Frequently Asked Questions

What is the point of writing  yet another CMS?

Well, if you ask us we needed a simple yet powerful system that can be easily extended for simple tasks. There were zero proper alternatives available.The code we found had security holes in it or it was chaotic, cryptic or bloated. Mostly all of those. Small is beatiful. That said there are good, professional alternatives around. If you are happy with one of them we do not blame you.

What are key concepts in SkoopyCMS

Make it as simple as it can get. Keep the modules as small as possible. Keep the code as clean as possible. Do not intermingle PHP and XHTML. Make it extendable. Make it easily extendable. Make it quickly extendable. Make it perform fast.  Make it use few system resources. Make it free to use.

How is SkoopCMS licensed?

Well, that is a tough one! Please have a look at the License page.

The module/functionality xxxx is missing. Why?

This is a minimalistt framework. If you need a special module you can easily extend the system. However, as time time goes by new modules will be added to the site. So stay tuned. Or better still, create one and send it to be added to the repository and get the glory.

I have used product XXX for content management and it is better and a lot more powerful

Fine! Keep using it in case you are happy with it.  SkoopCMS is not the most feature-loaded beast available. It has a specific target and and it will definitely not compete with other products. And remember it is actually a collection of ideas, not a product.

Also... ehm... go have a look at the CPU/memory consumption of your current product or framework. If you are happy with it and do not need a lightweight, fast alternative, then simply use your current tool!

I do not understand classes and objects. Can you provide a version without them?

No. No. No. Never again back to the "rat's nest", "spaghetti code", "cat's vomit" or whatever it is called. There are plenty of  PHP OO programming tutorials in the Internet. It may also happen that one can be found here in the future.

I cannot find any echo or print statements. Where did you hide them? Why?

The template system takes care of it in all normal cases. If you insist on seeing them please have a look at the templates_c directory where the compiled templates end up. Do not worry about where or when the data is echoed. The stuff you want will be on browser screen if the module returns it.

But PHP is a templating language per se so why use templates?

Sigh. Go away. Do it now, please! But have a look at C#+ASP or Java+JSP to get a clue.

I have heard that Smarty sucks and is slow having a huge overhead!

If you have read the myths about "unnecessary Smarty overhead" compared to Hugely Better Systems, go have a look at our Performance section where we compare four different systems: Three without Smarty and one with Smarty. 

If you, however, believe the guys telling horror stories about Smarty go ahead and join the mob that follows them to their cosy little Jonestown. They must know better that us. You know we have only used Smarty since 2002 and have not yet stumbled onto the vast problems so they must be still ahead :) And our group of programmers has only written about like 300 web applications using Smarty so far.

So please understand that we do not as much experience as the know-betters have. We know that many of them have  tested Smarty for up to two hours! It may well be that we see the light before 2020.

CKEditor sucks. I found a better lightweight alternative

All HTML editors suck. That includes 90% of human HTML experts and everybody in our team. Yes, we have tested quite a few WYSIWYG tools and so far found no alternative. Either the editing does not work or the output is far from valid XHTML If, however, you really like the editor you have found feel free to use it instead of CKeditor. You can probably include it in the form much the same way. Go ahead, test it and if it is really cool, stable and produces good code let us know and we will include in the feature set.

Can I use another database engine

Sure. The old-school way of using procedural MySQL has only been used because most of us already know it. We recommend the use of PDO which provides many improvements over the old-fashioned style. With PDO you have a selection of database drivers. There will be a future tutorial article that shows how to convert one's thinking to object orientation in database handling.

The CSS and the templates  provided are an abomination

This is something we agree. If you can improve them, please do!

This site looks simply awful!

Sorry abou that :) We cannot help being fans of Art Deco....

The adminstration code and the templates suck

Well... that may well be the case - but for a reason. Remember that the first DataBrowser was written in 2003 and after it was developed in horrible haste for a few years. Now  the time has come to clean up the code and add new features. As for the templates the DataBrowser template is already producing XHTML 1.0 Transitional  compliant code and the UpdateForm will follow soon. The work is in progress alreay so stay tuned.

Where are all the Web 2.0 and the HTML5 features?

We assume you are referring to highly interactive sites that do not use Flash, Java, Silverlight or other plug-in technologies but rely on cross-browser compliant Javascript. Writing a framework that has a wide selection of DHTML features is pretty hard and needs quite a lot of design and code. But it is on the way already. 

On the other hand - if you mean Flash, Java or Silverlight we have no plans to include any of them in the core system.Small is beautiful and if you need something extra you can always write a small module that may make use of external objects. And please note that we have nothing against Flash and friends because we know that some things just cannot be done without extensions.

As for HTML5 we have written a fact page that should answer the most common questions.

We have written several media-intensive sites that output media using Flash and/or HTML5 tags.

CKEditor does not show the styles correctly

CKEditor is included in its very basic installation state. You can fine-tune its features including page templates, CSS usage and many other features as well. Please consult the CKEditor documentation.

I deleted an image I have added to an active page!!!

Yes. This is a 'feature' as the Android or Apple people would probably say. There is no checking as of writing this.

We have been planning to inject a small hack in the KCFinder code. This should make it possible to have a safe file handling capability with a callback routine to check the usage of an image/file in the pages created. But this will take place later. No promises.