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v3.x

Introduction

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ContentBox Modular CMS - v3.7.1

ContentBox is a professional open source modular CMS (Content Management System) for ColdFusion (CFML) and Java engines that allows you to easily build websites, blogs, wikis, complex web applications and even power mobile or cloud applications. Built with a secure and flexible modular core, designed to scale, and combined with world-class support, ContentBox will get your projects out the door in no time.

Versioning

ContentBox is maintained under the Semantic Versioning guidelines as much as possible.Releases will be numbered with the following format:

<major>.<minor>.<patch>

And constructed with the following guidelines:

Breaking backward compatibility bumps the major (and resets the minor and patch)
New additions without breaking backward compatibility bumps the minor (and resets the patch)
Bug fixes and misc changes bumps the patch

License

ContentBox Modular CMS is open source and licensed under the Apache 2 License. Ortus Solutions, Corp, the makers of ContentBox, can also offer commercial and supported versions as well.

Copyright by Ortus Solutions, Corp
ContentBox is a registered trademark by Ortus Solutions, Corp

Discussion & Help

The ContentBox and discussion group can be found here: https://groups.google.com/d/forum/contentbox

Reporting a Bug

We all make mistakes from time to time :) So why not let us know about it and help us out. We also love pull requests, so please star us and fork us: https://github.com/Ortus-Solutions/ContentBox

By Jira: https://ortussolutions.atlassian.net/browse/CONTENTBOX

Professional Open Source

ContentBox is a professional open source software backed by Ortus Solutions, Corp offering services like:

Custom Development
Professional Support & Mentoring
Training
Server Tuning
Security Hardening
Code Reviews
Much More

Resources

Official Website: https://www.contentboxcms.org
Source Code: https://github.com/Ortus-Solutions/ContentBox
Bug Tracker: https://ortussolutions.atlassian.net/browse/CONTENTBOX
Twitter: @gocontentbox
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gocontentbox
Vimeo Channel: http://vimeo.com/channels/contentbox
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKLYx772weG6Eh06ny-lJBg

HONOR GOES TO GOD ABOVE ALL

Because of His grace, this project exists. If you don't like this, then don't read it, its not for you.

"Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God." Romans 5:5

Intro

Introduction

ContentBox Modular CMS - v3.7.1

Versioning

And constructed with the following guidelines:

Breaking backward compatibility bumps the major (and resets the minor and patch)
New additions without breaking backward compatibility bumps the minor (and resets the patch)
Bug fixes and misc changes bumps the patch

License

Copyright by Ortus Solutions, Corp
ContentBox is a registered trademark by Ortus Solutions, Corp

Discussion & Help

Reporting a Bug

Professional Open Source

Custom Development
Professional Support & Mentoring
Training
Server Tuning
Security Hardening
Code Reviews

Resources

HONOR GOES TO GOD ABOVE ALL

Because of His grace, this project exists. If you don't like this, then don't read it, its not for you.

"Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God." Romans 5:5

What's New With 3.7.0

This release has a major focus on security, authentication, containers, testing and automation. Below you can find the major changes and updates for this release and our full release notes.

Container Updates

Our ContentBox docker image has been updated to support this release and we have added two new areas of improvements for containerization:

Portable Datasource

You can now create a config/runtime.properties.cfm file with your database information and ContentBox will leverage it dynamically. No more registering of datasources on the CFML engines if you do not need to. This can allow you to leverage dynamic datasources for multiple environments and container deployments.

Author Sessions Cache & Distribution

In a world now of containers and distributed computing, we have added the ability for logged in sessions to be tracked by the ColdBox Cache Storages and CacheBox. This means that you can leverage in-memory sessions or distribute to any Cache provider CacheBox can talk to and distribute your sessions easily. It will also allow you to use the geek settings to monitor and manage the session objects of your users. You can even clear them all, expire them or choose a-la-carte.

The new cache provider region is called sessions and you can find its definition in the config/CacheBox.cfc file.

Make sure that your config.Coldbox.cfc file contains in configure function

Security Updates

Two Factor Authentication

This is one of our biggest features for ContentBox is our two factor authentication framework. That's right, we built a two factor module framework that will allow you to build or use any two factor or multi-factor authentication mechanism. We have included one in the core which is Email verification.

Please refer to the developing two factor authentication providers in order to get an in-depth look of how to build your own two factor authentication provider modules.

Two Factor Events

The following are the new interception points for two factor authentication

cbadmin_onTwoFactorSettingsPanel - Shows on the two factor global settings panel
cbadmin_onAuthorTwoFactorOptions - Shows on the options for two factor auth in the author editor
cbadmin_onAuthorTwoFactorSaveOptions - Fires when the options are being saved
cbadmin_beforeTwoFactorForm - Shows at the beginning of two factor form challenge
cbadmin_afterTwoFactorForm - Shows after the two factor form challenge
cbadmin_onInvalidTwoFactor - Fires when an invalid challenge has been made
cbadmin_onValidTwoFactor - Fires when a valid challeng has been made

Global Settings

An admin can force two factor authentication for all users in the system and even provided a trusted device registry so ContentBox can track their devices and challenge only after a few days.

User Settings

The user can also setup two factor authentication for their account if so desired.

An administrator now can control login options and enhance the logging experience of their users.

Permission Groups

We have introduced the ability to create and organize permissions not only in roles but in our new permission groups. This will allow you to create more complex and robust permission schemas and be able to assign multiple permission groups to users. The entire permissions tab for authors has been revamped to allow you better visualization of rules and permissions.

Improved Rate Limiting

The rate limiting module has been revamped to help with Denial of Service attacks or even just pesky scrapers. You can now configure more options for fine-tuning including relocation URLs, custom messages and improved logging.

Password Enhancements

There have been many updates on both the UI and the security of user passwords.

Password Meter

We have introduced the concept of a visual password meter, which can guide users when changing, resetting or setting passwords:

Password Length Options

You can now also as an admin decide on the minimum length of user passwords.

Password Reset Options

As an administrator, you can now reset user passwords a-la-carte or for every single user in the system. This will issue a notification to the user with instructions on resetting their system password. User password reset workflow has now been improved with our new password reset screens instead of bulky double email validation mechanisms.

New Interception Events

Here are the new interception events you can listen on for password reset workflows:

cbadmin_onGlobalPasswordReset
cbadmin_onPasswordReset
cbadmin_onInvalidPasswordReset

Author Updates

New Author Wizard

We have introduced a new approach to creating authors in ContentBox. You will now be presented with the new author wizard which will allow you to pre-fill author details in a secure manner. A notification will be sent to the new author's email address with a password setup token so they can secure their account.

Improved Author Listings

The author listings have been improved with tons of new filters, reporting and even sorting options. Go admin like a mad man!

Improved Author Snapshot

The Author Profile Snapshot has been updated to include a better UI, better visualization and a new action toolbar for direct Author actions and Author exporting.

Content Updates

Markdown Support++

We introduced markdown support for all content in many versions before. This update includes a brand new markdown engine with table support, code syntax highlighting and much more. We also made several settings and author specific details available as markdown content. In other words, viva markdown!

Markdown Editors

We have also updated our markdown UI editor and it can be used everywhere in the admin were markdown is allowed.

Publishing Workflows

We have added a new two-step workflow for publishing any piece of content. This will allow you better visibility when working with drafts or live content. The new flow will also assist users that do not have any publishing capabilities.

We have improved the navigation of the content store and the sitemap by taping into the browser history API and providing history support for hierarchy navigation. Never again loose your place in the hierarchy.

Full Release Notes

Bugs

New Features

Improvements

What's New With 3.6.0

This release was all about improvements to the core, localization and internationalization for sites, many bug fixes, UI improvements and updates to our containerization strategy. Please see below the major areas of improvement and our full release notes.

New Installer Module

The installer module is now available as a standalone module using the slug contentbox-installer-module. This will improve our container and your container strategy as now you can bring in the installer on demand via CommandBox.

install contentbox-installer-module

Ability to contribute CSS to CKEditor

Thanks to the Computer Know How guys you can contribute your own CSS files to the CKEditor instance so the content has your theme's look and feel. Please note, this is mostly usable for theme developers and module developers.

The event is called cbadmin_ckeditorContentsCss and it will receive a struct with one key called contentsCss which is an array. You can then append CSS style sheets to that array that CKEditor will showcase.

function cbadmin_ckeditorContentsCss( event, interceptData ){
  // Add css
  interceptData.contentsCss.append( "/path/theme.css" );
}

Site Localization Updates

Thanks to the Computer Know How guys, this release sports many i18n improvements.

Changing Site Locales

A ContentBox application depends on the ColdBox i18n module which gives you the ability to serve any content in any language, use resource bundles and use the resource utilities. However, we have now exposed the ability natively for users to change locales via the UI module using our URL of: http://site.com/__changelang/en_US. The route expects an ISO valid language code in the format of code_variant.

Note By default, visitor locale's are stored in the cookie scope. You can change this via the config/Coldbox.cfc configuration CFC.

Generating Locale Links

The CBHelper object can now produce these links for you in your layouts, themes and views by leveraging the following method:

/**
 * Link to the __changeLang route, this is where the fwLocale is changed
 * @lang The iso language code
 */
function linkLanguageChange( string lang = "en_US" ) {
    return getRequestContext().buildLink( '__changeLang/' & arguments.lang );
}

Locale Content Caching

All caching strategies have now been updated to allow for locale to determine its key. This way, every visitor's language will be cacheable and performant.

Release Notes

Bugs

[CONTENTBOX-442] - Emails sent out to be approved or point back to the dashboard are not adhering to SSL rules of the site
[CONTENTBOX-814] - Blog counts in category list include non-published entries.
[CONTENTBOX-880] - Admin actions are note multi-tenant, regression
[CONTENTBOX-896] - markdown converter not accounting for null markups from upgrades
[CONTENTBOX-897] - Importer does not import cbox package
[CONTENTBOX-898] - Error on update patch for additonal non-existen argument on log.append()
[CONTENTBOX-899] - missing variable exception on module config for environment variables and setting service
[CONTENTBOX-901] - On HTTPS reload link are not ssl enabled
[CONTENTBOX-909] - Adobe ORM Incompatibilities
[CONTENTBOX-910] - bug on maintenance mode when user not logged in, null exception

New Features

[CONTENTBOX-878] - Admin > Settings On/Off toggle
[CONTENTBOX-881] - Create new installer slug: contentbox-installer-module
[CONTENTBOX-905] - New __changeLang/:lang UI route to allow for User locale changes
[CONTENTBOX-906] - New CBHelper method for creating links to change UI locale languages linkLanguageChange()
[CONTENTBOX-911] - New ContentsCss interceptor for CKEditor module in order to allow for custom css to be loaded
[CONTENTBOX-912] - Add getNumberOfContentStore and PublishedContentStore formulas to categories

Improvements

[CONTENTBOX-747] - Menu builder cannot render SSL links
[CONTENTBOX-812] - File Uploader - Select File Change text not obvious a button
[CONTENTBOX-813] - Filebrowser Root Path Setting failure doesn't throw error
[CONTENTBOX-883] - Tools Importer Function often times out
[CONTENTBOX-884] - Tools - Import button needs to be clicked twice?
[CONTENTBOX-885] - Importer - BlogCFC Importer fails if Pages aren't in current version
[CONTENTBOX-886] - Importer - BlogCFC Importer doesn't import blog hits correctly
[CONTENTBOX-894] - Related content entries not showing in chronological order
[CONTENTBOX-900] - strip whitespace for metadata content
[CONTENTBOX-902] - cbhelper links now link correctly to homepage
[CONTENTBOX-903] - Admin bar UI fixes
[CONTENTBOX-904] - Add i18n locale to content cache keys
[CONTENTBOX-908] - Security updates on pathing and forgebox modules

What's New With 3.5.0

This release we're focusing on feedback from ContentBox 3.x customers and the ability to containerize ContentBox. Building on top of the SEO updates in ContentBox 3.1.0, we're continuing to make ContentBox more SEO friendly, Search Engine Friendly and Social Media Friendly. This update has a tremendous amount of updates and bug fixes for your current installations. So let's start investigating all the major areas of improvement:

New Installation Slugs

ContentBox has been partitioned into three installation slugs from ForgeBox in this version going forward:

contentbox - Installs ContentBox as a module into any ColdBox application.
contentbox-site - Installs a new ColdBox site enabled for ContentBox with a dependency on contentbox for its module.
contentbox-installer - Same as above but with our DSN Creator and Installer Module.

This new schema and re-organization allows us better flexibility when updating ContentBox and installing ContentBox under docker containers. First of all, updating ContentBox will now be a matter of two simple steps:

Run box update contentbox in the root of the site
Apply the contentbox-db patch in the admin

We are trying to leverage CommandBox much more for updates and also for ease of use of installation.

Container Based Updates

On our move to greater containerization we have made several improvements and re-structuring in ContentBox.

Override ContentBox Settings via ColdBox.cfc

You can now override any runtime setting for ContentBox via a configuration structure in your main ColdBox.cfc configuration file. This will allow developers to override any runtime setting for any site (yes multi-site is coming).

All you need to do is create the a contentbox structure in your configure() or any tier method, with the name of the site (default is the default site) and then any setting name-value pair.

Override ContentBox Settings via Java Environment Variables

You can also override any runtime ContentBox setting by passing them via Docker/Java Runtime variables.

Since these are string keys we can now use our fancy structures like the settings above, so you must adhere to our recognition pattern:

Here is an example on adding a custom media root:

This will allow especially Docker environments to override settings as environments or even provide secrets. More is coming, so stay tuned to our updates.

UI AdminBar

We have added a new Admin Bar that can help you manage and edit content from the front end website. This Admin Bar can be enabled/disabled from the ContentBox Settings panel and will only show up if it meets the following rules:

You are logged in
You have ANY of following permissions: CONTENTBOX_ADMIN,PAGES_ADMIN,PAGES_EDITOR,ENTRIES_ADMIN,ENTRIES_EDITOR

The admin bar will give you the following features:

Visit admin
Edit visited content
Edit custom fields
Edit SEO data
View content history
View Hits
View page layout
Visual Draft Mode
Visual Publish in Future

Hopefully, this admin bar can help you manage and edit content in a more visual manner.

Media Manager Image Editor + UI Updates

Thanks to our good friend Francesco Pepe (@tropicalista), we now have a full-fledged image editor in ContentBox Media Manager. The new Image Editor has the following capabilities:

Visual Image Information
Image Resizing
Image Cropping
Image Manipulation: Rotation, Flip and much more.

The media manager also sports better dialogs, context menus and better visualization. You can now also do multiple select via the use of the ctrl key.

i18n Editor Integration

The ContentBox editors now accept a new markup for retrieving localized content from any resource bundle in the ColdBox application. You can now use the following markup:

This will allow you better localization in any page, blog entry or content store item.

i18n Caching Updates

All the UI front-end caching mechanisms have been updated to incorporate the user's language locale via the i18n module included in ContentBox. This means that you can localize any content now by using the getFWLocale() method included in the i18n module.

Updated Dashboard

The ContentBox dashboard gets some love with two new reports:

Future Published Content - Shows top 10 content that publishes in the future.
Expired Content - Shows the top 10 expired content.

The Latest Edits widget also shows hit counts for the pages as a mini-report.

Revamped Admin Global Search

The admin global search has been completely revamped. The UI has been updated to reflect the different types of context searches: pages, contentstore, entries and authors. It also allows you to edit or open directly to the site if available. We have also introduced that ability to scope your search context with the following search prefixes:

author:{text}
page:{text}
contenstore:{text}
entry:{text}

You can replace the {text} with whatever you want to search for and ContentBox will search only the context you applied.

Global Search Interceptors

You can add your own search contexts and search contributions by listening to the following two events:

onGlobalSearchRequest
onGlobalSearchDisplay

Content Store Ordering

The content store hierarchy has now been introduced to ordering digits. This means that instead of retrieving content store collections ordered by their natural keys, you now have full control of ordering hierarchies. This will allow you to create ordered collections for things like photo galleries, metadata, etc.

On Demand Sitemap Generation for Search Engines

In an effort to make ContentBox work better with search engines, we have added a Sitemap Generation Module for Search Engines. You can now upload your XML sitemaps to Google, Yahoo, Bing and any other search engine you would like to work with.

The Sitemap generation is available on demand, and available in several formats. Following Google's convention, we have implemented the following url patterns:

/sitemap.xml
/sitemap.txt
/sitemap.json
/sitemap.html
/sitemap - which defaults to html

Google recommends XML, but supports txt as well. XML allows for more information, including:

loc - location / url of the content
lastmod - last modified
image
- image:loc - image location / url

If you use the featured image with your pages and blog entries, the image will be included in the site map, and the last modified date as well.

The site maps shows all pages and blog entries that are published, and not hidden via the show in search bit. If you disable the blog, all blog posts are removed from the site map.

Info The HTML version of the sitemap does not take into consideration any of the hierarchy of your site. It simply outputs all visible content into a list. This can be used for a crawl-able site page, but it not intended for your website visitors, at this time.

Sitemap Options

You can turn on/off the sitemap features of ContentBox via the Settings Panel.

Sitemap.txt support requires manual step

To support sitemap.txt, you will need to edit your config/routes.cfm file. Inside that file you will find a line:

setValidExtensions('xml,json,jsont,rss,html,htm,cfm,print,pdf,doc');

For the .txt extension to work inside of ContentBox ( and ColdBox the framework underneath ContentBox ), you will need to append txt to the list of existing supporting file extensions.

setValidExtensions('xml,json,jsont,rss,html,htm,cfm,print,pdf,doc,txt');

Once you have made this change, reinitialize the site, the easiest way is to log into the admin, and then click the Setting Cog and click Reload Application. Once this is done, the /sitemap.txt will function in addition to the xml and json formats.

Opengraph support for Facebook and Twitter

CKEditor Updates

CKEditor has been updated to its latest stable release with its new skin which looks fantastic within ContentBox.

Update of all JavaScript libraries + Widgets

All internally used JavaScript libraries and widgets have been updated to their latest stable versions.

Release Notes

Bugs

New Features

Improvements

What's New With 3.1.0

ContentBox 3.1.0 is a minor release with over 40 issues, improvements and new features addressed. Below you will find the detailed release notes about this release but also the major areas of improvement and new features introduced. Enjoy!

Upgrading to 3.1.0

Travis Integration

Travis is now building and publishing ContentBox to ForgeBox.io. We will also be able to accept pull requests with satisfaction that they do not break the builds. So pull away my friends!

Updated JDK/JRE + Lucee Engines

All express versions have been updated with the latest JRE/JDKs and Lucee CFML engines.

Easily Render Captcha Images

ContentBox supports native captcha support and now your themes can render out a nice captcha image by using the new ContentBox helper method: cb.renderCaptcha() method.

SEO Enhancements

We have also devoted time to enhance the SEO capabilities of ContentBox not only in the ContentBox helper object but in the updated default theme. The new helper methods are:

getContentTitle() : Retrieve the assigned title for a rendered page
getContentDescription() : Retrieve the assigned description for a rendered page
getContentKeywords() : Retrieve the assigned keywords for a rendered page

Title Discovery

Please note that the title for a page now comes in the following discovery hiearchy:

Override set by custom modules
SEO Panel title
Page name

Description Discovery

Please note that the description for a page now comes in the following discovery hiearchy:

Override set by custom modules
SEO Panel description
Excerpt
Dynamic Excerpt (160 characters) from content

Keywords Discovery

Please note that the keywords for a page now comes in the following discovery hiearchy:

Override set by custom modules
SEO Panel keywords
Global Site Keywords

SEO Module Overrides

If you are building custom modules with views that render in a site's theme, you can now also set SEO content for title, description and keywords by leveraging the following methods in the ContentBox Helper:

setMetaTitle()
setMetaDescription()
setMetaKeywords()

Static Site Generator

ContentBox 3.1 now supports the generation of static sites from your content and even your blog. This is a great addition to ContentBox as now you can produce static versions and workflows, deploy to CDN networks, secure your content and much more. Once you click on the Start Generation button, ContentBox will go over your entire site and produce a static archive for you in the associated theme. It will also announce two interception points for you during the process:

cbadmin_preStaticSiteExport : Receives all the export options in the intercept data so you can alter the export behavior.
cbadmin_postStaticSiteExport : Receives all the export options and also a results structure with the following keys: exportLog:builder, exportDirectory, exportArchive. This is a great way to listen for the export and send to S3 for archiving, etc.

Warning Dynamic elements like commenting, searching, etc must require a JavaScript implementation. So make sure you have a static export strategy in place.

Module Enhancements

This release sports many enhancements to support module development authors in order for them to seamlessly build high impact applications using ContentBox.

Author Object Availability

The logged in (or not) author/user of ContentBox is now globally available in the ColdBox private request collection as prc.oCurrentAuthor. This will allow module developers to have easy access to the current object that would represent a logged in Author or User of the ContentBox instance.

File Manager UI Updates

The File Manager / Media Manager is an important part of a Content Management System, and we have fixed several UI bugs, and added a few smaller features. The Context Menus are more accurate, and function on the selected item. The file location breadcrumb is now clickable, to allow you to move about your file structure easier.

Release Notes

Bug

New Feature

Improvement

What's New With 3.0.0

ContentBox 3.0.0 is a major release and with a completely rewritten administration module. If you are upgrading from a previous release, please make sure you read the . You can find the full release notes here:

ContentBox 3 is a collection of more than 150 tickets resolved. It has been a massive undertaking with some great results. We have divided all the major updates in this release by category below:

Architecture

The following are major system architecture updates we have done in ContentBox 3.

ColdBox 4

We have updated the entire core to leverage ColdBox 4 and modularity. We have completely re-architected all modules to adhere to ColdBox 4 standards and rely on CommandBox CLI for package management and resolutions. This update in itself is worth noting as it not only modularized even more ContentBox, but gave it a source code reduction and performance boosts.

Oracle + PostgreSQL Support

Oracle and PostgreSQL are now fully supported.

BCrypt Support

Password Policy

A new password policy is now in place for ContentBox for new and current users, which must be greater than 8 characters with at least one:

Lower case character
Upper case character
Digit
Special character

The ContentBox administrator module now comes with a login tracker which if enabled can track invalid logins and be able to block individual ip addresses from brute-force attempts. We even track all valid logins into the new ContentBox Security Audit Log.

Rate Limiter

ContentBox now comes with a rate limiter module that can limit count and duration and very configurable. This can stop denial of service attacks or just penetration hacking attempts.

Core Settings

Introduction of core and user based system settings. This allows for the distinguishing of what are ContentBox core settings and custom user or module settings when managing them from the geek panel.

Settings Cluster Storage

You can now decide in which caching engine to store global ContentBox settings. This provides the way to fully scale ContentBox in any cloud provider.

SSL Support +

SSL support can now be found everywhere in ContentBox for both the UI and admin modules. Users can even select specific pages for users to transition into or out of SSL for richer eCommerce or secure experiences.

Internationalization

The majority of all modules have been now translated into English, Spanish, Italian, German and French. There is still work to do to localize the entire source, but it is coming.

ContentBox Express with JRE

Our entire build process has been revamped and now we can produce ContentBox Express editions with included Java runtimes for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows.

Automated Asset Pipeline

We have completely re-architected our asset pipeline and ContentBox now comes with an integrated development pipeline for front-end development. All assets are now tracked via bower and npm. We have created a developer guide for anybody working with the admin assets and collaborating.

CommandBox Integration

All development is now done with CommandBox and all dependencies are tracked via CommandBox. This provides a smoother update processes for users and also a great workflow for collaboration.

DocBox API Docs

DocBox now generates all API docs with much better documentation and readability.

Administrator

Below is a listing of all the major updates in the administration modules.

Admin UI

The administration module sports a completely re-designed responsive UI. Our goal was to think mobile first and build from there. So you will see tons of great additions for working on mobile devices, new editors, new fullscreen mdoes and much much more. Below is a nice image gallery of all the changes in the administration module. Please note that every single screen has changed.

Markdown Native Support

ContentBox now sports native Markdown support for writing all content objects. You can even choose markdown on a per-user level as your preferred writing style.

New Code Editor

We have included a new code editor that supports HTML and Markdown natively. This will allow developers or editors to write in native markup and have all the integrations into ContentBox. It also sports realtime previews and side-by-side editing in full screen. Your editing experience is about to get a whole lot better now.

Editor Auto Save

We have introduced local storage auto saving capabilities for all editors in ContentBox. No matter the implementation, we will provide auto-save capabilities. This is a great way to know that silently your work is secure.

Editor Escaping Markup Translations

You can now use the <escape></escape> syntax in any content editor to escape ContentBox translations for settings, markdown, etc.

Editor Responsive Previews

All live previews are now responsive. Meaning you can choose from the responsive previewer the type of device and get immediate feedback of the content result in real-time.

Editor UI Updates

The content editors have completely been re-designed for mobile first paradigm. They sport new tabbed interfaces for history, comments, custom fields and editing. You also have much more real estate when editing and even full screen editing support.

New Dashboard

The dashboard now supports a cleaner interface for visualizing the latest content edits, drafts, comments and news.

Media Manager Updates

Improved UI to match the new admin UI with responsive updates. It also has a smoother uploading and drag and drop uploading capabilities.

Admin Fullscreen Mode

We have added HTML5 fullscreen mode capabilities for the admin UI. This will allow you to go full screen to edit, create and manage in a gorgeous huge display.

Configurable RSS

RSS feed options and caching options can now be customized via settings.

Content Featured Images

All content objects now have the ability to set natively a featured image alongside the content.

Author Edit Panels

The author details now sports two new panels to showcase their latest edits and latest drafts. It will make it much easier for authors or administrators to discover what they are working on.

CBHelper Updates

The CBHelper sports some new methods:

getPrivateRequestCollection() - Get the ColdBox private request collection
isHomePage() - Verify if the current rendered page is the home page
prepareUIRequest() - Use in any ColdBox module to prepare rendering under the ContentBox theme

New Admin Interception Points

Here is a collection of all the new admin interception points:

onGlobalSearchRequest - When a global search is made
onGlobalSearchDisplay - When the global search is displayed
cbadmin_beforeLoginForm - Before the login form renders
cbadmin_afterLoginForm - After the login form renders
cbadmin_preThemeSettingsSave - Before saving theme settings
cbadmin_postThemeSettingsSave - After saving theme settings
cbadmin_onThemeSettings - When displaying theme settings in the admin UI
cbadmin_onThemeInfo - When displaying theme information on the admin UI

Themes

We have also updated the theming engine in ContentBox with ColdBox 4 goodness and extreme modularity. Here you can find the major updates for the theming engine.

Themes not Layouts

Themes is our new mantra. We have transitioned layouts to what we now call ContentBox Themes. They have been revamped to support ColdBox 4.

New Theme.cfc

The theme descriptor CFC is now named Theme.cfc. Backwards compatibility still remains, but now the new descriptor will provide a nice way for editors and tools to target.

Theme Setting Groups

You can now create theme setting groups in the theme descriptor Theme.cfc and the new admin UI will present them in a categorized and ordered format. This is a great way to visualize theme settings.

Theme Modules

Themes can now include ContentBox modules in a new folder convention called modules. This allows you to ship your theme with 1 or a billion modules.

New Theme Events

The theme life-cycle now presents several new events:

cbadmin_preThemeSettingsSave - Before saving theme settings
cbadmin_postThemeSettingsSave - After saving theme settings
cbadmin_onThemeSettings - When displaying theme settings in the admin UI
cbadmin_onThemeInfo - When displaying theme information on the admin UI

Getting Started

Usage

Developing

Customizing Layouts

What's New With 3.5.0

New Installation Slugs

ContentBox has been partitioned into three installation slugs from ForgeBox in this version going forward:

contentbox - Installs ContentBox as a module into any ColdBox application.
contentbox-site - Installs a new ColdBox site enabled for ContentBox with a dependency on contentbox for its module.
contentbox-installer - Same as above but with our DSN Creator and Installer Module.

Run box update contentbox in the root of the site
Apply the contentbox-db patch in the admin

We are trying to leverage CommandBox much more for updates and also for ease of use of installation.

Container Based Updates

On our move to greater containerization we have made several improvements and re-structuring in ContentBox.

Override ContentBox Settings via ColdBox.cfc

All you need to do is create the a contentbox structure in your configure() or any tier method, with the name of the site (default is the default site) and then any setting name-value pair.

Override ContentBox Settings via Java Environment Variables

You can also override any runtime ContentBox setting by passing them via Docker/Java Runtime variables.

Since these are string keys we can now use our fancy structures like the settings above, so you must adhere to our recognition pattern:

Here is an example on adding a custom media root:

This will allow especially Docker environments to override settings as environments or even provide secrets. More is coming, so stay tuned to our updates.

UI AdminBar

You are logged in
You have ANY of following permissions: CONTENTBOX_ADMIN,PAGES_ADMIN,PAGES_EDITOR,ENTRIES_ADMIN,ENTRIES_EDITOR

The admin bar will give you the following features:

Visit admin
Edit visited content
Edit custom fields
Edit SEO data
View content history
View Hits
View page layout
Visual Draft Mode
Visual Publish in Future

Hopefully, this admin bar can help you manage and edit content in a more visual manner.

Media Manager Image Editor + UI Updates

Thanks to our good friend Francesco Pepe (@tropicalista), we now have a full-fledged image editor in ContentBox Media Manager. The new Image Editor has the following capabilities:

Visual Image Information
Image Resizing
Image Cropping
Image Manipulation: Rotation, Flip and much more.

The media manager also sports better dialogs, context menus and better visualization. You can now also do multiple select via the use of the ctrl key.

i18n Editor Integration

The ContentBox editors now accept a new markup for retrieving localized content from any resource bundle in the ColdBox application. You can now use the following markup:

This will allow you better localization in any page, blog entry or content store item.

i18n Caching Updates

Updated Dashboard

The ContentBox dashboard gets some love with two new reports:

Future Published Content - Shows top 10 content that publishes in the future.
Expired Content - Shows the top 10 expired content.

The Latest Edits widget also shows hit counts for the pages as a mini-report.

Revamped Admin Global Search

author:{text}
page:{text}
contenstore:{text}
entry:{text}

You can replace the {text} with whatever you want to search for and ContentBox will search only the context you applied.

Global Search Interceptors

You can add your own search contexts and search contributions by listening to the following two events:

onGlobalSearchRequest
onGlobalSearchDisplay

Content Store Ordering

On Demand Sitemap Generation for Search Engines

The Sitemap generation is available on demand, and available in several formats. Following Google's convention, we have implemented the following url patterns:

/sitemap.xml
/sitemap.txt
/sitemap.json
/sitemap.html
/sitemap - which defaults to html

Google recommends XML, but supports txt as well. XML allows for more information, including:

loc - location / url of the content
lastmod - last modified
image
- image:loc - image location / url

If you use the featured image with your pages and blog entries, the image will be included in the site map, and the last modified date as well.

The site maps shows all pages and blog entries that are published, and not hidden via the show in search bit. If you disable the blog, all blog posts are removed from the site map.

Info The HTML version of the sitemap does not take into consideration any of the hierarchy of your site. It simply outputs all visible content into a list. This can be used for a crawl-able site page, but it not intended for your website visitors, at this time.

Sitemap Options

You can turn on/off the sitemap features of ContentBox via the Settings Panel.

Sitemap.txt support requires manual step

To support sitemap.txt, you will need to edit your config/routes.cfm file. Inside that file you will find a line:

setValidExtensions('xml,json,jsont,rss,html,htm,cfm,print,pdf,doc');

For the .txt extension to work inside of ContentBox ( and ColdBox the framework underneath ContentBox ), you will need to append txt to the list of existing supporting file extensions.

setValidExtensions('xml,json,jsont,rss,html,htm,cfm,print,pdf,doc,txt');

Opengraph support for Facebook and Twitter

More information on Facebook and OpenGraph can be found here:

CKEditor Updates

CKEditor has been updated to its latest stable release with its new skin which looks fantastic within ContentBox.

Update of all JavaScript libraries + Widgets

All internally used JavaScript libraries and widgets have been updated to their latest stable versions.

Release Notes

Bugs

[] - Widget - When loading widgets the error catching is ugly
[] - Widget - Test Widget in Firefox relocates to url and does not run js function
[] - Quick search in Contentstore ignores ajax traversing
[] - ContentStore - deleting an item with child throws a big bad error
[] - Forgebox - Cfloop uses lucee attributes not ACF and errors on ACF
[] - Javascript reloads like Application Reinit ignore rewrites
[] - Wrong link on the latest edits for content store items
[] - Ellusive contentbox filebrowser media root reset
[] - Installer for 3.5 fails - settings for file browser doesn't exist on load
[] - Default Theme Archive layout is not correct
[] - Textareas in Geek Settings should be disabled to stop editing
[] - Theme Service - adds settings without flushing setting cache
[] - Preference are not working properly
[] - Content caching was not working due to missing return

New Features

[] - Sitemap admin settings
[] - admin latest content widgets hit counter support
[] - Ability for ordering content store items within hierarchies
[] - Integrate yarn for node dependencies
[] - update all node dev dependencies
[] - Update ckeditor to latest edition
[] - Updated all UI dependencies
[] - Revamped global search UI
[] - New dashboard reports: expired content, future published content
[] - Ability to override ContentBox settings from the ColdBox Config
[] - Ability to override ContentBox settings via environment variables
[] - New setting prefix: i18n which will retrieve any language key
[] - Incorporate fw locale for cachekeys for content to allow for multi-lingual front ends
[] - content viewelets UI updates and choice enhancements: showAuthor, showColorings, showHits, showPublishedStatus,showExpired
[] - Ability to add a search context in the global admin search via a prefix (page,entry,contentstore,author:search):search
[] - UI Admin Bar
[] - Media Manager UI Updates
[] - Media Manager Image Editor

Improvements

[] - Don't let the tools spinners spin infinitely after a form submission
[] - Mega Menu - JSON / Struct Export to allow Theme more control of display
[] - Add support for Facebook / Twitter OGRAPH elements in pages / entries
[] - Exporter - Once export is complete, UI does not update
[] - Widgets - Widgets loaded from Themes are still marked as Layouts
[] - update admin to use prc.oCurrentAuthor for consistency
[] - Sitemap UI module
[] - Contentbox Modules should have Forgebox Entries
[] - Allow cbCKfileBrowserDefaultEvent variable to be set in interceptor
[] - Anything using a .keyUp should have a debounce for better user experience
[] - When creating a contentstore item, you have no page modifiers for parents
[] - Latest Edits Viewlet need a ID for multiple viewlet renderings

Docker

ContentBox sports its very own ContentBox Docker image. As with the CommandBox image, the [major].[minor].[patch] versioning mirrors the upstream product version, so it's easy to pull deploy a specific version, should your application require it.

Playing around

The image is packaged with a self-contained express version, which uses an in-memory H2 database. To stand up an image for testing purposes, using an unconfigured express edition, simply run:

docker pull ortussolutions/contentbox &&
docker run -p 8080:8080 \
-e express=true \
-e install=true \
ortussolutions/contentbox

Note The command above is using && to concatenate the two commands which will work under *unix. If you are in windows, replace && with ; in Powershell, replace && with & in Cmd, or run the two commands separately

A new container will be spun up from the image and, upon opening your browser to http://[docker machine ip]:8080, you will be directed to configure your ContentBox installation using the ContentBox Installer.

Persisting Data Between Restarts

The above run command produces an image which is self-contained, and would be destroyed when the container is stopped. If we wanted to run a version in production, we would need to persist, at the very minimum, the database and user-uploaded assets. In order to do this we need to mount those resources in to the Docker host file system.

By convention, the express H2 database is stored at /data/contentbox/db inside the container. In addition, the default storage location for the CMS user media assets is set to /app/includes/shared/media. Let's mount both of those volume points, so that our database and user-uploaded assets persists between restarts:

docker run -p 8080:8080 \
-e express=true \
-e install=true \
-v `pwd`/contentbox-db:/data/contentbox/db \
-v `pwd`/contentbox-media:/app/includes/shared/media \
ortussolutions/contentbox

Now, once our image is up, we can walk through the initial configuration. Once configuration is complete, simply stop the container and then start it without the environment variable install in place. The H2 database and uploads will be persisted and the installer will be removed automatically on container start.

docker run -p 8080:8080 \
-e express=true \
-v `pwd`/contentbox-db:/data/contentbox/db \
-v `pwd`/contentbox-media:/app/includes/shared/media \
ortussolutions/contentbox

Custom Database Configuration

Because the express flag produces a ContentBox installation which runs on a file-based, in-memory H2 database, it's really suitable only for testing or low-traffic containers. For scalability, we would want to connect to an database server, which would allow us to connect from multiple containers in a distributed fasion (MySQL, Oracle, MSSQL, etc)

The image is configured to allow all ORM-supported JDBC drivers to be configured by specifying the environment variables to connect. Alternately, you may specify a CFCONFIG environment variable which points to file containing your engine configuration, including datasources.

By convention, the datasource name expected is simply named contentbox.

To programatically configure the database on container start, environment variables which represent your datasource configuration should be provided. There are two patterns supported:

DB_DRIVER configuration - which may be used for Adobe Coldfusion servers
DB_CLASS configuration - which configures a datasource by JDBC driver and connection string (Both Adobe and Lucee)

An example container run command, configuring a MySQL database would be executed like so:

docker run -p 8080:8080 \
-e 'installer=true' \
-e 'cfconfig_adminPassword=myS3cur3P455' \
-e "DB_CONNECTION_STRING=jdbc:mysql://mysqlhost:3306/contentbox_docker?useUnicode=true&characterEncoding=UTF-8&useLegacyDatetimeCode=true" \
-e 'DB_CLASS=org.gjt.mm.mysql.Driver' \
-e 'DB_USER=contentbox_user' \
-e 'DB_PASSWORD=myS3cur3P455' \
-v `pwd`/contentbox-media:/app/includes/shared/media \
ortussolutions/contentbox

To use the DB_DRIVER syntax for Adobe Coldfusion, an example run command would be:

docker run -p 8080:8080 \
-e 'CFENGINE=adobe@11' \
-e 'installer=true' \
-e 'cfconfig_adminPassword=myS3cur3P455' \
-e 'DB_DRIVER=MSSQLServer' \
-e 'DB_HOST=sqlserver_host' \
-e 'DB_PORT=1433' \
-e 'DB_NAME=contentbox_docker' \
-e 'DB_USER=sa' \
-e 'DB_PASSWORD=myS3cur3P455' \
-v `pwd`/contentbox-media:/app/includes/shared/media \
ortussolutions/contentbox

As you can see, these commands can become quite long. As such, using Docker Compose or CFConfig may provide a more manageable alternative.

Granular Environmental Control

A number of environment variables, specific to the ContentBox image, are availabe for use. They include:

express=true - Uses an H2, in-memory database. Useful for very small sites or for testing the image. See http://www.h2database.com/html/main.html
install=true (alias: installer) - Adds the installer module at runtime, to assit in configuring your installation. You would omit this from your run command, once your database has been configured
$HEALTHCHECK_URI - Specifies the URI endpoint for container health checks. By default, this is set http://127.0.0.1:${PORT}/ at 1 minute intervals with 5 retries and a timeout of 30s
FWREINIT_PW - Allows you to specify the reinit password for the ColdBox framework
SESSION_STORAGE - Allows the customization of session storage. Allows any valid this.sessionStorage value, available in Application.cfc. By default it will use the JDBC connection to store your sessions in your database of choice.
DISTRIBUTED_CACHE - Allows you to specify a CacheBox cache region for distributing ContentBox content, flash messages, cache storage, RSS feeds, sitemaps and settings. There are only three cache regions defined in this image: default, template and jdbc. jdbc is the default cache that will distribute your data, default and template are in-memory caches. Please see the distributed caching section below to see how to register more caches.
H2_DIR - Allows you to specify a custom directory path for your H2 database. By convention, this is set to /data/contentbox/db within the container
contentbox_* - All Contentbox "Geek Settings" may be provided as environment variables, allowing granular control of your ContentBox settings.
ORM_SECONDARY_CACHE - If true it will activate the ORM secondary cash to the ehcache provider. By default it is turned off.
ORM_DIALECT - You can choose the specific ORM dialect if needed, if not we will try to auto-detect it for you.

In addition, the CommandBox docker image environment variables are also available to use in your container. For additional information on using the CommandBox docker image, see the initial release blog entry.

Automatic Session Distribution

By default, the ContentBox image will use the Lucee Open Source CFML engine for running the application. It will also configure the datasource to store user sessions so you can easily scale the image or send it to Docker Swarm, Kubernetes, etc for scalability. You can also use the SESSION_STORAGE environment variable to switch the connection to any backend you like.

Distributed Caching

By default, our image configures a jdbc CacheBox cache region that will be used to distribute settings, flash data, content, RSS feeds, sitemaps, etc. This means that out-of-the-box, your ContentBox containers can use the database to distribute its content within a swarm or set of services. However, if you would like to use your own CacheBox providers or a more sophisticated distributed cache like Redis or Couchbase, you can.

We have also prepared a docker compose and distribution example using Redis (more caches to come) and the ContentBox image. This example will allow you to have a stack that can easily distribute your sessions and content via Redis. You can find the repository here: https://github.com/Ortus-Solutions/docker-contentbox-distributed

Healthchecks

The image contains built-in capabilities for healthchecks for the running application. You can customize the URL entry point by using the $HEALTHCHECK_URI environment variable. By default, this is set http://127.0.0.1:${PORT}/ at 1 minute intervals with 5 retries and a timeout of 30s.

In The Real World

Playing around with the image is great, but what does this mean for you as a developer? Effectively it means that you can develop and deploy customized CMS applications with only a single theme directory (and, possibly, a customized config/Coldbox.cfc file).

The image location for the themes directory in ContentBox is /app/modules/contentbox/themes. Any theme mounted in to this directory can be configured in the run of the container, which means you no longer have to commit an entire ContentBox installation to your repository. You can mount only those files and folders ( e.g. - custom modules ) necessary for your application to do its thing. In addition, you also have power to reconfigure ContentBox settings on-the-fly using environment variables prefixed with contentbox_{site}_{setting}={value}.

Let's start an image with a custom theme, and a ColdBox module, persisting our assets, while using a MySQL database with the installer:

docker run -p 8080:8080 \
-e 'installer=true' \
-e 'cfconfig_adminPassword=myS3cur3P455' \
-e "DB_CONNECTION_STRING=jdbc:mysql://mysqlhost:3306/contentbox_docker?useUnicode=true&characterEncoding=UTF-8&useLegacyDatetimeCode=true" \
-e 'DB_CLASS=org.gjt.mm.mysql.Driver' \
-e 'DB_USER=contentbox_user' \
-e 'DB_PASSWORD=myS3cur3P455' \
-v `pwd`/contentbox-media:/app/includes/shared/media \
ortussolutions/contentbox
-e 'contentbox_cb_site_theme=myCustomTheme' \
-v `pwd`/myCustomTheme:/app/modules/contentbox/themes/myCustomTheme \
ortussolutions/contentbox
-v `pwd`/myAwesomeModule:/app/modules/myAwesomeModule \
ortussolutions/contentbox

Customizable Volume Paths

Please note the following customizable paths for custom assets.

/app/includes/shared/media - ContentBox Media Manager
/app/modules - CommandBox managed modules
/app/modules_app - Custom ColdBox modules
/app/modules/contentbox/themes - Custom ContentBox Themes
/app/modules/contentbox/widgets - Custom ContentBox Widgets
/app/modules/contentbox/modules_user - Custom ContentBox Modules

There are more geek settings and paths that we have time to go in to in this post but, suffice it to say, you will be able to control nearly every aspect of your site settings on the startup of your Docker container.

For a list open source themes, readily available for your customization, visit Forgebox.

Note that the Application.cfc and the config directory of the ContentBox Docker image have some customizations specific to their purpose. If you wish to customize those, please see the Docker build repository files to ensure those customizations are present in yours.

In Short

The ContentBox image for Docker re-vamps the entire Modular CMS game by de-coupling your customizations and user assets from the underlying framework. It can makes your source code lighter-weight, as well as providing you with a standardized development environment, which matches your production container strategy.

Quick Guide

Quick Setup

The Quick Setup will take you through 8 easy steps in order to configure and install a ContentBox Express Edition with an embedded database so we can start working with ContentBox. Ready, set, go!

Note If you prefer a container (Docker) approach, then use the Docker getting started guide.

Step 1 : Download

Go to https://www.ortussolutions.com/products/contentbox#downloads and click on the download ContentBox Express Edition for your operating system.

Once downloaded, extract the contentbox-express-{version}.zip (we recommend you to do this in a new folder).

Step 2 : Start it up!

Open the bin folder and double click startup.bat (Windows) or execute the startup.sh (Linux,Mac) and Kaboom! ContentBox will start to deploy a local embedded server with an embedded database.

Warning If you are in Unix or Mac OS X, make sure you give the bin folder execution permissions. You can do this by running chmod -R +x bin to give the directory execution permissions.

Step 3 : Running the Installer

Once the server is online go to your browser and type http://localhost:8085 which is the port that ContentBox Express uses and hit enter. Your browser should now open the install wizard. Read the instructions and click on the Start Installer button to start the process.

Hint If you go back again to the bin folder you are going to find a new folder called contentboxDB. This is the ContentBox Express embedded database. This doesn’t mean you can’t use other data bases with ContentBox Express Edition, but it has been done this way out of convenience.

Step 4 : Administrator Information

Fill out the setup details for your ContentBox Administrator and click Next Step.

Step 5 : Site Setup

Fill out basic information for your ContentBox Site and click Next Step.

Step 6 : Email Setup

You can connect ContentBox to any email system in order to send notifications. By clicking Next Step without changing anything ContentBox will use by default the email settings in your application server (default).

Step 7 : URL Rewrites

ContentBox Express Edition already has Full URL Rewrites enabled. So just use the dropdown to select ContentBox Express and it will automatically configure ContentBox for full URL rewrites. We also support iis, nginx, apache, and CommandBox.

Step 8 : Done!

Click Start Installation! ContentBox will prepare the database and process the final configurations so it can start running.

You are done! Go ahead and visit your site by clicking Visit Site and log into your Contentbox Administration by clicking Visit Administrator.

Danger : Please make sure you delete the contentbox-installer and contentbox-dsncreator modules after installation. The administrator will warn you about it and you can even delete those modules from the admin dashboard.

Welcome to ContentBox!

The ContentBox Dashboard

Before diving into ContentBox, we recommend you to take a few minutes to get to know your Dashboard.

Home

Under Recent Content you have: Recent Pages, Recent Entries and Recent Content Store.

On the right panel you have Data Snapshots where you can check Top visited Content, Top commented Content, Discussions and Content. Everything you see through the site has what we call a Quick View. By right clicking on any instance you can get the content immediately as a quick view so you can edit or actually view it and see the content within. Note: You can’t quick view the Content Store. Then you have the whole layout of the administrator. On the upper right corner you have who you are and the about information about the software. There is also the add\/remove Sidebar button so that you can remove the Sidebar to have more reading space. On the upper left you have your administrator commands [the house icon on top] opening the site, [the plus icon] adding new data, [pencil icon] creating posts [the pencil icon + close] and some administrative options [master 3xWheel icon:] like the ability to clear the caches, reload the applications, reload the ORM, reload the administrator, and reload every single piece of module that you have available at ContentBox. You have a Global Search which searches pretty much anything in your ContentBox.

About

Our about page is very useful. Apart from your build information it contains keyboard shortcuts! ContentBox has a lot of keyboard shortcuts available for you and you can very easily navigate throughout it once you memorize them. Also, for you module developers we also have an API based on a jquery java script library. And you can very easily do data biding for your own shortcuts so if you want to offer you own keyboard shortcuts it’s very easy.

Updates

Our sophisticated auto-update system offers 3 ways of getting updates from Ortus Solutions. Check for updates: We have a Stable Channel which can check against new ContentBox releases. We also have a Bleeding Edge Release: all our releases will go in our release cycle so all our releases will be in the bleeding edge channel 1 or 2 weeks before actually making to a stable channel.

Download Updates:

If you are upgrading from an old version of ContentBox, or you are a Ortus Solutions support client, we have the capability to give you an URL for specific patches.

Upload Updates:

If you don’t have internet access you can upload the patch and it will be delivered through your ContentBox installation. Options 2 and 3 are great avenues for those companies and individuals that have support contracts or other special project arrangements with Ortus Solutions.

Content

ContentBox provides many options for managing content, including:

The ability to create pages which can be hierarchical
An integrated blog which gives you instant, turn-key blogging capabilities
The super-flexible Content Store which allows you to create and store any kind of content that you’d like. Whether you’re creating custom localized content, simple lists, or a complex content-delivery system for your mobile app, the Content Store is specifically designed to accommodate whatever your site or app needs. In conjunction with a RESTful API, you have a powerful content repository that can be used however you want!
Categories which allow you to quickly and easily organize all your content in whatever way you choose
An easy-to-use Media Manager which not only provides storage for your documents, images and other assets, but is also integrated into content creation tools to make using media in your content quick and easy.

Pages

Let’s get started with Pages. Inside pages on your right panel you see that we have set up filters to filter out the view of the pages. You also have Global Actions: Delete Selected, Draft Selected, Publish Selected, Import, Export All and Show All.

Page Editor

Inside Pages click Create Page and the Page Editor will open. Name your page by giving it a Title and ContentBox will give you the permalink for the page. By default, the Page Editor uses CKeditor for a WYSIWYG editor. ContentBox also offers different other editors that are available in your installation.

Hint Remember that editors are programmable so any module developer can actually register new editors in your system.

The Page editor has markup support [button right beside Editor Button]. HTML markup is currently supported by default.

ContentBox’s implementation of CKEditor comes with support for a number of plugins, including:

Insert code snippets [page icon beside (right) to World],
iframe [the world]
Youtube or embedded media
Insert Lorem Ipsum Dolor [T] to create content.
Contentbox Widgets

On the right panel you have the Paging Details.

Publishing

ContentBox allows you to publish the page on a specific date and time, as well as set an expiration date to expire the content on any schedule you choose. Additionally, commit messages can be included (and even required) via the change log, providing built-in version control of your content.

When saving content, a number of options are available:

Save: Preserve a snapshot of the page as is, and continue editing
Draft: Save a draft of the content and close Page Editor
Publish: Publish the content to your site and close Page Editor

Hint You can collapse the side bar and still have your Quick Edits controls right from the gear widget [on the up right corner].

Display Options

Display options allows you to control many aspects related to how the page will be displayed within your site.

Parent: Choosing a parent determines the hierarchy of the page within your site. For a “top-level” page, simply choose “No Parent”
Layout: Specifies which layout the page will use. It can inherit default settings, or use a custom setting.
Mobile Layout; Specifies what layout the page should use when viewed on a mobile device. Set to “None” to use the normal layout for the page.
Show In Menus: Tells ContentBox whether this page should show up in automatic menu builders. If set to “No”, the page will not show in ContentBox menus.
Menu Order: If your page is shown in menus, you can specify the order that this page should appear.

Modifiers

Modifiers allows you configure extra information about how your page will be accessed.

Creator: Allows you to configure who is displayed as the author of this page. This is particularly useful if several editors have modified the page, but a specific author should be acknowledged
Allow Comments: Allows you configure if comments should be allowed for the page.
Password Protection: Allows you to specify a particular password needed to access this content. This password can be shared with allowed visitors to provide secure access to specific pages.

Caching Settings

ContentBox provides administrators with granular control over how content is cached within your site. Each page can be configured with the following caching settings:

Cache Page Content: When set to “Yes”, the content of your page will be cached (based on global or page-specific timeouts)
Cache Page Layout: When set to “Yes”, the content of your page, as well as the page layout HTML, will be cached (based on global or page-specific timeouts).
Cache Timeout: Specifies how long (in minutes) the page should be cached. Set to “0” to use the global setting
Idle Timeout: Specifies (in minutes) the idle timeout for your page. Set to “0” to use the global setting

Categories

ContentBox allows you to provide additional organization of your content by setting one or more categories. You can choose from a list of already-configured categories, or even add new categories by adding a comma-separated list of categories in the “New Categories” text field.

HTML Attributes

To help you configure your page for Search Engine Optimization (SEO), ContentBox provides the ability to specify HTML attributes for your page, including:

Keywords: List of keywords that will be added to the <head> of your page
Description: Text description of the content that will be added to the <head> of your page

On the bottom of the page you have the Page Excerpts. You can create summaries of your Page Excerpts pages and then in your UI use them as you see fit.

Custom Fields

One of the most powerful features of ContentBox content is the ability to attach metadata which can be done via Custom Fields. You can add as many Custom Fields as you like in the form of key-value pairs.

A little Tale: How the metadata works
The metadata is stored in the object itself and then you can retrieve it using the CBhelper when you are building themes, widgets and events.

After you are done editing your page, you can go ahead and Publish it [click publish]. You will then be redirected to the Pages page where you will see that your page is published.

Child Pages

In addition to specifying the parent of a page via the Page Editor, ContentBox also allows you to quickly create “child” pages via the main Page Manager.

On the Pages page, find a page you have already created and click Page Actions and select Create Child. Page actions button) in the product row at the right edge; click ‘Create Child’]. The Page Editor will open as normal. However, in this scenario, the new page will automatically be added to the selected parent page.

When you Publish your Child Page you will be redirected to the Parent Page Hierarchy View where you will be able to see all the Child Pages for the parent page. Just like with Pages, when you have created multiple Child Pages you have also complete control of manipulating how the Child Pages are rendered. So again, you can choose which Child Page should be last or first with simple drag and drop.

You can then continue to go back in your hierarchy and you can go back home [click home button]. The “+” sign beside a page indicates that that pages has at least one Child Page.

Hint Visit your page to see the changes you have made to your site. We recommend you Clear Content Caches.

Global Actions

The Pages manager provides a number of global actions [Global Action button; drop down menu\/beside create page button] that make managing your content easy. These actions include:

Delete Selected: Will delete all selected pages (via checkboxes)
Draft Selected: Will put all selected pages into draft status (via checkboxes)
Publish Selected: Will publish all selected pages (via checkboxes)
Import: If you have a ContentBox page export file (.json) from another site, you can use the Import option to quickly import the file and add the page to your site*
Export All: Allows you to export all your pages as either XML o r JSON. This is particular useful if you need to transfer content from one site to another.
Show All: By default, ContentBox “pages” your view to provide the best performance. However, you can select “Show All” to view the full list of all the pages in your site.

Page Actions

Each page in the Pages view has an actions column which allows you to quickly execute several actions on your page.

Page Info

Provides detailed information about your page [go to about row on the list and hover over the ‘’i’’], from last edited date to page-rendering configuration.

Clone

If you have a page that you’d like to use as starting point for a new page, you can Clone a selected page by choosing “Clone” from the Page Actions menu. When cloning a page, you can specify a new, custom title for the page, as well as whether or not the new, cloned page should be automatically published. Additionally, you can clone entire hierarchy of pages [hover over products]. Interesting: ContentBox will look into the content of cloned pages and update any slug that points to any point of the hierarchy so anything that is slash “myoriginalpage” page will be rewritten to slash\/new-myoriginalpage.

Delete

Choosing “Delete” from the Page Actions menu will delete the selected page, as well as any child pages.

History

Choosing History from the Page Actions menu will open the history channel for the selected page. You can view how many versions of the page exist, as well as compare the current version [black dot (left side under diff) to the last item] with the latest version [click compare versions; red button]. Comparing two versions will display a comparison chart of the data that have changed between versions. If needed, content versions can roll back to previous versions. When content is rolled back, ContentBox will create a new version number for the current version with the rollback.

Widgets. An Easy Example.

Widgets are one of the most powerful tools in ContentBox. Let’s start with an easy sample: Creating a News Page.

[Pages view] Create a New Page [Create Page] and name it “News Page” [title]. Inside the CKEditor [ckeditor window] type: “Welcome to my news!” and give it a heading [heading 2].

Click Create a New Widget and type “RSS” in the Quick Filter. Select the RSS Widget . You will see that it gives you an error because you need to fill out the required info for the widget. To do this, get the RSS link for your favorite news site and paste it in the feed URL field. If your link is valid, you should see a list of links display in the Widget Preview area.

Before clicking Insert Widget there are a few things you can modify. For example, maxItems allows you to select very easy how many items you want to be displayed in. You can also use showBody in order to show the body or collapse the body of the news article.

Now that you are done configuring the options that the RSS widget offers, click Insert Widget. You should now see a graphical representation of your widget within the CKEditor content editing area.

Hint You can configure your inserted widget anytime by double-clicking the widget content, or by choosing “Edit Widget” from the context menu

You can actually have a Quick Preview by clicking the EYE or typing the Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl + P. The Quick Preview allows you to see how the changes you have made to your page (like your new widget) are going to render on your site before publishing them.

Inside the Page Editor

Apart from the widgets you also have the ability to insert entries from the Content Store [ contentstore icon], to link to specific pages [ link icon], or to link to a specific entry [pencil icon]. You can also insert different media items and images [image icon].

For example, to link a few words [select a word from TEXT] to a specific page, highlight the desired words and click the [Link Page] icon. This will display a list of all pages in ContentBox from which you can choose the desired page to link to and even specify whether the link should be SSL or not. The same can be done with ContentBox blog entires.

You can also insert from the Content Store [ccontentstore icon]. You can try inserting something from the Content Store you will see it creates a kind of pseudo Markup. ContentBox will automatically render this content when the page is viewed.

Hint [clicking the eye or type CTRL+P] to get a preview and to actually see the translation of that markup.

As an administrator here you have full control of how this editor looks like. So for example right now you are seeing every single option known to man. However you can basically limit this for editors. You can limit actually all the controls that you are seeing. So you have all control of how everything looks and feels. So if you need to make it simpler you can really do so very easy.

You can also insert images from the media manager gallery [click image icon\/beside ‘A’], you can insert an image and say, browse server [click browse server], and you'll see that it’ll give you our ColdBox file browser [will pop up]. You can see the different medias that are available in the system [ ICONS\/quit list view]. You can actually create new media very easily by drag and drop.

Content Response Formats

When you are in your site (not in the admin) there are also pretty cool things you can do. We created what we call a print renders. You can now come in and say, I want to view my page as print. You just need to add <.print> to the page URL and hit enter. And you will see that it changes the whole format to print version. You have complete control of this layout as well. By convention you just have the same layout called underscore print. You can create one called underscore pdf as well or add “.pdf” to URL, and you'll see that it’ll produce a pdf output of your page as you designed it. You can also produce a word document by adding <.doc> to the URL of the page.

The Blog

The Blog [Content dropdown menu + blog], it basically reuses almost the same things. Actually under the hood, you can say we have an ORM object model that you can very easily extend and create custom content types, so, entries actually are just another custom content type based on a custom content object that we provide in ContentBox. You have the same capabilities [Global Actions] except there is no hierarchy but the rest it’s the same as if you were writing a normal page except these are based on blogs.

The Content Store

[Click Content dropdown ContentStore] The contentstore is one of the most interesting features of ContentBox which allows you to store any piece of content, whether it can be Java Script, HTML CSS internalization bid, anything that you like can be stored, binaries images RSS feeds, you name it. You can store anything you want in the content store.

This is also a custom content type based on ORM object. Same capabilities [global actions] of export, draft, importing, are available to you. The same actions pretty much. [3xGears] You have history, so you have version control, you have the ability to export them, edit them, clone them, delete them, etc.

When you create content [click create content] is a little bit different than the other ones. You have a title for your content. The slug is the unique identifier that you will access this content piece with; and a short description. And then in the editor [click the editor box] you can choose this to be content [circle around blank area] or if you wanted just a simple text area [change Editor dropdown menu to Text Area] you can move to a simple text area [click OK].

[Content Store Editor opens] and [click typing box] just type a content as you see fit. Or if you want, what we call [drop down menu Editor, select Edit\/Area + cancel\/ok] our coders.

Example: [coders editors drop down, default HTML] And right here is our coders editor and you can see that you can even say [drop down menu] 'I want to type in ColdFusion', you can go ahead and start typing here [type asdf + enter x3] and it’ll do some syntax highlighting for you.

But the whole thing is for you to be able to create content. Give the metadata [scroll down] to specific content.

You can also choose publishing schema [scroll up, topright corner side bar] for your content, different caching characteristics [hover over caching open\/close] if you are an administrator and also, categorize [open\/close categories] your content as you see fit. [click BACK] [Content Store view opens] So the Content Store is very powerful and you can pretty much do anything you like with it and then retrieve or build your own modules to get that content out.

Media Manager

[Content + Media manager] Media manager is and embedded media manager that we ship with ColdBox. If you are an administrator you have different libraries [Switch Library drop down menu; top right] that you can managed for example if you want to manage the widgets [click widgets in the DDM] you can manage the widgets, so you can install manually other widgets or download some of the widgets that you have available here.

[Switch Library + Update] You can check out the auto update channel so you can actually do any type of modifications. So it’s up to you what you want to do with is [switch to list view]. Obviously, and administrator can choose all the different things [select new ‘blog folder’ & click X to delete] and all different permissions and right that you can do with this [hover in circle] as well.

Comments

[Click Comments + Inbox] It’s basically an inbuilt commenting system. It has lots of capabilities [Global Actions] from approving to moderation. You have a lot of settings [comment + settings] available for commenting as well, from enabling ‘Site Wide’ comments, to disabling them. URL translations, security captchas, moderation rules, notification rules, so you have a lot of flexibility when it comes to your comments so you can attach comments to anything e.g. pages, blog entries, etc except the Content Store.

Look and Feel

[look & Feel + Layouts] Now, Look and Feel are obviously very important. 0So you have our layouts section. As you can see some of our sections are tide to forgebox [ForgeBox upper right corner].

Again this is administration permission, but you can actually talk into ForgeBox [click ForgeBox] so you can connect to ForgeBox. It will bring you all the different setups available that you can install immediately. If you download a layout for example, you can then go to your Manage Layouts

[click manage layouts \/ left side panel] and you can see that the new layout will be there. If you want to set is as your current layout you can go ahead and activate it [click Activate for the layout]. You can go to your site and check your new layout. So very easy [back to admin \/ active layout] you can now start skinning or downloading themes.

If you are building themes just please remember to contribute into ForgeBox so everybody can benefit.

[Manage Layouts] Management is for you to be able to see which layouts you have. Activate them, upload them, if you need to upload a new theme [Upload layout \/ up right], rebuild the internal registry or do any kind of clean up.