Tribiq
Encyclopedia
Tribiq is a UK-based consultancy specializing in custom web site design and development. Tribiq is the trading name for Tribal Limited (incorporated in England), and was previously called Tribal Internet.
The company was founded in 1996. The name "Tribal" was chosen as it conveyed the view of the internet as a medium for bringing people together.
The company rebranded in 2008 under the name Tribiq. Tribiq is a registered trademark in the EU and other countries.
The company's activities are bespoke web design and development (mostly for customers in the UK and contintental Europe), and web-based application development.
Tribiq also develops the Tribiq CMS open source content management system.
It is available in an open source Community edition under the GNU General Public License
. Other editions of Tribiq CMS are also available under a commercial license.
It allows site administrators to edit many aspects of a website: the content of individual pages can be edited with a WYSIWYG
editor; the navigational structure of the site can be modified and developed; "Plugins" can be added to enhance functionality; and sites can be loaded with new "Skins" which change the appearance of web pages.
Many management features use AJAX
interfaces, so that the effect of making a change can be previewed and then published, without needing to reload the web page.
The overall layout of a page is determined by a Template (of which the CMS contains a choice of 1, 2, and 3-column templates), and the Skin (which includes CSS and images and which controls the appearance of the page).
There are scalability features; when a Plugin is inserted into a page, the administrator can decide whether to apply the Plugin just to that page, to any page which uses a given Template, or across the entire site.
Tribiq CMS has multi-language capabilities. It is designed to handle content in any character set, and uses UTF-8
format for data storage so that characters in all languages can be rendered faithfully. Various tools are available to assist in the management of multiple languages, such as the "equivalence" system which creates relationships between pages which have the same meaning but are in different languages.
For administration, there is a tool called Storekeeper, which is the administrative back-end of the CMS. An administrator can perform a range of functions in Storekeeper, such as: managing content; organizing the categorization of content; installing new templates and skins; installing and managing Plugins; managing languages and their phrases; managing password-protected content and the associated Users and Groups; and other administrative tasks.
Tribiq CMS has options for federated website management, and there is a "Multisite" Plugin. This allows an administrator to run multiple websites from a single software installation. So-called "Super Administrators" can have a single admin login across all federated sites, while "Local Administrators" can edit only their designated site.
Most of the visible functionality of Tribiq CMS is delivered using Plugins. Many Plugins are built in to the standard product, and others can be installed separately. A Plugin which performs a given function can thus be removed and replaced with a different one.
Tribiq CMS can be used as a platform for web-based applications, with Storekeeper being used as an administrative interface which can be extended in bespoke ways. The CMS can be operated with Storekeeper as the sole interface, therefore with no website front-end for unauthorized visitors.
Storekeeper is designed to have the familiarity of a regular operating system, and therefore has icons, different views, pagination, sort controls, and a search feature. It has a fully documented API, with the intention that third-party developers can create new application Plugins.
The product is designed to run on any web server with PHP 5 and MySQL 5. When administering a site, it is designed to work on Internet Explorer versions 6, 7, 8, Firefox 3, Safari and Chrome.
Storekeeper - an administrative backend for configuring the content management system and interacting with applications built on the Tribiq CMS framework.
Admin Toolbar - a tabbed administrative toolbar present on all pages in the frontend and used for accessing different viewing modes and settings for the page.
Floating boxes - launched by pressing buttons in both Storekeeper and the Admin Toolbar, floating boxes overlay the page and commonly provide the administrator with access to settings.
All native functionality in Tribiq CMS is written in TUIX. This enables modification and integration of new functionality by Plugins.
The XML defined in the TUIX document is converted into a PHP
array on the server before being sent via JSON
to the client (a web browser) to be rendered.
If multiple TUIX documents are defined with the same elements, the TUIX documents will be merged in the PHP array. This makes it easy to add new features to existing interfaces.
My Top Level Item
My Panel
My Item
This will place a link to the panel in the left-hand column of Storekeeper and place an item in the panel with the text 'My Item'.
TUIX also supports the definition of a data source which can be used to populate the tag dynamically:
My Top Level Item
My Panel
<table>some_table_name AS t</table>
t.id
Name
t.name
The TUIX model can be further modified by manipulating the PHP array before it is sent to the client.
The company was founded in 1996. The name "Tribal" was chosen as it conveyed the view of the internet as a medium for bringing people together.
The company rebranded in 2008 under the name Tribiq. Tribiq is a registered trademark in the EU and other countries.
The company's activities are bespoke web design and development (mostly for customers in the UK and contintental Europe), and web-based application development.
Tribiq also develops the Tribiq CMS open source content management system.
Tribiq CMS
Tribiq CMS is the company's main product line. It is a browser-based web site content management system, and a platform for bepoke online applications.It is available in an open source Community edition under the GNU General Public License
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
. Other editions of Tribiq CMS are also available under a commercial license.
Features
Tribiq CMS is a browser-based website content management system based on PHP and MySQL.It allows site administrators to edit many aspects of a website: the content of individual pages can be edited with a WYSIWYG
WYSIWYG
WYSIWYG is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get. The term is used in computing to describe a system in which content displayed onscreen during editing appears in a form closely corresponding to its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product...
editor; the navigational structure of the site can be modified and developed; "Plugins" can be added to enhance functionality; and sites can be loaded with new "Skins" which change the appearance of web pages.
Many management features use AJAX
Ajax
- Mythology :* Ajax , son of Telamon, ruler of Salamis and a hero in the Trojan War, also known as "Ajax the Great"* Ajax the Lesser, son of Oileus, ruler of Locris and the leader of the Locrian contingent during the Trojan War.- People :...
interfaces, so that the effect of making a change can be previewed and then published, without needing to reload the web page.
The overall layout of a page is determined by a Template (of which the CMS contains a choice of 1, 2, and 3-column templates), and the Skin (which includes CSS and images and which controls the appearance of the page).
There are scalability features; when a Plugin is inserted into a page, the administrator can decide whether to apply the Plugin just to that page, to any page which uses a given Template, or across the entire site.
Tribiq CMS has multi-language capabilities. It is designed to handle content in any character set, and uses UTF-8
UTF-8
UTF-8 is a multibyte character encoding for Unicode. Like UTF-16 and UTF-32, UTF-8 can represent every character in the Unicode character set. Unlike them, it is backward-compatible with ASCII and avoids the complications of endianness and byte order marks...
format for data storage so that characters in all languages can be rendered faithfully. Various tools are available to assist in the management of multiple languages, such as the "equivalence" system which creates relationships between pages which have the same meaning but are in different languages.
For administration, there is a tool called Storekeeper, which is the administrative back-end of the CMS. An administrator can perform a range of functions in Storekeeper, such as: managing content; organizing the categorization of content; installing new templates and skins; installing and managing Plugins; managing languages and their phrases; managing password-protected content and the associated Users and Groups; and other administrative tasks.
Tribiq CMS has options for federated website management, and there is a "Multisite" Plugin. This allows an administrator to run multiple websites from a single software installation. So-called "Super Administrators" can have a single admin login across all federated sites, while "Local Administrators" can edit only their designated site.
Most of the visible functionality of Tribiq CMS is delivered using Plugins. Many Plugins are built in to the standard product, and others can be installed separately. A Plugin which performs a given function can thus be removed and replaced with a different one.
Tribiq CMS can be used as a platform for web-based applications, with Storekeeper being used as an administrative interface which can be extended in bespoke ways. The CMS can be operated with Storekeeper as the sole interface, therefore with no website front-end for unauthorized visitors.
Storekeeper is designed to have the familiarity of a regular operating system, and therefore has icons, different views, pagination, sort controls, and a search feature. It has a fully documented API, with the intention that third-party developers can create new application Plugins.
The product is designed to run on any web server with PHP 5 and MySQL 5. When administering a site, it is designed to work on Internet Explorer versions 6, 7, 8, Firefox 3, Safari and Chrome.
TUIX
TUIX, Tribiq User Interface XML, is an XML based user interface markup language created by Tribiq for development of applications within the Tribiq content management system, Tribiq CMS.Outline
The key interface elements in Tribiq CMS are:Storekeeper - an administrative backend for configuring the content management system and interacting with applications built on the Tribiq CMS framework.
Admin Toolbar - a tabbed administrative toolbar present on all pages in the frontend and used for accessing different viewing modes and settings for the page.
Floating boxes - launched by pressing buttons in both Storekeeper and the Admin Toolbar, floating boxes overlay the page and commonly provide the administrator with access to settings.
All native functionality in Tribiq CMS is written in TUIX. This enables modification and integration of new functionality by Plugins.
The XML defined in the TUIX document is converted into a PHP
PHP
PHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document...
array on the server before being sent via JSON
JSON
JSON , or JavaScript Object Notation, is a lightweight text-based open standard designed for human-readable data interchange. It is derived from the JavaScript scripting language for representing simple data structures and associative arrays, called objects...
to the client (a web browser) to be rendered.
If multiple TUIX documents are defined with the same elements, the TUIX documents will be merged in the PHP array. This makes it easy to add new features to existing interfaces.
Examples
A very simple Storekeeper panel could be defined with the following XML:This will place a link to the panel in the left-hand column of Storekeeper and place an item in the panel with the text 'My Item'.
TUIX also supports the definition of a data source which can be used to populate the
<table>some_table_name AS t</table>
The TUIX model can be further modified by manipulating the PHP array before it is sent to the client.