I've seen a couple of ideas/proposals for extensions on the forum lately, and I have one of my own that I've been wanting to do for a while, so I just thought I'd throw this out there.
I'd love to be able to create an "options" page for my site. The back-end interface would function exactly like settings -- instead of a set of parent/child records, it would simply display a single page of configurable settings that are "global" to the site. For example, you may have a company address, phone number, single link, or block of content that needs to be displayed in multiple locations (but may be formatted differently per location). It would be great to give a client access to a single place to edit this without having to dig through multiple content elements, or giving them access to FE modules.
The difference between this and the settings module is records would probably be stored in the database instead of the global configuration file. Then they could be dropped into templates either via PHP code (from a global array) or optionally by dynamically creating an insert-tag, if chosen as an option.
We pretty much use Contao for every site now, whether or not a client is paying for content management, because it makes it so much easier for us to develop and maintain internally anyway, and also if they want to add CMS controls later it's an easy transition. We also have sites done in Contao where the client can only edit a catalog or a news archive. In each case it would be very convenient and user friendly to offer these clients access to an "options" page to manage simple site-wide stuff.
I've been meaning to try and reverse-engineer the settings module to figure out how to do this. But I was thinking this would also make a kick-ass extension as well, where you'd define an options page, define form widgets, decide whether to create an insert-tag for each, and then define access through user groups. But developing such an extension would be way over my head.
Anyway, hoping someone else thinks this is a good idea, too.
Thanks!
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