RubyCMS

Reusable Rails engine for a CMS-style admin: permissions, admin UI shell, content blocks, and a visual editor.

Vision: your app owns product features (pages, models, business logic); RubyCMS manages content workflows and admin screens.

This README is an overview and quick start. For a full, versioned checklist of admin routes, rake tasks, and integrations, see docs/FEATURES.md. Use a GitHub Wiki only if you want long, site-specific runbooks; keep the gem’s canonical list in-repo to avoid drift.

Features

• Visual editor (inline editing for content_block regions)
• Content blocks (rich text + placeholders + list items)
• Permissions and users (admin access control)
• Admin settings (DB-backed options, nav order)
• Visitor error tracking (/admin/visitor_errors)
• Analytics via Ahoy (dashboard, page and visitor drill-downs)

Quick Start

rails g ruby_cms:install

The generator sets up:

• config/initializers/ruby_cms.rb
• mounts the engine (/admin/... on the host app)
• migrations + RubyCMS tables
• seed permissions + initial admin setup

If your host app already has /admin routes, adjust/remove them so RubyCMS can use /admin.

Using Content Blocks

In any view:

<%= content_block("hero_title", default: "Welcome") %>
<%= content_block("footer", cache: true) %>

Placeholders (attributes like `placeholder`, `alt`, meta tags)

content_block wraps output for the visual editor, so do not put it inside HTML attributes. Use wrap: false (or content_block_text):

<%= text_field_tag :name, nil,
  placeholder: content_block("contact.name_placeholder", wrap: false, fallback: "Your name") %>

<%= text_area_tag :message, nil,
  placeholder: content_block_text("contact.message_placeholder", fallback: "Your message...") %>

List items (badges, tags, arrays)

Use content_block_list_items to get an Array:

<% content_block_list_items("education.item.badges", fallback: item[:badges]).each do |badge| %>
  <%= tag.span badge, class: "badge" %>
<% end %>

Store list content as JSON (["Ruby", "Rails"]) or newline-separated text in the CMS.

Create/edit blocks in Admin -> Content blocks.

Visual Editor

Configure preview templates + (optional) preview data in config/initializers/ruby_cms.rb:

c.preview_templates = { "home" => "pages/home", "about" => "pages/about" }
c.preview_data = ->(page_key, view) { { products: Product.limit(5) } }

Then open Admin -> Visual editor, pick a page key, and click content blocks in the preview.

Admin UI Pages (custom admin templates)

RubyCMS exposes an admin_page helper:

<%= admin_page(title: "My Page", subtitle: "Optional") do %>
  <p>Hello from RubyCMS admin.</p>
<% end %>

Visitor Error Tracking

Public (non-admin) exceptions are captured and shown in /admin/visitor_errors.

In development, logging is typically disabled and exceptions are re-raised normally.

Page View Tracking (Ahoy)

Include RubyCms::PageTracking in public controllers:

class PagesController < ApplicationController
  include RubyCms::PageTracking

  def home
    # @page_name can be set; defaults vary by controller
  end
end

Seeding Content Blocks from YAML

If you want to import blocks from locales, set:

c.content_blocks_translation_namespace = "content_blocks"

Example config/locales/en.yml:

en:
  content_blocks:
    hero_title: "Welcome to my site"

Import:

rails ruby_cms:content_blocks:seed

Common Rake Tasks

• rails ruby_cms:seed_permissions
• rails ruby_cms:setup_admin
• rails ruby_cms:content_blocks:seed