the authors distribute. We came to the conclusion that the preferred file structure inside the archive should be - modules - MyModule - pnuser.php etc so that an unpacked archive could be copied inside the pnroot. More information is in t

Generated on March 21, 2007.

Introducing: Scribite!   (News)

the project. Sven Schomaker (hilope) was already working on an module that made the Xinha editor available for PostNuke modules.

"Scribite!" now includes Xinha and TinyMCE and can relatively easy be expanded with more Editors so you can test them all and choose the one that best fits your editors needs.

But can not only use the WYSIWYG-editor in most common modules there is also a nice administration that makes it easy to use all the available plugins, to change the editor's language and most of all choose between several functional layouts. Most editor donot need to be able to change the color or the font of their texts. In this case you can use the reduced feature layout and offer only the basic functions.

Sven Schomaker received the 500€ last year before Christmas right in time for the birth of his first child. And yet it still is one of the most active projects in the NOC.

Links:

Download
Hilope's Paramedics Portal (It's UTF-8!!)

Generated on March 2, 2007.

Did you know: Module Templates in the Themes Folder   (News)

The formula is: Customization in the theme only!

Step 1: The Postnuke templating engine looks for templates in different places and it always looks first in the theme and then in the module folder. So if it finds the needed template in the theme it stops searching:

/themes/YourTheme/template/modules/ModuleX
is the equivalent for
/modules/ModuleX/pntemplates

Everything that is contained in the module's templates folder can be stored in the same manner in the theme's folder. For example EZComments contains several template-sets in subfolders these can simply be copied into the theme. The same applies of course for the plugins that are stored in the module's templates folder.

Step 2: If you have to write your own plugins, store them in
/themes/YourTheme/plugins/ModuleX
instead of in
/modules/ModuleX/plugins or something

Step 3: If you change a module's style sheet you can place it at
/themes/YourTheme/style/ModuleX

You see: There is a place for everything that can be customized in the theme folder. And the best thing is, that this feature had been in PostNuke ever since version .750. In the end you won't have any customizations inside any other folder but the themes folder - and if you don't overwrite that folder, you will never again lose changes during updates.

Now there is one objection you could make: When you don't update a module's templates you might not benefit from new features - the old templates might also be disfunctional. - Of course this is a problem. But with the above solution you can at least keep your layout and then include the new stuff.

Note: Only for the language files is no such solution available yet. This will be solved in future version though. The redesign of the language system is a .9 topic.

Generated on February 27, 2007.

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