Selected blog entry about wicket stuff and others

Wicket based BRIX CMS from developer point of view

2010-01-05 09:56 | Author: vytautas.racelis

BRIX is an Open Source, Wicket-based CMS for java platform. Based on JCR, it is simple yet powerful and extensible. It has plugin architecture, tiles, templates, prototypes, snapshots, rich content editing and other features. But how good is BRIX CMS for me? Short review of BRIX CMS from developer point of view.

Product is placed at http://code.google.com/p/brix-cms/. It contains documentation, discussion groups, sources and other product related information.

There are some blogs written some time ago:

http://blog.inertiabev.com/index.php/2008/07/23/brix-released-as-an-open-source-project/

And more advanced usage:

http://blog.inertiabev.com/index.php/2008/07/24/brix-whats-in-it-for-me/

Startup

Startup is easy : checkout the demo and re-factor the way you need. Usually you should be able to start the project without any changes.

Templates and pages

Brix CMS is ideal for creating static pages and good enough for dynamic information. You may change information online or prepare the site using publishing workflow. So, first you need to create the template.

Create template

Then you only need to use your selected template when creating concrete page.

Use created template

What is good in BRIX CMS - you may create page names whatever you want. SEO would love it

But how should i create meta tag for every new page? Here variable will help you.

Using variables

Variables are very useful when defining default information in template and later want to replace this default information in specific page, e.g., you have a template, but want custom meta tags, page description, keywords for your pages.

define global variable, e.g., "title" with default value "my title page";
add "<title><brix:var key="title"/></title>" into your template head. This will be default value;
add variable in your custom page with your new value. Default value will be replaced with your selection.

There is more simple way to create your header of page. You may just add <head></head> tag into your page and information will be added to your template <head></head> tag, e.g.,

<head>
	<meta name="description" content="my page description"/>
	<meta name="keywords" content="my keywords" />
</head>

Using tiles

BRIX CMS has brilliant feature in order to inject your custom panel into CMS. More information how to transform your wicket pages into BRIX CMS tiles might be found here. What you need is just to implement interface brix.plugin.site.page.tile.Tile. It provides methods for editor and viewer. Viewer might be used to provide your panel.

Security

There is security plugin for brix aready prepared for you. It also has demo usage and is based on spring security.

How dynamic is dynamic content in BRIX CMS?

There are some places when i could not use BRIX CMS so dynamically as i wanted :( I could not find the way how to change page title, page description from a tile when integrating blog entry panel.