Plugins and Nests in Zenario

Plugins: Building Blocks of Dynamic Content

What Are Plugins?

Plugins are Zenario's modular components that bring functionality to your web pages.

They are smart building blocks that can be inserted into "slots" on page layouts to provide specific features — from contact forms and search boxes to news feeds and user dashboards.

They are re-usable, in the sense that a plugin can be used in one or many places, meaning that an edit to a plugin can have effect in multiple places.

How plugins work

Plugins can be placed in a on a layout, with the scope being appropriate to its use, for example:

• Site-wide: Deploy plugins in header/footer areas across an entire website (for example, the main site logo)
• On a layout: Place plugins that appear consistently across all pages using that layout (for example, showing a menu breadcrumb trail)
• On a specific content item: Add plugins on individual pages, overriding layout plugin choices (for example, showing a form, or a list of documents).

There are various types of plugin:

• Interactive plugins: Contact forms, search functionality, user login panels
• Content display: News listings, Document lists, event calendars, image galleries
• Integration plugins: Social media feeds, maps, video players
• User management: Registration forms, member directories, dashboards.

Speed and caching

Plugins run quickly: although they often pull data from Zenario's content database, the output is cached, and then is available for other site visitors. 

Zenario's caching system is smart enough not to cache data that is personalised to specific users, among other things.

When the caching system cannot deliver an entire web page from the cache, the system falls back on delivering content from the cached plugins, thus providing a still rapid user experience.

Customisable

Plugins are highly customisable: most contain a number of options to adjust their behaviour, what they display, and styling.

They also use the Twig templating system, so where a built-in HTML output cannot be achieved, the Twig framework for that plugin can be modified (via the file system for security).