Custom Elements

CommonSpot's powerful Custom Element features give you maximum control over creating objects that enable contributors to easily add rich content to your site. Instead of first constructing custom queries to capture object data, then creating separate HTML templates to handle data display, you can use Custom Element options to build unique content objects that meet your site's needs. For example, to dynamically display events, create a custom Upcoming Events Element that includes site-specific title, description, date, location, audience, and expiration fields. Once deployed, contributors simply select the Upcoming Events Element from the standard Element Gallery to add this dynamic component to pages.

Unlike the collection of Elements on a page, Custom Elements are self-contained content objects, similar to Metadata Forms, defined by a collection of fields. You can either use the two dozen-plus predefined CommonSpot field types (text-area, checkboxes, selection-list, image, mail, multimedia, etc.) or code your own custom fields. You can also set required default, and security values for Element fields or use predefined field masks.

Contributors enter and edit Custom Element data through a form interface. Since Custom Elements do not specify any display attributes other than a built-in name/value pair format, CommonSpot includes Layout options for formatting each Element type and makes them conveniently available at the page level, with preview and editing options, from the Element menu Choose Layout option (see the Elements Reference for details). Layouts are controlled by:

Custom Elements also provide two rendering modes. You can produce content based on either of the following:

These options enable you to reuse content within a site. For example, your Upcoming Event Element might present a calendar view for multiple events and a detailed view for a specific event.

Related Links

Custom Element Types

Creating Custom Elements

Custom Element Field Definitions

Defining Element Security

Data Browser Properties

Viewing Page & Search Properties

Defining Field Render Masks

Defining Display Templates

You can download PDF versions of the Content Contributor's, Administrator's, and Elements Reference documents from the support section of paperthin.com (requires login).

The following guides are available from the support site and are in the /docs/directory of your CommonSpot Server:

You can also download these other guides from the support section of paperthin.com (with login):

For technical support:

http://www.paperthin.com/support/