Learn more about ZOO's CCK

Get a clue about the idea of our CCK architecture

Apr

It has been two and a half weeks since the ZOO release and we have over 5700 downloads of the Lite Edition. We are glad to see more and more reviews, news articles and Twitter discussions going on about our ZOO extension. Also, the term CCK is a hot and intensely discussed topic and we would like to share our view on some points and answer some questions here.

What is a true CCK architecture?

In the last couple of days a lot of people asked, "What is so special about ZOO?" and, "What is the difference between ZOO and other extensions with a so-called CCK functionality?" The term "Content Construction Kit" (CCK) originally comes from the Drupal world. It is the name of a third party module for Drupal which allows users to add custom fields to custom content types, using a web interface. We at YOOtheme really liked the idea of this great and powerful feature and started planning a catalog system with a CCK. You can read more about the time this whole process took in this blog post.

Okay, let's get to the question "What is so special about the ZOO extension?" now. Our approach in designing the ZOO's architecture was to create a true CCK. Basically this means that by default, an item has nothing but a name. Everything else is inherited from the item's type. You can easily create these types yourself: You select the exact elements the type shall consist of, like text, images or a file download. The item itself has no properties like an image or video that are bound to it hard-coded. As said above, everything is inherited by the type. The ZOO's most powerful feature is that we broke down the design of content into items, types and elements. This is where its architecture unfolds its strengths. In one type you can use any kind of element as often as you want, in any combination. You can also add and remove elements from a custom type at any time, even if you already created items of that type. The elements are completely pluggable and we will continually extend the current set of elements. The flexible and powerful design of the ZOO will allow us to integrate many more features in the future.

More parameter settings = more features?

Do less configuration options mean the application is less complex in its functionality? Of course not. We had the intention to make the ZOO's backend interface as simple as possible to not overwhelm the user with parameter settings. Instead of adding every functionality as a parameter option we thought it is more important to have a clearly arranged user interface and all the options in the right places. Anyhow, the ZOO offers a lot of flexible and powerful features like the API which allows you to build your own elements and templates. In short: It is possible to achieve most common functionalities with the ZOO.

ZOO Lite too light?

The Lite Edition of the ZOO provides all core features of the ZOO. You can develop your own custom templates and elements. Please take a look at How to start templating and Develop your own "hello world" element. Both tutorials are a good start to learn more about the ZOO API. If you don't feel like looking into code and want to start your web project right away, go and get the ZOO Pro Edition. We created additional templates with pre-built types for the Pro Edition. All these templates are ready to use and are designed for specific purposes like a personal blog or a download archive.

ZOO reviews on the web

We like to highlight a really comprehensive review by Tom Bohacek. Tom is the developer behind the bContent extension. So make sure to take a look if you understand German.

What's next?

We started the development on ZOO 1.1.x. So keep an eye on our Twitter tweets. We will tweet about the upcoming features...

By Sascha | 07 April, 2009 | Posted in ZOO

Comments (14)

aviva

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Thanks for this added, very useful information and review.
Will ZOO updates be free of charge, and if yes, for how long?

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Captain Bob

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Great work guys! Thanks a lot for this tool, very professional, clean and well documented. It's a bit expensive for me, especially the 3 month update period (TOO SHORT!!).

Will ZOO be able to update content (articles, photos, videos) from the front end?? I will buy the PRO version if that feature is included...

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jacob.whitaker

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Thanks for the explanation. :-) The article by Tom Bohacek was very comprehensive and well done. I am looking forward to the upcoming features for ZOO!

I have no doubt YOOTheme will keep ZOO priced at whatever the market can bare. At this point I am will to spend the money simply because in the long run it saves me money by saving me time. If the product saves me simply one hour it pays for itself. :-) Not to say I wouldn't love for ZOO to be less expensive.

Keep up the good work YOOTheme!

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ACS

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ZOO is a very exciting component. A key feature that will make it invaluable would be a highly configurable module. Maybe a module template system. This would allow the user to display for example, the latest items from a product catalog in a module position.

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trl1986

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I have had some really great experience with PRO edition of Zoo. Even without getting too heavy in to the templates I have already been able to greatly enhance even the most standard content on my sites. It is easy to use, maybe a little less easy to wrap your head around initially, but totally worth taking the time to figure out what Zoo is capable of.

Great job YooTheme!

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Mark

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This is a very great component. At first I thought it had a lot of limitations because of the templates, but since I learned how to fully template items and catalogs I could see the potential of using this on my site. Previously it would take me up to 2 hours to style just one article on my website(which is a type of resource), now I can do it in minutes and the layout is perfect every time.

One thing I would like to see in the future is a front-end item maker. A bit like submitting articles(which authors and above can do) except using zoo. If that would be a possibility in the future, I would rate this 10/10 easy.

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Maxim

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Have you thought about a demo section?

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Captain Bob

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Do you have a roadmap for ZOO 1.1.x? Can you give us a features list please?

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Zach

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@ Maxim,

Since YooTheme is built off of Zoo, you are currently on the demo site.

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waitz

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I just bought zoo pro, and started to study the templates. WOW (!!) Now I begin to understand the potential of zoo. It is really great, and I am very happy I took this decision. Yoo hoo.

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Michele Fioretti

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Zoo and a very interesting tools.
Calendar lacks a field for entering a data.Will be implemented?

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rob

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any chance of adding pay to download option in zoo..?

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koobifora

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Have not checked this site for a while. Has Zoo implemented front end submission/editing yet?

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edy_vikingmetal

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I would also like to know if Zoo will implement a front end submission/editing (of any type) controlled by a form with its functions!!!!

That would just be freaking awesome!!!!!! I would bought the PRO edition without even thinking about it!!!!!

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