How can I customise the publish/edit screens, or provide a custom UI for editing entries?

Question

I'd like to provide my users a prettier UI to publish and edit/delete content (compared to what is provided by EE's control panel). For example, say I wanted to divide my entry form into tabs, etc. What are my options?

Answer 1

You can build a custom "My Account" area in your EE templates to handle all editing of content. The primary addon you'd use is the Safecracker Module.

Here are some global variable conditionals you'll use a lot with a custom "My Account" area:

• {if logged_in}
• {if logged_out}
• {if member_group == ""}
• {if member_id == ""}

There is also alternative syntax for some of the above if you are trying to use the conditional inside a channel:entries tag... variable names get prefixed with "logged_in_"

Answer 2

You already can use tabs in your publish layout:

Edit an entry > click "show toolbar" > add/remove tabs in this section:

More info in the EE documentation: Publish Page Layouts

Answer 3

I've done this using an entry that uses Ajax calls via jQuery and SAEF. Basically just hold all the changes in a json string and pass them when everything is collected that you/they need.

I didn't use tabs though. I used modals and steps.

Answer 4

In addition to customizing the layout of the publish screen as per janvl's answer, you can have a look at one of the available third-party themes for the control panel.