Hotaru CMS A Truly Modular Content Management System

Hotaru CMS is a modular CMS that can be used to launch almost any kind of website, the use that interested me though was the fact that Hotaru CMS can be configured to build a Social News website similar to Digg or Wpscoop the second of which I own and is built using Drupal. Being that Drigg for Drupal hasn’t really been developed or maintained since 26 Jun 2009 now I was looking at possible systems for the future in case Drigg never makes it to a Drupal 7 release.

What Is Hotaru CMS

Hotaru CMS is a content management system that is completely modular based in it’s approach, the core of Hotaru is merely container shell and you build you desired web application with released or custom modules for the Hotaru core. This is an approach that really interested me as Hotaru can be anything you want and not simply a Blog, Social News Site, Microblogging Site etc. After doing research and reading a few articles about Hotaru CMS I decided to join the project and contribute where I can.

Hotaru Development Approach

Hotaru is very much like wordpress in it’s theming and plugin development approach which really appeals to me and no doubt many others who already do or have used wordpress. Hotaru plugins and themes are easy to understand and the Hotaru community forums already have a wealth of information on how to edit or create plugins and themes for the system.

Currently under development is a full suite of social bookmarking plugins that allows Hotaru to perform the functions of a Social bookmarking/news website.

• ReCaptcha – Email confirmation.
• Block by IP.
• Block by email address.
• Block by username.
• Email notification of new users with an option to approve or deny them access.
• Ban, killspam, or physically delete users.
• Place users under moderation (so you can approve their posts or comments).
• Group and individual user permissions to submit, vote, comment, etc. – Block posts from being re-submitted.
• Block posts by url or domain.
• Limit daily submissions for posts and coments – Restrict the submission rate (e.g. set 10 mins before being able to post again).
• Moderate first X submissions or comments.
• Enable/disable comments site-wide and on individual threads.
• Close threads, but retain existing comments.
• Limit the number of urls allowed in posts or comments.
• Hide or physically delete posts and comments.
• Flag posts – a bury button that shows the number of buries and their reasons.

Hotaru Plugin Template Hooks

To better understand how Hotaru handles template hooks from plugins/modules here is a short example below.

To add the content from the simple Hello World plugin into your Hotaru Template you can simply add this hook below in your template where you want the content to appear.

< ?php $hotaru->plugins->pluginHook('hello_world'); ?> 

To write the actual function for this call into a plugin you simply create the php function below.

public function hello_world()
{
     echo "Hello World!";
}

The code below shows the entire contents of the Hello World plugin code.

< ?php
/**
 * name: Hello World
 * description: Displays "Hello World!"
 * version: 0.4
 * folder: hello_world
 * class: HelloWorld
 * hooks: hello_world
 *
 * more info
 */

class HelloWorld extends PluginFunctions
{
    /**
     * Displays "Hello World!" wherever the plugin hook is.
     */
    public function hello_world()
    {
        echo "Hello World!";
    }

}

?>

This demonstrates how you can easily code a simple plugin for the Hotaru system.