Administration system
The Cliqon administration facilities are built in exactly the same way and using the same tools that we provide for designing a website. The heirarchy and content of the admin subdirectory is functionally equivalent to the views subdirectory. The templates are built using the common template engine, common PHP classes, Javascript tools and frameworks provided for a frontend website.
Menu
Cliqon administration uses the popular CoreUI administrative template, which is in turn based upon the Beta version of Bootstrap 4. The CoreUI template provides four menu opportunities – one on each side of the screen. All the menus and footer are programmable. The basic production version of Cliqon uses two of the menus plus a couple of entries in the footer. Access to a menu and any of the menu items is managed through the ACL system so that entries are hidden from view for certain groups of users.
Dashboard
The admin system provides an operator configurable Dashboard, which allows the creation and inclusion of widgets, such as charts and tables.
Data display and entry
The primary purpose for the administration system is to display the data held in all the Collections of the system and provide the means to maintain that data. As a general rule of thumb we divide data into two two types – data that is part of the structure of the system, including menus, configuration files, the data dictionary and language strings for the administrative parts of the system. The ability to manage the content of these data collections will be restricted to users who have administrative privileges. The second type of data are collections that are specific to that web site or application. One might call this user data. It will include news articles, documents, useful links, calendar events, gallery images and main web site sections, blocks components and strings. Access to the user data collections will also be controlled at a fine level, so that users who have managerial and operational access facilities can manage this data.
If the Cliqon system is used as an application, such as a business directory, auction system or catalogue and ecommerce system, the data that is a fundamental part of the application will be classified as user data.
We have designed different mechanisms for displaying different types of data and managing that data. We provide, as standard, grids, tables, lists, cards and trees. Different display mechanisms suit different types of data. As an example, menus are displayed in tree structures whilst language strings are displayed on grids. Some types of data require very specif display types, such as a calendar for diary events and a gallery for images.
The administrative system supports three types of data entry display or forms. Forms can be displayed in a column alongside the data, in popup dialogues and full page.
We provide a limited range of reports, for the production system. However a fully operation application created with Cliqon will probably require an increased number and range of management reports. A Report Designer is provided to help with the generation of these reports.
Help and Documentation
We have created our own stand-alone documentation system which developers may download and use for their own purposes. Menu entries in the administration system provide access to the Cliqon production system documentation and potentially to the documentation for your application.
In addition to a wiki style documentation system, we also provide a simple on-line popup help systemfor both the administration system and that can be created and used for a main web site or application.
Utilities
One way to look at the utilities facilities is to think of them as the application to manage and augment the Cliqon base application. We provide facilities to manage the API security keys to support a OAUTH method of user access control to the system. We provide facilities to export to and import from CSV files. We provide facilities to view and modify the data-dictionary – the data collections within the generic database tables. We provide a mechanism to create and display a site map. We provide facilities to delete and clear down the contents of the cache and also log files. We provide facilities to create new language, manage existing languages and delete languages from the system. We offer various facilities to convert TOML files JSON arrays or import TOML formatted arrays of data into the system. We provide a generic database records editor which is a quick way to add new records to the system or carry out minor modifications to the system. Finally we have the facility to compare, download and update the core Cliqon source programs.