A Review of The CMS Made Simple Cookbook

The comprehensive guide to PHP and SMARTY development for CMS Made Simple.

This is the missing book I've been looking for ever since I started using CMS Made Simple four years ago!

Goldstein starts off by explaining how to determine when to use a User Defined Tag (UDT) a Plugin or a full-blown Module to solve a problem. He then devotes three chapters to UDT and Plugins with several useful tricks. I learned many things I never knew - that UDT's share the same name-space as Plugins, and if you have a UDT with the same name as a Plugin the UDT takes priority. That means you could rewrite or replace any plugin with a UDT if you wish. (I wish I had known that three years ago!)

I also learned that you can write SMARTY plugins as precompile or postcompile filters that will automatically run every time a page is compiled. This is very useful for implementing sitewide content policies, like always adding a Trademark symbol to a product name, or automatically converting content images into HTML5 <figure> elements.

The book also gives several examples of how to use a UDT to process data captured by Events, which is one of the most powerful features of CMS Made Simple. I know I struggled with this myself in years past, and having a resource like this book would have saved me many hours.

The book then moves into an extremely thorough explanation of how to build Modules. For me module development was the wall that has prevented me from getting the full potential out of CMS Made Simple in my projects. Goldstein has brought Module development within reach for me.

I believe this book will prove to be a very important contribution toward the future of CMS Made Simple as a web development platform. It will save developers hundreds of hours of learning time. Even though I got a free PDF to review the book, I plan to buy my own hard copy. I can see that this is a reference book I will be using a lot!

Get your own copy today!