Advanced Search
Every page has a search box at the top, but Advanced Searches can also be set up. This allows searching on metadata terms on certain areas of the site. Advanced searching is used on this site to drive the Job Search feature.
A to Z
Any page on the website can be given a series of keywords. The A-Z page then summarises those keywords in an easy to navigate page divided into letter-by-letter sections.
Channel Summary
Channel Summaries are a very powerful feature. They are used throughout the site to summarise the contents of channels. They can be used to display all the pages in a certain section or the top 5 news items for example. They can split their contents into pages, they can sort their contents, they can add RSS output. There is not much a Channel Summary can't do! Some examples are:
Discussion Forums
Usually used inside a member-protected area, an author can create a page based upon the Discussion Forum template to create a simple forum which will allow registered users to discuss the matters of the day. If you have a login, you can view the Equal 2 forums. An author can decide whether or not to allow the forums to be moderated, and by whom.
Document metadata
Any resource (PDF file, Word document, JPEG image, Flash file etc) can have metadata recorded against it. Intelligent lists of links can then be created to automatically display all resources that match certain search criteria. These can be defined by an author (for example, the documents relating to
Agriculture in our
Documents section), or even based on user preferences like on the
Documents of interest page.
Events
A page author can add Event metadata to pages to define when an event is running and where. An Event Summary page can then be created which summarises events. An author can choose whether to display a calendar for event browsing and some quick-search features to allow visitors to find events by category or location. Equal 2 is running a series of fictional university seminars, as well as a fictional Christmas Party, all of which can be browsed and searched for in the Events section.
FAQ
A series of questions and answers can be brought together by a page author into a simple to navigate FAQ section. Here Equal 2 try to answer some employment-related questions.
Forms
Site authors can create any number of forms to collect data from site visitors. It is as simple as creating a form page and adding questions and input types to the page. When a visitor to the site fills in a form, the information they supply is emailed to an email address that the page author supplies. Forms can validate themselves and the author can control many different aspects of each form - the format of the emails and the text shown to the visitor. Even the text of the form submit button! Some examples of forms are: Submit CV, Email Us, and the Product Enquiry form.
Form-based page creation
It is possible for a page author to create a form that when suibmitted creates a CMS page and submits it for approval. An example on this site is available in the Partner Section. It allows a visitor who has logged in as an Equal 2 partner to add events to the Partner Events section.
Friendly URLs
You can use the Friendly URL feature to make short cuts to pages that are easy for someone to remember. A couple of examples are:
Because you have to be a member to get to the members' section, if you are not logged in, the first link will present you with the sign-in box. Once signed in, you will be taken to the members' area.
Glossary
The Equal 2 Glossary is quite exciting. It lets a page author define any number of terms and acronyms along with a description of the term. Some terms have extra information. An example is the term Political awareness, which includes a more link to the BBC Politics page. The really exciting feature is that a Glossary can be made into an Active Glossary. This means that wherever a glossary term is used on the website, it becomes a link to that term in the glossary, along with a tooltip containing the definition of the term. Take a look at the following sentence - hover your mouse over each highlighted term: Web pages are made up of HTML and these help to increase your dynamic Java skills which in turn can create opportunities! And it almost goes without saying that all of this is completely accessible and uses correct web standards!
Image Gallery
You can point an Image Gallery page at a collection of pictures. The pictures will be displayed as thumbnails (automatically on the server to save bandwidth) which allow a site visitor to click them to see the full-sized image.
Newsletters
Authors can create Newsletter pages. When a newsletter page is published to the live website, it is also sent out by email to all registered users who have chosen to receive the newsletters. This can be further customised by the users by them choosing to only receive letters that are relevant to their interests. The page author ticks the categories that the letter relates to and OneStopCMS does the rest, correctly sending the newsletter to those users who are interested in the topics covered by the newsletter.
News Pages
Any section of the website can be configured as containing date-specific pages, such as News Pages. These pages can show the date in their content and the date can be used to sort the items correctly in any Channel Summary pages which may be summarising the news pages.
Polls
There is a Poll feature on the homepage. A site administrator can create a poll via the Control Panel. He or she then defines a question and the available answers. Once done, the administrator can add the poll to the homepage. A poll can be defined to only run for a certain period of time. A visitor to the site can vote in the poll. Once voted, the visitor can see how voting is currently going. The site administrator can see at any time how the voting is going, including the total number of votes.
Products
OneStopCMS includes a series of templates for displaying products in a website. Equal 2's fictional product range includes bags, books, and t-shirts. Only the bag section has been populated. Here you can see the Basket functionality, the Product Summary template (which lets the author choose the metadata that will be displayed on it) and the product template itself. You can add many images to the product templates, all of which generate their own thumbnails scaled to a size selected by the page author.
RSS
A Channel Summary page can be defined by a page author as offering an RSS feed of its contents. This allows news readers to keep up to date with the news from the website. An example is the Equal 2 RSS feed. Click the orange RSS icon on the page to see the feed.
Site Map
The automatically populated and always up-to-date Site Map ensures that your visitors never get lost! An author can define how much detail to show on the site map. When in edit mode, the Site Map shows the author exactly which pages are not yet published or are hidden in the main navigation.
XHTML
This site can be configured to be fully valid XHTML. Different XHTML compliance modes can be defined by site administrators. Currently, Equal 2 is running as standard HTML, but the Alternative Theme renders itself as XHTML 1.0 Transitional.
