Development and customization

---

File architecture

The file structure is organized in a way that the core files of the ZCMS are isolated in separate folders so that it can be easily upgraded to the latest compatible version.

logic                     #here are located the files that contain all the business logic used in the application's modules
root/module/core          #this is the core modules folder
root/public_html/core     #it contains the client side files like CSS and JS

You have to keep the files contained in these folders untouched. Instead you can override the core modules by creating new modules in root/modules for example, and place your client side files in root/public_html folder

Customizing the appearance

If you need to customize the front end user area appearance of the website, then you can do that by creating new module, named lets say root/module/ApplicationOverride. This module will contain only the view files from Application module that you want to override plus the file root/module/ApplicationOverride/Module.php. It'll also contain a root/module/ApplicationOverride/config/module.config.php file, that will actually map the files to be overridden. It's content might look like the following:

return array(
    'view_manager' => array(
        'template_map' => array(
            'layout/layout'           => __DIR__ . '/../view/layout/layout.phtml',
            'application/index/index' => __DIR__ . '/../view/application-override/index/index.phtml',
        ),
        'template_path_stack' => array(
            __DIR__ . '/../view',
        ),
    ),
);

Then you need to create or copy paste the corresponding view .phtml files respectively from root/module/core/Application/view/layout/layout.phtml to root/module/ApplicationOverride/view/layout/layout.phtml and from root/module/core/Application/view/application/index/index.phtml to root/module/ApplicationOverride/view/application-override/index/index.phtml and after that you may customize the newly created files according to your needs. You can update the CSS & JS file references in root/module/ApplicationOverride/view/layout/layout.phtml to point to your newly created client-side files in root/public_html folder.

Extending the CMS

In order to extend ZCMS you have to be experienced in the development of applications using Zend Framework 2 and Doctrine 2 ORM. The ZCMS file structure contains various modules located in the folder root/module/core and the most important are Application containing the front-end (user area) files and Admin containing the administration area files. The JavaScript and CSS code is located in the public_html/core folder. It is recommended to consult and stick with the best practices described in the Zend Framework's documentation and Doctrine ORM's documentation while developing and changing the functionality.

In order to add/extend/override some of the logic in root/module/core/Application/Module.php you can write some code in the newly created root/module/ApplicationOverride/Module.php and or in ApplicationOverride/src/ApplicationOverride/Controller/YourController.php. You have to register the new module in root/config/application.config.php, listing the new module after the module being overridden:

return array(
    'modules' => array(
        'Application',
        'MainMenu',
        'Admin',
        'Languages',
        'AdminLanguages',
        'ApplicationOverride',
    ),
    'module_listener_options' => array(
        'module_paths' => array(
            './module/core',
            './module',
            './vendor',
        ),
        'config_glob_paths' => array(
            'config/autoload/{,*.}{global,local}.php',
        ),
    ),
);