On PHPBuilder.com today, there's a new posting for anyone out there that's ever wanted a more "drag and drop" kind of web site - Creating a Simple Extendable Module System.

Many web pages these days contain a sidebar filled with all sorts of goodies: Calendars, Searches, Links, RSS News feeds, etc. For those DIYers this can get sort of ugly if you are sticking all of these into a single php document. What we are going to show you in this article is how to create a simple way to import these types of features as self contained modules. First we'll start real simple, then cover a few ways to expand this.

They base a lot of the functionality off of the PEAR File_Find package and using it as a the base to find and use the modules that are to be developed later. They start small, showing you how to structure your system to make adding other modules a snap. Then, they get a bit more complex and briefly cover the style and order issues that will eventually come up...