Fractal

A versatile CMS for Laravel.

Fractal is a content management system for Laravel which maintains freedom and easy access to customization, to a range of different degrees. You can do all of this out of the box:

• Manage content pages for website
  • Create as many separate content areas as you like and create content in Markdown or an HTML WYSIWYG editor
  • Use the layout template system to re-use standardized and custom layouts across pages
  • Re-use content areas across multiple pages
• Manage files
  • Upload files
  • Resize images
  • Create thumbnail images
• Manage blog articles
  • Make use of the same versatile content area system as content pages uses
• Manage media items (images, video, audio, and more...)
• Manage website / web application settings
• Manage all menus via database, for both front-end website (optional of course) and admin/CMS area
• Manage users
• Customize routes, controllers, and subdomains (by default, "blog" and "media" subdomains are used)
• Use built-in front-end views and Blade layouts or use your own

Please keep in mind though that there are a variety of different levels of customization available from using all or a partial set of custom controllers (Fractal's controller and method routes are set in config.php for easy modification), using custom views, or even just customizing any of the many available config settings or database-stored settings in the CMS' Settings page. The level of control of your website or web application that you wish to externalize from Fractal is entirely up to you.

A few more things that should be mentioned before we get started with the Table of Contents:

• Fractal uses the Identify authorization / authentication package and uses Twitter Bootstrap 3 as its CSS framework.
• Fractal is still considered beta software and moved into beta as of version 0.8.0.

Table of Contents

• Installation
• Installation: Authentication
• First Log In
• Basic Usage

Installation

Install composer package:

To install Fractal, make sure "regulus/fractal" has been added to Laravel 4's composer.json file.

"require": {
	"regulus/fractal": "0.8.0"
},

Then run php composer.phar update from the command line. Composer will install the Fractal package.

Register service provider and set up alias:

Now, all you have to do is register the service provider, set up Fractal's alias in app/config/app.php, publish the assets, and run the install command. Add this to the providers array:

'Regulus\Fractal\FractalServiceProvider',

And add this to the aliases array:

'Fractal' => 'Regulus\Fractal\Facade',

Run the install command:

php artisan fractal:install

Fractal will now be installed. This includes all necessary DB migrations, DB seeding, config publishing, and asset publishing.

Installation for Authentication

Install Composer package:

To install Identify, make sure "regulus/identify" has been added to Laravel 4's composer.json file.

"require": {
	"regulus/identify": "dev-master"
},

Then run php composer.phar update from the command line. Composer will install the Identify package.

Register service provider and set up alias:

Now, all you have to do is register the service provider, set up Identify's alias in app/config/app.php, set 'model' to Regulus\Identify\User in app/config/auth.php, and run the install command. Add this to the providers array:

'Regulus\Identify\IdentifyServiceProvider',

And add this to the aliases array:

'Auth' => 'Regulus\Identify\Identify',

You may use 'Identify', or another alias, but 'Auth' is recommended for the sake of simplicity.

Next, change the model variable in app/config/auth.php to Regulus\Identify\User.

Run the install command:

php artisan identify:install

Identify will now be installed. This includes all necessary DB migrations, DB seeding, and config publishing.

You should now have 4 users, Admin, TestUser, TestUser2, and TestUser3. All of the passwords are password and the usernames are case insensitive, so you may simply type admin and password to log in. The 3 initial roles are Administrator, Moderator, and Member. Admin has the Administrator role, TestUser has the Moderator role, and the final 2 users have the Member role.

Register service provider and set up alias:

Now, all you have to do is register the service provider, set up Identify's alias in app/config/app.php, and set 'model' to Regulus\Identify\User in app/config/auth.php. Add this to the providers array:

'Regulus\Identify\IdentifyServiceProvider',

And add this to the aliases array:

'Auth' => 'Regulus\Identify\Identify',

You may use 'Identify', or another alias, but 'Auth' is recommended for the sake of simplicity.

Lastly, change the model variable in app/config/auth.php to Regulus\Identify\User and set the domain variable in app/config/session.php to .website.com (using your domain of course) to allow session data to be kept when the user is accessing a subdomain for the blog or media system.

First Log In

Logging in:

To log in, go to website.com/admin where "website.com" is the name of the site you have installed Fractal on. Type "Admin" and "password" as your username and password and click "Log In".

You should now be logged in to Fractal for the first time. You should now be able to manage the CMS and the settings of the website or web application.

Enabling Developer Mode:

To set a developer session variable to true, go to website.com/admin/developer. This will identify you as the web developer for Fractal and you may be able to see more information and manage extra settings. To turn off Developer Mode, go to website.com/admin/developer/off.

Basic Usage

Adjusting Fractal's base URI:

By default, Fractal's base URI is admin making your URLs like website.com/admin/pages/home/edit. You may adjust this in the baseUri variable in config.php.

Adding additional controllers:

You may add additional controllers or point existing defined controllers to alternates in the controllers array in config.php. Use standard for standard Laravel controllers and resource for resource controllers.

Other configuration options:

Look around in the various config files such as config, blogs, media, tables, and social to see what other configuration options can easily be customized as well. Most config variables have detailed descriptions that should help you to understand how different things can be customized. The config files menus and settings, however, are exported from the database automatically to minimize a Fractal-driven website's need to make certain database queries on each page load.

Get Bootstrap-ready menu markup for a view:

echo Fractal::getMenuMarkup(); //get "Main" menu markup

echo Fractal::getMenuMarkup('Footer'); //get "Footer" menu markup

echo Fractal::getMenuMarkup('Footer', ['class' => 'nav nav-pills']); //set class attribute for menu

Getting an array of menu items:

$menu = Fractal::getMenuArray(); //get "Main" menu array

$menu = Fractal::getMenuArray('Footer'); //get "Footer" menu array

Setting a page title:

Fractal already uses SolidSite to handle page titles, breadcrumb trails, and some other things which means that if you are using Fractal's public layout for your website, you may set page titles using the following code.

//title HTML tag may look like "A Page Title :: Website.com" depending on config
Site::set('title', 'A Page Title');

//this can be used to differentiate the title that actually appears on the page from the primary title
Site::set('titleHeading', 'Alternate Title in Content');

//you may show the title using these
echo Site::title();

echo Site::titleHeading(); //will use "titleHeading" if it is set and if not will default to "title"