Where is Data Stored in Coaster CMS

Where data is stored in Coaster CMS

We’ve had a couple of discussions recently with people trying to understand the data structure of Coaster and more specifically, where data is stored in Coaster CMS and I thought I’d summarise some of the points we’ve replied with here.

It’s worth remembering this about Coaster’s structure…

“Blocks can be either global (with the potential to appear on any template) or template specific”

So, you’ve uploaded an image to Coaster on a repeater or onto a page and as a developer you want to know… “where has that data actually gone?”

Installing Coaster CMS on Windows

Happy New Year! Recently, we’ve noticed quite a few issues crop up on Github citing installation problems when trying to configure Coaster CMS on Windows. This mostly affects cURL when running various Composer commands. Here are a few steps you can take which will help prevent any potential issues:

  • Temporarily disable the Windows Firewall whilst running Composer commands.
  • Install a .pem certificate (more on this below).
  • Use a virtualised solution such as Docker or Laravel Homestead.

For some reason or another the Windows Firewall can sometimes interfere with outgoing connections made by cURL. Momentarily disabling the firewall can often help when running Composer commands – just remember to re-enable it once you’re done.

Fixing Cloudflare SSL Issues with Coaster/Laravel

Cloudflare offers a great flexible SSL service allowing anyone to secure their site for free. Unfortunately, you can run into some issues straight out of the box as we ourselves found out when implementing Cloudflare’s SSL on this very site. For more established content management systems, Cloudflare does supply plugins that fix these problems without the need of additional code. However, in this case we will be guiding you through the process of setting up SSL with Coaster CMS – and yes, that does include writing some code.

Create a form-builder with Coaster CMS repeater blocks

One of the things that a lot of websites need is the ability to build their own forms. Now, Coaster doesn’t come with this installed as default (or as a plugin) but in the back of my mind, I’ve wondered if it was a possibility using the repeater block functionality. And. It is (if you are not a developer, you may want to get hold of one for this bit).

It’s actually pretty easy. Working on the Coaster2016 theme on a fresh install (change the theme folder below as fits your current build), I created the following form.

WordPress vs Coaster CMS

Banners with Coaster CMS

Prerequisites: this tutorial assumes your theme uses the Bootstrap framework.

We recently built a site using WordPress for a client, since they weren’t sure about trying Coaster as it isn’t as well known. However, popularity doesn’t necessarily make something good or bad. The client in question required a CMS site where they could edit, add and remove pages when needed – all of which can be done with Coaster. Features such as a banner and a carousel on the homepage were part of the original design.

Implementing InstantClick with Coaster

InstantClick is a JavaScript library that seamlessly loads pages in the background of your user’s browser as they hover over a link. This can give the impression that your site’s pages load instantly. We’ve recently implemented this technology on our site for Coaster CMS, you may have noticed pages appear to load in the blink of an eye – without a ‘flash’. In this post we will be implementing InstantClick with Coaster to improve user experience.

The 6 Basic Principles of a Coordinated Office

Where you work and how it is set up plays a massive part in how your business works – trust us.

A messy, cluttered office slows you down and makes you less productive while a coordinated, streamlined office can help you to become a better and more efficient employee.

Feel like you don’t have any time to organise your office? We both know that’s not true.

Content Manipulation

The Web-Feet blog uses h1 tags for the main title on each individual post, as you would commonly expect. However, from an SEO perspective, we did not want this same layout on the homepage. The reasoning behind this is that multiple h1 tags can instead carry a negative penalty. Therefore, we instead opted to display h2 tags in place of h1 tags on our blog’s homepage. One of the drawbacks of doing this meant that post titles on the homepage would look exactly the same as sub-titles within a post’s excerpt. From a user’s point of view, this isn’t ideal as it can be confusing and lead to a negative experience.

2016 Default Coaster CMS Theme released

We have been working to bring you the first default theme for Coaster CMS which includes all of the features, we believe make Coaster great. At the same time, we have been working hard to add and update the theme export/import features so that you can export your own creations. Eventually, we will have a “sister” site to coastercms.org on which you will be able to buy/upload themes for Coaster CMS for anyone to use so if you’re a designer/developer with some great ideas of how to use the features in Coaster CMS then jump in and start creating.

Default Coaster CMS Theme