Conclusion
Head over to concrete5.org and get a demo going to try this stuff out. Keep reading to learn about the concrete5 community and let me know what other features you want to talk about in the comments.
From concrete5 for Drupal Developers and Designers by Chris Hvizdak
Concrete5 Single Pages: Use Them For Custom Application-y Tasks you Might Code a Module for in Drupal
While exploring the concrete5 forums and documentation you will definitely encounter the concept of Single Pages. Blocks are great for creating reusable sections of content and elements that offer basic interaction like contact forms built with the core Form block. Single Pages are the way to go when you need to implement custom, complex CRUD tasks that can or should have a fixed URL on your site.
At their most basic, Single Pages allow you to execute code at a fixed URL in a concrete5 site. If you have developed a Drupal module you have most likely implemented menu hooks to execute functions at specific URLs. Both concepts have essentially the same goal.
A lot of concrete5’s core functionality is built using Single Pages:
- Public facing pages like the Login page and the Registration page are Single Pages.
- The administrative Dashboard is composed almost entirely of Single Pages.
Here are some good example candidates for custom Single Pages you might build:
- Complex content creation forms*
- Fixed pages that display data from external databases
- Multi-step public facing forms
- Forms that offering varied fields based on user input
*About those content creation forms:
Composer was added to concrete5 in 2011 and allows you to leverage Page Types, Page Type Defaults and Page Attributes to setup nice content creation forms not unlike the Add / Edit content form in Drupal. Single Pages were the best solution for creating basic content creation forms before Composer. If you find that you need more complex , application-y forms that go beyond what Composer can offer, Single Pages are the way to go.
Check out the concrete5 core team’s eCommerce Add-on and developer ChadStrat’s ProEvents Add-On to see good examples of complex forms implemented with Single Pages.
Building Single Pages
Prior to the introduction of Composer, concrete5 CTO Andrew Embler put together a detailed article on creating a Single Page Powered Page Editing Interface. While today you could achieve almost the same results with Composer, this article remains the go to resource on coding a single page that will allow you to create and edit conventional pages using a form interface.