Sitefinity Custom Modules: Extend Your CMS, Enhance Your Website
PlanetMagpie provides development of websites using Sitefinity CMS. Creating the design, layout, content and SEO.
We also develop custom modules for Sitefinity. Custom modules that make your website do exactly what you need it to do.
Why Do We Need Custom Modules?
Sitefinity software includes dozens of standard modules. However, every company has their own unique needs. Most companies have at least one non-standard need for their website. That’s where custom modules come in.
In most CMS, you'd accomplish this with custom programming. Your developer would write code, test it, and then implement the custom programming into your site's code.
Sitefinity makes this process a little easier. It's designed to load custom modules just as easily as its regular code. So instead of plugging custom programming in, we develop a Custom Module and simply load it into Sitefinity.
This is why Custom Modules are so useful in enhancing your website.
Examples of Custom Modules Created by PlanetMagpie
To give you an idea of how varied custom modules can be in Sitefinity CMS, here's a partial list of the modules our own developers have customized or created.
Modules Extended and Customized - Events. Module extension with new data fields for additional contacts, locations and event related data fields. For example: Who should attend, Certificate name, Certificate content. Developed custom widgets to present event list and details.
- News. Module extension with new data fields for thumbnail and image link URL. Image gallery tag another custom field is used to associate a news item to any images in the news photo gallery. Developed custom widgets for presentation of news list and details.
- Image and Document Libraries. Added new data fields for image sequence, to put images into an order for display, and image link URL, used to wrap the image with a link to page or website.
- Custom Classifications. Module addition, for relational data lookups in multiple areas (Product types, Event types, State and County). Very useful for population of drop down lists on forms.
- Ecommerce. Module extension for endurance race registration. The checkout process assigned a membership role for each race, to allow for directed content and race updates specific to the races for which the racer had registered.
- Secondary extension: Administration. This extension also processed a bulk checkout and credit card validation of racers accepted into the premier race. Administration extensions included demographics reporting on racer's gender, age groups, state and countries of origin. Other reports included race registrations and counts for membership group.
Custom and Dynamic Modules Developed - Image Gallery and Categorization. Created for a furniture store's Products and Brands/Manufacturers. Presented high-quality product & brand images via product type, which are active (available), which are "Made in America", or which products are in a Featured Brand.
- Alert Status with Notifications. Module used by a major computer hardware production manufacturer to notify customers and employees about its current status - network, production or clean room status. Alert types are Green (OK), Yellow (Slow Production/Error) and Red (Production Down, Repair Needed).
- Contact Management. Created for event participants, and the participant managers who’ll add/remove participants from event registrations. Included tables for Company, Shipper, & Certificates Achieved. Custom classifications by event type, geographic region, and certificate type.
- Marquee/Banner Manager Module. Complex HTML5/JavaScript animated banners. The custom module allows the client to manage the images & its content overlays without needing to know the scripts behind the marquee.
- Content Import Modules. Several modules created for simple upload/import of CSV, Excel spreadsheets, or direct connection to external data sources. Data types include user accounts and user profile data, news items, blog posts, document library items, and products and product departments in the Ecommerce module.
- News Item Import. Module imports news content from CSV or Excel spreadsheet, with pre-import review, and reporting on the imported data counts by news category.
- Portfolio. Custom module for managing client portfolio data, multiple associated images and metadata columns, permissions-based access, & custom end-user presentation.
- Products. Custom module for managing product data, CMS Admin forms and front end controls.
- Additional Membership Provider Contacts. Custom profile and authentication for users to access permissions-based content outside of the CMS membership framework. Includes website and product registration forms.
- Membership User Import. Import forms for uploading CSV or Excel spreadsheets, reviewing import data, and reporting on imported data. Includes creation of membership user accounts, and notifying new users by email.
PlanetMagpie: Building Custom Modules for Website Enhancement
PlanetMagpie is a Sitefinity CMS Platinum Partner, certified in development of custom modules. We are the only Platinum-level partner in the San Francisco Bay Area.
If you're interested in a customized website which does exactly what you want it to, call us at 408-341-8770 or email at
webdev@planetmagpie.com. Initial consultation is always free and no-obligation.
