Contents:

• Requirements
• Installation & Configuration
• Admin Console
• I.C.E. Concepts
• Create New Site
• Create New Channel
• Create New Page
• Create New Media
• Add I.C.E. Users
• Create New Component
• Create New Container
• Create New Language
• Create New Label
• Finding & Managing Site Assets
• Uploading Files
• I.C.E. Settings
• Send Messages
• Manage Tasks
• Custom Database Tables
• I.C.E. Widgets
• To Publish or Not?
• URL and Session Variables

Custom Database Tables

I.C.E. is the most flexible and extensible Coldfusion-based CMS available today. The main content handling mechanism in I.C.E. is the Page, whose look and feel and behaviour is determined by the Channel it is assigned to. In turn, the Channel's look and feel may be determined by globally available Containers, whose functions are determined by globally available Components. The relationship between Pages, Channel, Containers and Components allows developers to build practically any kind of Site.

But what if you want to use I.C.E. to manage unconventional data that doesnt fit into the Title, Summary, Body paradigm. E.g. an E-commerce Store or Real Estate Listings Site or a Q&A site like Yahoo Answers?

I.C.E. allows you to handle all these needs and more by allowing you to create custom database tables and the forms to manage them, automatically, right within the I.C.E. admin console without ever touching the database. These new tables will be automatically available to all Sites in I.C.E. CMS each with their own data.

Create New Custom Database Table

To create a new database table and the accompanying forms to manage it, click the Database icon (stacked cylinders icon). Note: Only the Default I.C.E. Admin can access this function and you must be familiar with MySQL database concepts to use it.

On the following page, you will see any existing Custom Tables, which you may Browse, Edit or Delete. Click the New link to create a new Table. On the following pop-up, enter a name for the table e.g. (products) and the number of fields in the table (including the primary key field). Click the Total Fields button. The number of fields will change to reflect your entry.

For each field, enter a name for the field, select a data type (int, varchar etc.), the default size of the field, whether it can be NULL or not and a Default value if needed. Click the Create Table button, close the Window and refresh the Page. As you can see from the refreshed Page, I.C.E. adds the prefix 'ice_custom_' to the tablename you entered and also links the custom table with the I.C.E. system by adding ice_site_id, ice_user_id, and ice_status_id fields. These extra fields allow data entered for the table to be queried by Site, User and Status.

You will also notice that you can now enter data and manage the new custom table from the Create and Browse drop-downs. If you wish to change the look and feel of these forms, you can find the templates for the forms in the ice/modules/cms folder. E.g. if you created a new custom table called Books, you'll find the management templates at:

ice/modules/cms/CMS_new_books.cfm
ice/modules/cms/CMS_browse_books.cfm
ice/modules/cms/CMS_edit_books.cfm
ice/modules/cms/CMS_delete_books.cfm

Note: Change only the parameters in these generated templates. Also templates to manage custom tables are only created in English but you can create additional Labels to make them multilingual.