CMF Content Panels

These provide a way to put customised material in Plone's right and left slots.

They are temporarily not being used by Vasudevaservice for portlets because they give site errors when there are 404 errors on a page.

There is some information on how to use CMF Content Panels, but not much for the beginner.

How to Use Content Panels

1. Make sure they are installed by your Plone admin

2. From drop down menu add "content panel"

3. GIve content panel a title and short url. You can choose to have it on left or right - they will be automatically placed in left/right slots without you having to go into ZMI.

4. For simple designs, it doesn't matter whether it is page layout mode "tab" or "tile"

5. After saving, go to layout tab

6. You will see Page 1; give this a title if you want. Then on bottom right you will see various icons. Fourth from end is called 'new panel' ( you will see this if you hover over it) - it will be next to the arrow to shift the panel left or right.

7. You will then get a pop up Panel Configuration:

* Folder related | ZPT macro | Title description
* Site wide | Calendar | Simple text | RSS | Inline frame
* Personal related | My recent changes | My favorites | Review list

For now, we just want to create a static portlet; click on the link simple text. You can then add the title of the page and the HTML preview and save.

As you can see from the menu, there are many ways in which the Content Panels can be used, and it is designed to handle custom macros easily too.

• Note if you don't know HTML, create an ordinary page using Kupu or fck editor then click the html button (kupu) or source (fckeditor). You can then copy and paste the html from the page and paste it into this panel.
• Note 2 I would advise excluding Content Panels from navigation bar. This can be done by going to /prefs_navigation_form and unclicking CMF panels.
• Note 3 To have just 1 column, just click on the red cross to get rid of second column.
• Note 4 Content Panels provide ample scope for customisation and can contain multiple panels if you wish.
• Note 5 The usual Plone rules apply for inheritance. If you add it at the root it will be available at all levels. However if you don't want it on a sub folder you can create right or left_slot and not add the call to the CMF panels.

Page by R. Pettinger 11/07/2006