Extending Tribiq CMS

Tribiq CMS can be extended through custom Templates, Modules, Plugins and Standalone Applications.

Templates

Templates hold not only the design and layout of your CMS website, but also any extra applications which you wish to display on your pages.

You can easily create a variety of templates to be used across your website. We understand that with some websites, a different template is needed for each page - which is also not a problem with Tribiq CMS. We are confident that our Template Architecture is favoured by most web designers over any other CMS system.

Modules

Additional modules provide extra functionality to a Tribiq CMS system. A module is not to be seen as an application - rather, a Module is like an "add-on". Modules are used where you want to install a fairly deep change, i.e. something which affects both the user-side and admin-side of a CMS.

Developers can write their own modules and install them for both editions. But at Tribiq, we only develop modules for Pro installations because we find such add-ons have more of a demand.

It is very easy for a developer to add a module to both the front-end and the back-end - adding links to the administrator control panel is as easy as appending a database table. Adding links in the front-end is as easy as creating a menu item.

Plugins

If Modules are for large or deep changes, then Plugins are for small, low-level changes. For example, a quick addition of functionality to a specifc template.

Tribiq CMS has a robust Plugin architecture allowing functionality to be extended in a wide variety of ways. There is online documentation for this (PDF) and a sample 'gallery' plugin available.

Applications

As part of the standard installation, TRIBiQ CMS has the /apps/[mysitename] folder in which you can put your own applications which can sit within a CMS template but need to be standalone. Templates hold not only the design and layout of your CMS website, but also any extra applications which you wish to display on your pages.

For example, here is a screenshot of the site traffic stats from the CMS Admin area.

The graphs are created by JPGraph, which is a standalone application.

While the application code sits in the template PHP file (.tpl.php), the CMS can be used to hold "parameters", hidden values which are passed as arguments to the application template.

The CMS gives your applications further structure, by operating the navigation, password-protection, editing. Leave your application to it's core goals - Tribiq CMS will cover the rest.