The Oscailt Module System

• An Oscailt system comes with a collection of modules, anybody can develop new modules for oscailt (see the oscailt module developers guide
• Modules allow you to produce data objects which can be viewed on your site. So, for example, having the static document module allows you to create multiple static document data objects, such as the about us page, the editorial guidelines page and so on. In Oscailt, each of these pages is a data object
• Every single piece of HTML on an oscailt page (with the exception of certain admin pages) is produced by a data object - there is no static html in oscailt.
• Some data objects are containers - they can contain other data objects. For example, a menu object can contain headline objects, static document objects, event calendar objects and so on.
• an Oscailt Page Layout is a data object which contains menus, bars and inset boxes.
• if a data object is to be viewed on a page of its own (eg a static document) then it must be given a reference to an appropriate page layout object. Some objects (eg simple links) are not supposed to be viewed on a page of their own and thus do not have a reference to a page layout object, they are designed to be viewed only in menus and so on.
• Each data object may have multiple display modes Having different display modes allows you to view the object in different ways. For example a static document object might have display modes: title only title and summary full page. When you are including a data object in a container (such as a menu or bar) you can select what display mode that you want to be included.