New Add-On for Flexible User Lists - Wow!
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Greetings C5 Community,
I'm pleased to announce the availability of my Enhanced User List add-on for Concrete5. Some key features include:
* Filtering by groups
* Sorting by user attributes
* AJAX driven
* Innovative template system
* Support for Encrypted E-Mail Address
An interesting technical aside... It turned out to be a fun and interesting challenge to retain the native C5 template selection functionality while still using the recommended C5 AJAX mechanism - i.e. a "tools" file. I did not want users wishing to create a new template to have to proceed in some non-standard fashion (duplicate the tools file, etc). I wanted them to be able to choose "Custom Template" from the block edit menu as usual. So I came up with a client-side template approach.
Basically, the AJAX request is initiated from the template and returns the block data in a JSON data structure. Client-side logic - i.e. JavaScript - then incorporates those data into the DOM elements comprising the structure of the list. CSS is of course used to style the list. As it turns out, this approach has several benefits:
* The standard C5 template selection method is preserved.
* No knowledge of PHP is required to create new templates (making this approach ideal for anyone proficient in HTML and CSS but not necessarily PHP coding).
* Because of the paucity of PHP tags and code, the templates are refreshingly "clean" and uncluttered. Cool.
On another note, many who've purchased my Encrypted E-Mail Address add-on might not fully appreciate that what you got was more than just a block. I very deliberately crafted that add-on to expose its functionality through a simple API. This enables theme and add-on developers to incorporate encrypted addresses into their products as well.
I, too, leveraged that API in this add-on. It detects the presence of the encryption add-on and automatically encrypts user email addresses (if you choose to display them), making this add-on ideal for listing contact information for your organization (among many other uses).
Anyway, you can check out the details here:
http://www.concrete5.org/marketplace/addons/enhanced-user-list/...
(Introductory pricing available for a limited time. Be sure to click the image for screen shots.)
Regards,
-Steve
I'm pleased to announce the availability of my Enhanced User List add-on for Concrete5. Some key features include:
* Filtering by groups
* Sorting by user attributes
* AJAX driven
* Innovative template system
* Support for Encrypted E-Mail Address
An interesting technical aside... It turned out to be a fun and interesting challenge to retain the native C5 template selection functionality while still using the recommended C5 AJAX mechanism - i.e. a "tools" file. I did not want users wishing to create a new template to have to proceed in some non-standard fashion (duplicate the tools file, etc). I wanted them to be able to choose "Custom Template" from the block edit menu as usual. So I came up with a client-side template approach.
Basically, the AJAX request is initiated from the template and returns the block data in a JSON data structure. Client-side logic - i.e. JavaScript - then incorporates those data into the DOM elements comprising the structure of the list. CSS is of course used to style the list. As it turns out, this approach has several benefits:
* The standard C5 template selection method is preserved.
* No knowledge of PHP is required to create new templates (making this approach ideal for anyone proficient in HTML and CSS but not necessarily PHP coding).
* Because of the paucity of PHP tags and code, the templates are refreshingly "clean" and uncluttered. Cool.
On another note, many who've purchased my Encrypted E-Mail Address add-on might not fully appreciate that what you got was more than just a block. I very deliberately crafted that add-on to expose its functionality through a simple API. This enables theme and add-on developers to incorporate encrypted addresses into their products as well.
I, too, leveraged that API in this add-on. It detects the presence of the encryption add-on and automatically encrypts user email addresses (if you choose to display them), making this add-on ideal for listing contact information for your organization (among many other uses).
Anyway, you can check out the details here:
http://www.concrete5.org/marketplace/addons/enhanced-user-list/...
(Introductory pricing available for a limited time. Be sure to click the image for screen shots.)
Regards,
-Steve
I am overly impressed by this -- not only the well thought-out architecture you devised and the well-designed block edit dialog (based on the screenshots I see), but also the description page in the marketplace is freaking beautiful and informative and enticing.
I think I might change back to using inline images in the marketplace pages myself -- I don't like the lightbox as much (I'm a vertical-scroll kind of guy).
Anyway, if/when I ever build a site with any kind of user list I will without a doubt be using your addon.
-Jordan