Q: Can I Use v1 apps in DMXReady CMS v2?
A: Yes you can. However, this will require some minor modification to your v1 apps.
DMXReady CMS v2 is designed in a way so that you can still use your DMXReady v1 apps in CMS v2. However, since CMS v2 has a quite different core architecture, you need to modify the v1 app a little bit so it can function 100% in the newly created page using CMSv2.
How to include v1 apps in your CMS v2
Lets say that you want to include your FAQs Manager application into CMS v2 so you can have a FAQ list in your website. To do this, you can do the following steps (Please note that this steps using example domains and it is assumed that you installed the FAQs Manager & CMS v2 in the original form):
- Log into the CMS v2 admin panel: http://www.yourdomain.com/dmxreadyv2/cms/admin.asp
- On the admin home page, click on the "DMXReady CMS"
- Click on menu: "Add Page" on the left panel
- Select "Yes" on "Display in Menu" field
- Enter Page Name: "FAQ"
- Enter Reader-friendly URL: "frequently-asked-questions" or "faq" or anything you want
- Click "Create" button, and the page will redirect to edit page content area.
- Click on "Add Plugins" tab (it is the forth tab after Basic Setup, Meta Tags, Link Control)
- On the "Plugin Custom Script" field, enter the installation to the FAQs Manager application. In this case: /applications/FaqsManager/inc_faqsmanager.asp
- Click "Save Changes" button on the bottom
If you look at your newly created page, e.g.: http://www.yourdomain.com/dmxreadyv2/cms/cms.asp?page=faq, you will see that the v1 FAQs Manager is already embedded into the page. It is that simple!
However, you will notice that once you click on the question, the url in your browser's address bar becomes: http://www.yourdomain.com/dmxreadyv2/cms/cms.asp?ItemID=13 for example, which is incorrect since it is suppose to be: http://www.yourdomain.com/dmxreadyv2/cms/cms.asp?page=faq&ItemID=13. This happens simply because the FAQs Manager list page (or any front-facing v1 file) does not have the "?page=faq" yet on the link. So in this case, you want to do the following steps:
- Open your "/applications/FaqsManager/inc_faqsmanager.asp" in your dreamweaver or any text editor that has Find and Replace capability
- Find for: Request.ServerVariables("URL")%>?
- Replace with: Request.ServerVariables("URL")%>?page=faq&
- Click Replace All
- Save and upload to your webserver.
By now, your FAQ page should function normally inside CMSv2 application.
A few notes regarding described steps above:
- Basically this operation needs to be done because some of the v1 application requires query string element in their list or detail page. As it stands now, v1 applications do not have the "page" element yet in their system. That is why we need to add that.
- The basic idea of operation above is adding the ?page=faq element into the links. You do not have to do the exact same steps above as long as you can add the element into the URL.
If you still have any question regarding this article, feel free to contact us through support@dmxready.com
Also, DMXReady offers a range of professional service that may help you with this if you do not want to do it yourself. Here is the detailed information:
http://www.dmxready.com/dmxreadyv2/index.asp?page=catalog&category=services
