INSTRUCTIONS FOR ACCESS CCS PAGES

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1. Introduction-
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CCS supports many methods to access your custom pages.  Depending upon your server environment and specific needs, you can utilize whichever method(s) you find best suit your needs.  This document highlights the various methods of accessing CCS pages and provides information describing how to access CCS outside of your forum root directory.

As we will be showing examples of various methods of accessing CCS pages, for the purposes of the examples we will assume the following:
-Page id: 1
-Page folder: parent/child-folder
-Page name: test.php

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2. Accessing CCS pages through your forums-
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Like any addon application for IPB, you can access CCS pages through specific URLs routed through your IPB installation.  CCS supports two methods of accessing it's pages through IPB.

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2.a. Using the page ID
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You can access CCS pages through a URL formatted similar to the following:

http://www.yoursite.com/forums/index.php?app=ccs&module=pages&section=pages&id=1

This is the least user-friendly way of accessing pages, but is a suitable fallback if you do not wish to have any named components in the URL.  Be sure to replace the id portion of the URL with the correct ID for the page.

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2.b. Using the folder and page names
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You can also access CCS pages through a URL that contains the folder and page names in it

http://www.yoursite.com/forums/index.php?app=ccs&module=pages&section=pages&folder=(folder_name)&page=(page_name)

If the folder is a subfolder, you will need to pass the full path (for example, &folder=parent/child/subchild).  The page value will need to contain the full SEO title that you specify in the ACP (including any extension you specify).  An example of a fully formatted URL might be

http://www.yoursite.com/forums/index.php?app=ccs&module=pages&section=pages&folder=parent/child-folder&page=test.php

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3. Using IPB Friendly URLs
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If you are making use of the IPB friendly urls, CCS can also utilize the IPB friendly URL structure (with an identifier "/pages") as well.  An example of a fully formatted page using the IPB friendly URL system would be

http://www.yoursite.com/forums/pages/parent/child-folder/test.php

or if you are not using the mod_rewrite .htaccess support in IPB

http://www.yoursite.com/forums/index.php/pages/parent/child-folder/test.php

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4. Using CCS outside of your forums
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While the above are suitable solutions, and can be used in any situation, you may also (or in place of the above) want to access CCS pages outside of your forum root directory.  A good example for this would be to have CCS power your main website, while your forums remain in the /forums subfolder as in the previous examples.  CCS is perfect for this scenario, but does require some work on your part to successfully set this up.

You will need to take the following steps in order to set CCS up in the root of your site (using the previous examples)

1) Take the "index.php" file from the Tools folder of your CCS download and open it in a text editor.  At the top of the file you will see the following


/**
 * You must define the path to your IPB installation here, with a trailing slash.
 * THIS IS A PATH, NOT A URL.  So, for example if this file is located in the root
 * of your site at /home/account/public_html and your forums are in a subfolder
 * named forums, you would set this to /home/account/public_html/forums/
 */
$path_to_ipb	= './forums';


Edit the $path_to_ipb variable to point to the directory IP.Board is installed in.  If in doubt, verify the correct path with your host.

2) Upload the file to the folder you specified

3) In the IPB ACP navigate to My Apps -> Community Content System.  Click on "Advanced" in the left hand menu.  Configure the "URL to index.php" setting appropriately.  In the above example you would set it to "http://www.yoursite.com".  Click Update Settings.

4) At this stage, you can access pages from your forum root directory using the following URL structure

http://www.yoursite.com/index.php/pages/parent/child-folder/test.php

5) If you would like to remove /index.php/ from the URL, go back to the IPB ACP and on the same "Advanced" page, change the setting "Use .htaccess mod_rewrite" to "Yes".  Again, click "Update Settings".

6) Click the button at the top right of the page to "Download .htaccess" and download this file to your computer.  Now upload it to the same folder you uploaded the index.php file to in step 2.  You should now be able to successfully access CCS pages without the /index.php/ in the URL like so

http://www.yoursite.com/pages/parent/child-folder/test.php

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5. Conclusion
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As you can see there are many ways of accessing CCS pages, some requiring your involvement and some that do not.  Choose the best option for your site and let CCS take care of the rest.