Nucleus .Net Core CMS

Control Panel Extensions

Some extensions do not have a user interface, but need to provide a way for site administrators to set configuration settings. Use a control panel extension to add an item to the Manage or Settings control panel.

A Control Panel extension is an MVC Controller/ViewModel/View, just like a module. A <controlPanelExtensionDefinition> entry in the manifest registers your control panel extension with Nucleus. A simple example of a control panel extension is in the Nucleus Google Analytics extension, which is used to manage your site's Google Analytics ID.

Example

<controlPanelExtensionDefinition id="{generate-guid}">
  <friendlyName>My Control Panel Extension</friendlyName>
  <description>Sample Control Panel Extension.</description>
  <controllerName>Settings</controllerName>
  <extensionName>My Extension</extensionName>
  <scope>Site</scope>
  <editAction>Settings</editAction>
</controlPanelExtensionDefinition>

Control Panel Extension Definition Values

id Unique id (guid) for your control panel extension.
friendlyName Display name for your control panel extension. This is shown on-screen in the Manage or Settings control panel.
description Description for your control panel extension. This is shown on-screen in the Manage or Settings control panel.
controllerName The name of your controller class. You can omit the root namespace and Controller suffix. For example, if your class name is MyExtension.MyControlPanelController, you can just specify MyControlPanel.
extensionName The name of the extension that the control panel extension belongs to. This value must match the value of the Extension() attribute in your controller class and is used for MVC routing.
scope Specifies whether the control panel extension is added to the Manage or Settings control panel. The allowed values are Site or Global. If your control panel extension saves settings for the current site, choose Site. If your settings are for the entire Nucleus instance, choose Global.
editAction The name of the Controller Action to run when the user selects the control panel extension. This action should render a View.

Element names are case-sensitive, and must appear in the order shown above.

If your control panel extension settings view has a header element with a class="nucleus-control-panel-heading", Nucleus will automatically set the control panel or dialog heading to the value of your header element and will remove the original header element. This is recommended, as it increases the vertical space available for your settings view contents.

Control Panel Extensions with a Site scope can save simple site-related settings using Context.Site.SiteSettings - get a reference to the current Context by including it as a parameter in your controller constructor. Control Panel Extensions with a Global scope need to implement their own data provider to save settings to extension-specific database tables, because global settings don't belong to a specific site (control panel extensions with a Site scope can do this too, if required).