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TYPO3
Web Design & Development Guide
TYPO3
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TYPO3 is a
free, open source
content management system written with PHP and MySQL. It has
become one of the leading content management systems (CMS) on the web and in
intranets.
TYPO3 is not to be confused with
Typo, which is an open source blogging engine.
Author and availability
Initially authored by
Kasper Skårhøj, it is available for free and licensed under the
GNU General Public License. Today, the core of TYPO3 is developed by two
teams in a maintenance tree (4.x, leader Michael Stucki) and a development tree
(5.x, leader Robert Lemke). Independent authors have contributed hundreds of
pluggable extensions.
TYPO3 offers full flexibility and extendability while featuring an
accomplished set of ready-made interfaces, functions and modules. Nearly 2000
extensions are available for download under the
GNU General Public License from a repository called the
TYPO3 Extension Repository, or TER.
Operating modes
TYPO3 has two operating modes: a frontend, which presents a TYPO3
based website to its users, and a backend, used by authors and site
administrators to manage content for the website. The backend is used with an
ordinary
web browser, so there is no special software needed to work on a TYPO3-based
website.
Design
The system is based on templates. People can choose an existing
template and change features such as logo, colors, and fonts, or they can
construct their own templates using a configuration language called
TypoScript. In this simple notation, a large object tree structure of
information is created with placeholders for data from the database to fill in.
Preprogrammed objects are configured by changing or adding values or features.
This object tree structure is saved in a text file. Various editors are
available to change the content in a structured way. The PHP generator uses this
data structure to drive the generation of the content. Besides conditions,
TypoScript has no other
control structures; if real processing must be performed, it is handed to a
PHP function. The top level object is the PAGE object. There are various
types of MENU objects.
Syntax of TypoScript
The basic syntax is:
[objectpath].[attribute] [operator] [value]
Operators are
- = assignment of a value
- < copy a whole object
- =< insert a reference
- > remove object
Examples:
myObject.attribute1=Hello
The content is mainly stored in two tables: one table called pages and
another called tt_content, which holds the elements contained in a page.
Every page object has a unique identification key (uid) and is linked to a
parent page. Thus, the pages are organized in tree form, allowing the system to
easily generate menus and site maps.
One key feature of TYPO3 is that it has a flexible
application programming interface which enables independent developers to
provide extra functionality. Modules using this API are called "extensions" and many developers provide their extensions in a
publicly available repository on the
TYPO3 developer portal.
TemplaVoila
TemplaVoila is an alternative template engine extension for TYPO3. Features
include a graphical mapping tool for creating templates, a new page module, the
ability to create flexible content elements and an API for developers. New
content element types can be created without programming in no time while full
control over the HTML output is
provided. TemplaVoila facilitates more flexibility for maintaining web pages
while making it possible to enforce a strict corporate design and allowing
editors to work with content more intuitively.
System requirements
Web server
[1]
- Operating System:
Unix (eg Linux), Windows or Mac
- Web server:
Apache, IIS
- Middleware:
PHP4 or PHP5
(starting with TYPO3 4.2.0, all releases will require PHP5)
- Database:
MySQL or any
other database system supported by the TYPO3
DBAL (e.g.
Oracle,
PostgreSQL and a lot of others)
- Hardware: A normal
web
server setup will do, with some modern
CPU and at least 256 MB RAM. As with all database-driven applications, more RAM is advisable
though.
Client (user)
[1]
- Recommended:
Mozilla Firefox on any OS, Internet Explorer 5+ on Windows
- Required: Any graphical browser on any OS (Internet Explorer,
Opera, Safari, Konqueror
on Windows, Unix, Mac)
- Hardware: Relatively modern computer
See also
Further reading
- Rene Fritz, Daniel Hinderink, Werner Altmann – TYPO3: Enterprise
Content Management (Paperback) –
ISBN 1-904811-41-8
- Michael Peacock – Building Websites with TYPO3 (Paperback) –
ISBN 1-847191-11-8
References
- ^
a
b
TYPO3.org – System Requirements
External links
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