What This Book Covers

Chapter 1 introduces us to e107 and provides a brief history of content management systems, how content management systems work, a brief history of e107, and an introduction to the development team.

Chapter 2 covers the requirements for running e107, uploading to the server, setting file permissions, creating the database, running the installation script, securing your installation, updating e107, and what to do and where to go when things don't go as planned.

Chapter 3 takes us to our new website and covers the various components of the screen layout, creating and activating usernames, and registrations. After covering the front end of our new website, we will get to the heart of our website—the back end—where we will learn the various preference settings options, learn about emoticons, creating static and dynamic front pages, and different front-page views for different user groups.

Chapter 4 deals with the themes—the site theme, admin themes, how to select a different theme, core themes, additional themes, and custom themes. We will learn where to find additional themes and how to make them available for installation. We will cover customizing our theme through the selection of menu items, and learn how to use the WYSIWYG editor and file upload manager, create and delete custom menu items, and make the navigation of our site multi-lingual.

Chapter 5 takes us into the world of e-commerce with our website through the use of plugins. We will learn the difference between core and non-core plugins, where to obtain plugins, and how to install and uninstall plugins. We will learn how to create banner advertising campaigns and display banner ads on our site using the Banner plugin. We will create the Paws R Us store using the Shopping Cart plugin and finally we will learn about the FAQ plugin.

Chapter 6 transforms our e107 website into an e-business powerhouse. In this chapter we will learn how to create user groups and how to use them to control access to the various functions of our system. We will cover the installation, setup, and maintenance of forums and polls.

Chapter 7 will no doubt be the most referred to chapter in this book as we learn how to use the Content Management plugin, which is a very powerful and versatile content organizer. We will also learn how to set up the PDF plugin so our users can download documents in their original formatting. Last but not the least, we will cover how to use the Coppermine photo gallery plugin.

Chapter 8 covers information dissemination. We will learn how to install, configure, and write a newsletter, communicate with our users with the calendar plugin, update users about our business by means of RSS, and learn some basic things we need to do to get our site listed in the search engines.

Chapter 9 shows us how to keep our database running in top condition, and use e107s self-diagnostic features to allow it to help us find problems so that we can make corrections. We will also learn security procedures.

Appendix A provides a list of e107 resources from around the world as well as resources for Apache, PHP, MySQL, XAMPP, Easy PHP, and WAMPServer