Introduction to tags

One of the key aspects of TourCMS, or any other content management system, is how you can use the data that has been entered into the system. This content includes tour descriptions, dates, prices and special offers.

For building web pages, TourCMS uses two kinds of tags. Firstly tags for individual data - we call these element tags. Secondly there are tags that create lists. As these require a start and an end, we call these container tags. They work in the same way as HTML container tags.

Web page building
Within TourCMS or within an external web page editor, page templates are created & edited. These templates combine HTML with the TourCMS tags. When the site is rebuilt, the tags are stripped out of the templates and are replaced with actual data. The final pages are then FTPed to your webserver in their final position.

Element tags

<$TourCMStour output="t_name"$>
<$TourCMSdeparture output="d_offer_price"$>

Container tags

<TourCMSlist_departures orderby="offer_datetime" order="desc"
bookable="show" has_offer="show" maxdisplay="3">

Attributes
The example above, TourCMSlist_departures, is a container tag that lists departures. Extra requirements can be defined using attributes. These attributes enable the web designer to dictate exactly what data should be returned. In the example above we have used:

• orderby - what to order the departures by. In this case the order is by date that the special offer was created
• order - whether the order should be ascending or descending. In this case the order is to show the latest special offer
• bookable - just show departures that are not closed or reached maximum bookings
• has_offer - just show departures that have special offers
• maxdisplay - how many departures to show. In this case show 3 departures

Combining container tags with element tags
The power of the tags system increases when container tags are combined with element tags.

<TourCMSlist_departures orderby="offer_datetime" order="desc"
bookable="show" has_offer="show" maxdisplay="3">

<$TourCMStour output="t_name"$>

</TourCMSlist_departures>

The above example encloses an element tag with a container tag. The container tag repeats its contents for each departure that has a special offer. The element tag itself is a tag to display the tour name. We could end up with a list of 3 tour names like this:

  Luxury Paris
  Luxury London
  Luxury Amsterdam

In addition we could add an extra element tag to display the special offer price:

<TourCMSlist_departures orderby="offer_datetime" order="desc"
bookable="show" has_offer="show" maxdisplay="3">

<$TourCMStour output="t_name"$>
<$TourCMSdeparture output="d_offer_price"$>
</TourCMSlist_departures>

In our example this would create a list of tour names and offer prices such as:

  Luxury Paris 500
  Luxury London 300
  Luxury Amsterdam 200

Building a table in HTML
Most of the time we will want to display this information in HTML rather than as a text list. The following example shows how the tags will integrate with HTML within the page templates:

<table cellspacing="2" cellpadding="2" border="1">
<TourCMSlist_departures orderby="offer_datetime" order="desc"
bookable="show" has_offer="show" maxdisplay="3">

<tr><td><$TourCMStour output="t_name"$></td>
<td><$TourCMSdeparture output="d_offer_price"$></td></tr>

</TourCMSlist_departures>
</table>

Which creates:

<table cellspacing="2" cellpadding="2" border="1">
<tr><td>Luxury Paris</td><td>500</td></tr>
<tr><td>Luxury London</td><td>300</td></tr>
<tr><td>Luxury Amsterdam</td><td>200</td></tr>
</table>

... and displays as:

Luxury Paris	500
Luxury London	300
Luxury Amsterdam	200

The HTML for each table row is repeated when each new line is added.

Summary
There are many container and element tags that can be used within TourCMS. These include content such as options, tours, dates, prices, pieces of HTML content from the inbuilt HTML editor etc. The web designer in full control over the presentation of the data and the travel company is in full control of the data itself.

This means that once the templates have been setup, the travel company can change their website without having to have any HTML knowledge.