Baobaz Blog

While implementing eZ Publish CMS with Magento we had to remember, that customers, which are used to Magento admin interface wouldn't like to learn completely new interface just to manage content pages. This requirement has led to creation of additional Magento module, that communicates with eZ Publish in different way than on front end. It's required because eZ Publish is using drafts for content edition, so if we want to keep all original functionality, we have to use drafts also with our Magento site.

Next, as we wanted to include eZ Publish backoffice into Magento admin interface, we had to prepare set of modified eZ Publish backoffice templates, so general design would be a little bit similar to the one in Magento. At the end we got the following result:

Left block contains almost original eZ Publish content tree menu. It's an Ajax driven structure, that loads sub nodes on demand. It's possible to browse whole content structure, separated into two parts for easier maintenance: content and media library.
Main part is also typical for eZ Publish backoffice, it contains current node preview box and list of sub items, with additional function buttons. From here we can create, edit, remove, sort or move selected nodes. It also allows to create/edit it any defined content language.

In page edition view, eZ-Gento gives all functionality existing in eZ Publish, including OnlineEditor (adapted TinyMCE editor for eZ Publish purpose). This allows to insert into page content any object from media library, or direct upload of image, movie or document to download.

There are some more possibilities, like described in previous posts. For example we can manage different page versions, we can set page temporary as hidden, so nobody except admin will see it. There is also Trash, which stores all deleted pages as long as it's not cleaned, so it's possible to restore deleted page.

Stay tuned for more information of eZ-Gento!

Magento contains built in simple contact form module, that allows to send a query by customer to web shop owner. Although it's not easy to customize it and fit into client's needs. As eZ Gento allows to load any content from eZ Publish, it also allows to use contact forms created by eZ Publish, which are much more flexible and gives a lot of possibilities that can be used on Magento site.

First of all, it is possible to add much more fields of different type, not only string or text area, but also email, selection, checkbox, date/time fields. All of this of course with data validation. Even more, thanks to eZ Publish extensibility, it's possible to develop our own specific data type. No limitations here!

Next, it is possible to create as much different contact forms as client wants. Each of form can have different fields and fit to different part of website. When submitted, email will be sent to different recipients, for example depending on selected subject. Besides, everything can have many translations so fields will be displayed in proper language, exactly as it is presented in "eZ Gento - content translation" post.

Last important thing is that collected informations can be easily accessed from backoffice. It is also possible to export it or schedule for sending exports everyday. All of that thanks to eZ Gento that brings great content management functions to Magento!

http://www.ezgento.org/

Content management as a tree structure in eZ-Gento is a big step forward, but it's just a small part of the new features made available.
One of the purposes of Magento store views is to allow you to define additional languages for your e-Store.
Indeed, Magento site can be visited by clients from other countries and we don't want to lose them. That's why, as you know, we can create additional store view and assign each of them to different language.
Magento allows you to duplicate CMS content pages or blocks in order to have one for each store view and therefore one for each language. Having many pages with the same ID can become confusing and hard to manage when you have many pages and/or many languages.

Now everything is easier with ezGento! eZ-Gento comes with automatic mapping between Magento store views and eZ Publish siteaccesses. It means, that when we access the "french" store view, a "french" eZ Publish siteaccess will be asked for content. So if requested page has french translation, it will be displayed.

Remember that there are two main ways of defining content translation in eZ Publish:

• The first one is to add a translation to an exisiting page. This way one content tree has pages with two (or more) translations.
• The second one is to define a separate content tree and have a different page structure in a new language. (This is useful when we don't want to limit or when we want to extend content comparing to the initial language.)

Of course it is possible to mix both methods and add only a few additional pages in new language, or just not to translate some of them.

What about friendly URLs? eZ Publish comes with powerful URL management. Different language has its content with proper URL. By default it's created from the page title, but it's also possible to define additional fields just for URL.

For more multilingual features please refer to eZ Publish documentation page.

All that is possible in eZ Publish is now available in Magento thanks to eZ-Gento!

See eZ Gento, an alternative CMS Module for Magento [Part 1] for more informations on eZ Gento.

Magento is a great software platform for web shops. It gives huge possibilities of products management, sales, promos, etc. Although some of customers demand also more advanced CMS feature. Plain pages structure is enough for sites with a few pages (like homepage, credits, legal mentions). But this might no be sufficient if you want to add more than 50 pages in different languages.
Of course it would be possible to develop additional modules, functions and blocks that will allow to group pages and store in tree structure, but that would be a very expensive part of the developement.
Therefore Baobaz has created a connection between Magento and eZ Publish Enterprise CMS. This solution allows to display eZ Publish pages directly in Magento front end

What is eZ Publish?
eZ Publish has many common points with Magento.

• Like Magento is one of the best (if not the best) open source e-Commerce solution, eZ Publish is one of the best open source Enterprise CMS.
• Like Magento, it is a great AMP platform for new extensions development.
• Like Magento, it has a great community of contributors.
• Like Magento, it has a lot of references
• Like Magento with Varien, it was developed by eZ Systems, a strong for-profit company.
• ...checkout http://ez.no/ for more details !

What we gain with eZ Publish?
A lot:

• Content tree structure
• Multilingual pages
• Content versioning
• Approval workflow
• Multimedia direct insert
• and much more...

Imagine that you can browse tree of content located next to products catalog, pages are in different languages depending on selected store view. It's also possible to define many little trees and put them in different product categories and don't have to take care about proper links placed in many templates. Everything is generated automatically each time new page has been published or exiting modified.

All above was possible thanks to merged Magento and eZ Publish called eZ-Gento. Both installations are placed side by side and contain little extensions responsible for direct communication. Each time user access any content page, Magento module passes part of url to eZ Publish and retrieves generated html content. Such html can be displayed directly on homepage, subpage or as a cms block next to product or as a product description.

So, first step done. If you want to read something more about eZ-Gento possibilities, stay tuned!