dotCMS - Open Source Content Management System, Ondemand CMS, and Professional Support

What Can Plugins Do

Several different extension points are provided to allow a wide range of customizations to your dotCMS system.

• Portlets

The portlet files, portlet-ext.xml and liferay-portlet-ext.xml can be added to but they DO NOT override.  They just add so make sure you use your pluginID to try and ensure uniqueness. 

• Viewtools

Viewtools are Java classes that are made accessible to velocity templates.  More information can be found in CreatingCustomVelocityTools documentation section.

• Macros

You can add your custom macros to the macros.vm file.  Macros are not overriden, they just get added to the macros ext file.  You can add your macro documentation the files under doc (macro_help_doc.html and macro_help_li.html ).  These files get merged to the macro_help.html file for end user reference. 

• Property Files

These files allow you to add/override properties to the appropriate files. It keys on the property name/key. If the property already exists it comments the older one out and adds the plugins property to the file. 

Several different extension points are provided to allow a wide range of customizations to your dotCMS system.

• Hibernate Mappings

Hibernate is an abstraction data layer library that dotcms takes advantage of. Hibernate allows dotCMS to conntect to many databases without needing to generate different SQL for each DB.

• Servlets and Filters

• Static Files

• TinyMCE

TinyMCE is the WYSIWYG editor within dotCMS. This directory allows you to configure the editor and even add TinyMCE plugins to the dotCMS.

This involves things like css, js, flv, and velocity files.