This article provides an overview of e107, and summarizes the key features of this Content Management System. It is primarily for anyone who has never used e107 CMS, but is interested in knowing what e107 is all about. Most of the features are for you to manage your site by using the Administrator functions. But this isn't a "how to" article. Hence, I've organized the features in sections where they're related.
Introduction
Administering e107 CMS and the presentation of the content is based on PHP, Javascript and other supporting scripts, image files etc. that are the physical files at your site.
The content is stored in a MySQL database. This includes your membership data, menu items, news, article, calendar entries and just about everything else that is not coded in a physical file at your site. You use Theme, Menus and other features such as News, Articles and Content pages to present the content in the way you want your website to look like, i.e. the layout of menus, colour, images, etc. The combination of physical files and the content in your database allows you to create and maintain your website.
At the heart of e107 is the core system that provides a lot of base functionality to manage your site. The base e107 install package also includes a list of plugins to provide additional functionality not originally in the base code. With the ability to add plugins, other developers have coded "add-ons" to enhance e107 functionality. For the most part, you have a lot of flexibility to choose which features you want to use at your site. e107 provides some standard themes you can use. There are many other themes created by others who are quite willing to share, while some people prefer to customize their own for a unique look. You can preview a theme before enabling it for your site, and you can change the theme at will.
Unless you plan to do a lot of customization, you can literally manage your site by using the features described in this article without writing a single line of code.
Knowledge of PHP or MySQL is not required!
Key features
User management
Membership - Using this feature is not mandatory, however, it allows you to invite visitors to sign up, with an option to provide a "members only" website. Members can post chat. comments, forum postings, submit news etc. Member profile includes name, custom title (shows on forum postings), email address, birth date, popular online chat identity (ICQ, AIM, MSN), website, and extended fields that you can add. Optionally send email notifications to new registrants to validate their email address and advise them to activate their accounts. You can also choose to allow anonymous postings at your site.
User and user classes - You can assign user classes to control what area of your site that each user class has access to. You can make certain users administrators with selective permissions, e.g. forum moderator. You can also allow other administrators to manage user classes.
Banlist - Not entirely "bullet proof", of course, but you can decide who you want to ban from your site, based on their IP address.
Content management
Image postings - Enable emoticons to add some smileys to your site. You can allow members to choose your own list of avatars and/or allow them to upload their own avatars and/or photos to their profile. You can also use image files in your news, articles and other content.
News - Publish the latest news for your visitors. You can also allow others to submit news to your site.
Articles - Use this feature (like this article) to publish material of interest to your visitors. You can also allow others to submit articles to your site.
Reviews - Use this feature to publish reviews you've written about movies, books, products and just about anything interesting. With reviews, you the author determine a rating on the subject. You can also allow others to submit articles.
Content - Use this feature to add just about any content, including syndicated content from other websites. This allows you to put pages of material at your site, integrated into your e107 website look and feel.
Calendar - Use the calendar to post events at your site, including posting URL of other websites for additional information and optionally link calendar event to forum discussions.
Downloads - You can host files for download by visitors to your site. Optionally activate a pop-up message that represents an agreement for your visitor to agree to before download, or they can click cancel to abort download.
Uploads - Enable this feature to allow members to upload files to your site.
Discussions and communications
Forum - Setup discussion forums, choose who can participate and who can moderate. You use the forum headings to organize your discussion topics. Optionally allow users to track replies to forum threads they started. Polls can also be part of forum threads. Optionally enable a link to forum rules that you can write up for your members to read. You can also enable a "report post to moderator" button. Other nice features are user info such as who's online, top posters, most active threads, and user's own postings.
Comment - Allow comments to news, articles, reviews, polls, downloads etc. You can also enable nested comments. This feature allows posting of comment by person B in reply to a comment by person A.
Private Message - This popular plugin is included in the base install package. This plugin allows members to send private messages to each other. When you view a member's profile, it has a button to send private message to that member. PM icon also appears on forum.
Chatbox - Not intended to be real time interactive, this feature allows you and your visitors to post comments that are immediately visible, and is a quick means to chat in a non-time sensitive manner.
Polls - Conduct a poll at your site, and decide if it's open to public or members only. Poll results are updated and displayed as votes are submitted.
Welcome Message - Choose to enable separate welcome messages for unregistered visitors, members and your administrators, and specify what you want to convey when they visit your site.
Other features
Fader - Included as a standard plugin, you use this feature to display fading messages and/or images to draw attention. Fader is displayed in a menu "box".
Banners - Display an advertising banner at your site.
Front Page - Determine what your front page looks like for visitors. News is default, but you can choose to display a custom page.
Menus and Custom Menus - Use Menus to organize where you want your Chatbox, Poll, Main Menu, etc., while Custom Menus allow you to create your own menu "box" that you can then activate it like a standard menu, and move it to specific area.
New Forum Posts - Included as a standard plugin, you can use this feature to display new forum postings at your front page.
News feeds - Retrieve and parse other sites' backend RSS news feeds to display at your site.
Online - Display number of guests and members online at your site. There are other plugins that provide more elaborate online features.
Search - Allows visitors to search for specific category (News, Forum, etc.) or all categories by checking selected categories or all categories. You can optionally restrict search to members only.
Site Statistics - You can enable logging to capture site statistics such as number of pages viewed, referrals from other sites.
Links - Set up links to other sites. You can also allow others to submit links to your site.
Cache - Optionally enable cache to improve site performance.
Administration
Maintenance - Enable the maintenance mode while you organize your website, install a plugin or perform an upgrade. You can display your own message to visitors while you have maintenance turned on. Visitors cannot access any area until you turn off maintenance.
Database - Use this feature to backup your database, check database validity, optimize database and update database if applicable when you upgrade to a newer version.
Integrity Check - This plugin allows you to check the integrity of the physical files of e107 base and plugins at your site, for possible missing or corrupted files. It is a great time-saving troubleshooting tool.
File Manager - Use this feature to upload files to your site, or delete files from your site, although I'd suggest that FTP software is more practical.
PHP Info - Display your site's PHP configuration to administrators, if necessary to conduct troubleshooting.
Plugins
The list is extensive, so I'll just list a few that I use. You can check this website's Download sections just to get some idea of what's out there.
* Coppermine Gallery - Picture gallery at your site
* FAQ - Frequently Ask Questions (used at this site)
* eCalendar - Enhanced Calendar for e107
* Tell A Friend - Visitor can send email from your site recommending it to others
* eContact - Visitor can send email to you, the webmaster
* Guestbook - Visitor can post a message at your site.
* Survey - Conduct an extensive survey at your site.
* Games - Visitor can play games at your site.
* Weather and News - plugins that present info'.
Hopefully, this article gives you a good overview of what e107 can do for you. The best way to find out is try it yourself!
Original date of article: 04-May-2004 (first written for v0.615).
This article has been taken from e107 FAQ by Zombie.