OLIV is a slim but flexible content management system, especially designed for the support of different languages. The special tool manages the layout of articles and the multilingual content. If offers a messaging system for all translators about changes.

OLIV don't use a database for the core functions. A database module offers the possibility to simply insert dynamic content into the page rendering. All configuration and content is stored in XML-Files, the templates are XSLT-Stylesheets, all editable with a simple text editor. This makes it easy to backup all the system by only copying some folders.

OLIV is designed to create a webpage without complex programming. The stylesheets, pages, menus and content can be interactively created on the webinterface. If very complex templates or content is needed, the use of XML and XSLT-Files make it easy to solve the problems.

A simple but powerfull module and plugin system make the developement of extensions a simple task. Modules are used to offer spezial functions to display complex content, like articles or menu structures.

XSLT-stylesheets are used to convert the content data to valid html code.

Some basic function are realised as modules:

• Article: displays and organizes dynamic content
• Menu: display of complex menues
• Login: a login area for access control
• Database (to be developed): an interface to mysql database structures

Plugins are functions, which can can change content after the render process. Both tags and attributes of tags can be filtered and changed. Plugins can be used stand alone or be part of a module.

Some plugins are standard part of OLIV:

• dabaPlugin: integration of mysql field content
• formPlugin: inserts the correct path in html formulars for intern links
• imgPlugin: use of the image class of OLIV to simply address images without the knowledge of the path
• pagePlugin: functions to affect the page to be loaded
• systemPlugin: display of system variables
• textPlugin: part of the article module to link the edit function to text parts

The multisession capability of OLIV makes it easy to realise different sites on one server with only one OLIV installation. All global installed modules can be used by all sites, whereas the content and templates are stored in a single separate subdirectory.

To display a page, OLIV has to execute some steps:

• Initialize the session
• Initialize the OLIV core system
• Scan for modules and plugins
• Route the url to the correct page
• Load the page template
• Load the page CSS-stylesheets
• Load the page content
  • Redirect if redirect function if found
  • Recursivly load masterpages if found
• Run preprocessor
  • Parse the page content and call all modules
  • Load and merge all module content to page content
  • Load and link all module xsl-templates to page template
  • Link all module CSS-staylesheets
• Render the page XML and XSLT with XSLT-processor to a XML
• Run postprocessor
  • Parse the complete page content for tags, defined in a plugin
  • Change the page content in the plugins
• Render the finished page content XML to valid HTML

For normal operation JavaScipt is not necessary. The Administration is designed with JavaScript support, to make the work as easy as possible. If the webmaster wants to use scipts inside of modules, the module class supports the linking an the execution of the scripts.

OLIV is in an early developement state and threre are some big tasks to solve to get to an operational version.