relationship between sitefinity modules and widgets

Question

Here's a very basic question. First let me give you a bit of background. We are trying to implement a website using Sitefinity CMS. This does nothing fancy but

1. add user
2. store / display user profile
3. add book information
4. associates books to user
5. show some activity related to the Books being read by a user

Now all the job of creating records in the database ( to add a user) and retrieving a user from database is dome by third party web services.

I know that though it sounds like this feature can be implemented as a Widget, I would like to create a Module, so that we have a structure to extend this. I was thinking User module, Books module e.t.c. Is that right?

Another question related to this is the view provided by the Module, is it a widget in itself? If a create a new widget in future, can it use the back-end functionality of a Module? Basically my question is around the UI part of Module and widgets.

SiteFinity ( latest version 6.xxx) Thank you Guys ....

Answer 1

In simple terms, a module is the backend interface/logic and widgets are the ascx files. When you create a module in Sitefinity, by default the dynamic module builder will create a widget for you to 'display' the data. It also produces some code-reference material so you can easily build additional widgets.

Based on the 25 word requirements, I would use one module and one taxonomy. You could use the default user system in Sitefinity and simply extend them with additional profile fields, you'd like to store.

Then create a Dynamic Module, using the Module builder inside Sitefinity, and create a books module that stores your info.

Then I'd tie users and books together by creating a new taxonomy, and adding that as a classification to both your books module and your users.

This would allow you to easily create book variations (hard cover, paperback, ebook) while still 'linking' them to the same title and it works multi-lingual as well.

On top of that it keeps everything as future proof as can be plus adds some possible future benefits. Your users will instantly work cross the entire Sitefinity system (think newsletters/forums) and similarly with the taxonomy you created, which can be instantly linked (filtered) to any content type.

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I know a 'taxonomy' to tie everything together sounds strange at first, but it is a very powerful feature of sitefinity and allows you to leave everything 'out-of-the-box' and let the Telerik team do the heavy lifting for you instead of later on having to extend various areas of the Sitefinity system yourself in order to use your info with other content.

Answer 2

Regarding your questions:

1. For users, you could use your own database and create a custom Membership provider to leverage the user information.
2. You could create a Dynamic Module (Module Builder) to store Books. Within this module you could save the currently logged on User and have that relationship.

Not sure if I'm understanding the requirements, but I think this should do the job. If you don't require a separate database, you could do all of this within Sitefinity of course.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Daniel