Blog about concrete5 cms

We have just updated the tables addon for concrete5.

What’s new in Tables 2.0:

Some bug fixes:

- when new column was added, the default value was not automatically added to existing rows. Fixed. Thanks to Steven Braun for bug report;

- table was not deleted properly when “Delete table” button is used (the record was not removed from swpTablesTables table in the database). Fixed. Thanks to Steven Braun for report.

Small improvements:

- translation function was changed from custom swp_table_t() to standard t() of concrete5.

Major improvements:

Field types functionality was added. This actually allows to set a specific field type for each cell in the table. The following field types are available at the moment:

- Text field. This is the default field type, which in fact was the only field type available in the first release of our addon;

- File. This field type allows you to choose a file from concrete5 file manager and the table cell will display the link that allows users to download the file;

- Image. It allows you to choose an image from the file manager. That image will be displayed in the table cell.

- Rich text content (with TinyMCE WYSIWYG editor). It allows you to embed rich text with extra formatting provided by TinyMCE editor (just like the “Content” block)

- Block from scrapbook. This one allows you to choose a block from your scrapbooks that should be displayed in the table cell. In fact this allows you to embed any concrete5 block inside table cell.

For customers using Tables 1.0

Even though upgrade should go smooth, we recommend to backup your website and database before upgrading.

Demo

If you are interested in the Tables addon and want to see it in action, including the admin dashboard, please contact us and we will provide you with access details.

admin Our news

Just a quick tip for concrete5 users: When you are moving blocks on the page (from area to area, or just arranging blocks inside one area), try to point your mouse  closer to middle of the block (vertically). This way it will be easier to target destination space, than if you take the block close to the bottom or top border.

Take a look at the picture.

This behavior possibly depends on which browser you use, I don’t know, but taking block at the middle works in any browser perfectly. I mean modern browsers and not IE 6

admin concrete5 for dummies

In fact it is very easy to copy pages in concrete5, but many people (especially those who use concrete5 for the first time) don’t know how this can be done.

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admin concrete5 for dummies

Maintenance mode disables website frontent for usual visitors, however admin backend is available for website owner. Enabling maintenance mode is recommended on high-traffic websites while doing backups and other maintenance procedures.
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admin concrete5 for dummies

Quick tip for developers writing custom blocks for concrete5. If you have coded a block, placed its folder in ‘blocks’ directory but cannot see it available for installation in concrete5 backend (in the "Add functionality" section), check the controller class name. That is the issue in most cases. It should match the block directory, i.e. if your block folder is “my_folder”, then in controlller.php you should have this:

class MyFolderBlockController extends BlockController {

I don’t recommend to use anything in your block directory name except digits, a-z characters and underscores.

admin concrete5 for developers

If you develop your own block, you will probably need to use some css to properly style it. But the issue is that you can’t access the css file of the users theme (of course if you’re not developing the block for one specific project). However you can create and use custom css file for this specific block type.

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admin concrete5 for developers

Some new concrete5 users get confused when they cannot find a way to add table to a page at their concrete5 website. However in fact there are several ways to do that. I will describe 4 ways to add table on the page with concrete5 cms… Read more…

admin concrete5 for advanced users, concrete5 for developers, concrete5 for dummies

Some concrete5 themes allow to customize background color from admin dashboard. Try this:

1. Sign in to concrete5 dashboard.
2. Go to ‘Pages and Themes‘ section.
3. Click ‘Customize‘ button for a theme you want to edit.
4. If the theme supports the feature, you’ll see ‘Background‘ in theme customization options. You can choose any color using color picker and preview it almost immediatelly. Click ‘Save’ to apply the change.

admin concrete5 for dummies

In previous article we described how to replace sitename with logo by html editing. That was for older versions of concrete5 cms. In the latest cms you can do it without any html knowledge. Here is step-by-step instruction:

1. Sign in to admin dashboard.
2. Go to ‘Scrapbook‘ section.
3. Open ‘Global Scrapbook‘ there.
4. There will be one block there – Content: “My_Site_Name”.

You can go 2 ways: you can either edit this content block and add the picture via ‘Add image’ button, or you can do the following:

1) delete the content block (My_Site_Name);
2) Add new block of ‘Image’ type (it will allow you to choose/upload the logo and set logo dimensions you want);
3) after you add the image block, it will be assigned a default block name like ‘Global Scrapbook 34′. You should click ‘Rename’ button and change the block name to My_Site_Name. Click ‘Save’ to finish the renaming procedure;
4) go to the site frontend and check if the logo is used instead of sitename. If not, that might be a problem with concrete5 theme (currently only cordobo green park theme supports it on our website, but we’ll update the other concrete5 themes soon). You’ll need to edit html code in this case, see this article then.

exclusive concrete5 for dummies

We wrote about concrete5 generating core dump files on some hostings before, we’ve did a thorough investigation of this problem, but still couldn’t find the exact reason for the core dump files being generated. But most likely it happens when concrete5 tries to allocate more resources than the system allows the php process to get.
If the solution we described (increasing memory limit) doesn’t help you, you can try this workaround which makes concrete5 delete core dump files after the script is run. Our investigations show that usually nothing really bad happens when a core dump file appears, but it might be very bad if you collect numerouse core dump files and exhaust your account limit.

So, try this:
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admin concrete5 for advanced users