Plugins

Last Updated: 2023-10-29 02:00:08

The documents plugin is robust and can create rich full featured document structures, this is an excellent plugin for building help systems, guides, and general documentation. Documents consist of three parts which include the document, chapters and pages. Let's go over the basics of the document plugin and it's configuration options.

Once you give your document a title, you can add chapters and within those chapters, pages. Chapters are simple and consists of creating a title. A page can contain any content you want, pictures and diagrams. There are some restrictions to the number of chapters and pages that can be created. Each document can have a maximum of 10 chapters, each chapter can have a maximum of 20 pages.

Note: To add images to your pages, you can either use an image URL or upload photos using the asset manager.

A document must also be placed into a folder which acts as a category. When creating a document folder, you have the option of making it hidden. This means the folder is not only hidden from visitors but inaccessible when access directly using the URL.

Plan your folders' hidden status ahead of time and try to avoid switch back and forth as this may have an impact on search engine optimization. The documents plugin does not have a drafts mode when creating content, however, you can create a folder called draft and mark it as hidden. Documents in development can remain in the folder until ready.

The chapters and pages interface is isolated to keep development streamlined. Once the chapters and pages are created, you can arranged them in what ever order you want.

Note: If your document is relevant in more than one category then you can assign a document additional folders.

It may be prudent to allow your document to be rated and/or commented by visitors. The document plugin has a options for you to enabling either or both.

The rating option allows visitors to rate your documents helpfulness from a scale you can refine. The default is set to 5 meaning a visitor can rate a document 1 out of 5.

You can also enable comments which allows a visitor to write a short response to your document. This is beneficial because if can help you correct errors and gauge the popularity of your content. However, sometimes it can be abused, thus, you can decide whether you want to review the comments first before they become public.   This is done through configuration options.

The documents plugin has several pre-built templates for display purposes. Currently you must use the configuration option MultiPageView to cycle between the views. Please read the documentation for additional on how to change views and what the options are.

Note: The display configuration options for this plugin has become deprecated, however, the templates will remain in your system files.

There are a couple options available to configure the behavior of this plugin. The following options are available.

AllowRating

Set to allow documents to be rated by visitors

RatingScale

The scale for which documents are rated by. The default is set to 5 but it can changed to 10 for a more traditional range or 2 to simulate yes/no statistics.

AllowComments

Set to allow documents to accept comments by visitors

ReviewComments

Alongside AllowComments, this option prevents comments from being public until you approve them.

CommentDuration

The same visitor can add more than one comment. This option sets teh time between comments from single visitor.

TrackViews

Set to enable documents to log how many times they've been accessed.

MultiPageView

Allows you to assign a view for displaying documents. Let's go over the views available.

Scroll

This display renders a list of chapters at the beginning of the document and scrolls content into view when clicked.

Page

By default a chapters content is rendered on one page. This option divides the content into separate webpages and displays a pagination bar.

Tabs
A chapters' pages are loaded into a tab control.

Accordion
A chapters' pages are loaded into a accordion control.

Note: This option is a deprecated and should not be used.

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