Creating Custom TVs in Evolution CMS

Custom TVs are one of the features that made Evolution CMS attractive to site builders long before “structured content” became a fashionable phrase. This short legacy article came from a common frustration: the official examples for building a custom TV were thin, while real projects often needed one field that combined several inputs into a single stored value.

The original source pointed to a working example and described the idea in one sentence. This republished version keeps that focus and turns it into a practical note.

The Goal

The goal is to build a custom TV that groups multiple form controls into one field. Instead of scattering small pieces of related data across separate TVs, you can keep them in one structured value and process them together.

the underlying example described this as combining multiple form elements in a single TV and serializing the result with jquery.serializeJSON.

Why Use a Custom TV?

to keep related content fields together
to reduce clutter in the manager form
to store more structured values than a plain text TV allows
to build a manager experience tailored to a real content model

That is especially useful when one content block contains several tightly related values such as a label, a URL, an icon choice, a color, or a small settings bundle.

What the Legacy Example Showed

A real-world case described a custom TV based on two building blocks:

Evolution CMS custom template variables
jquery.serializeJSON to collect several inputs into one stored value

The linked example demonstrated how a TV could behave more like a small form component than a single input box.

Design Advice That Still Holds Up

If you create a custom TV for a real project, keep these rules in mind:

Model one coherent content block, not an unrelated pile of inputs.
Store values in a format that is easy to inspect and transform later.
Document the expected structure for other developers on the project.
Keep the manager UI simple enough for editors to understand at a glance.

What to Publish Alongside a Custom TV

In practice, a reusable custom TV needs more than code. It should ship with:

a short field-purpose description
at least one example value
clear output examples in templates or snippets
migration notes if older content must be converted

Source Reference

The original article linked to an external walkthrough with the working donor example:

customtv-example.html

Even though the article itself was brief, the core point is still useful today: if standard TVs are too small for a structured block of content, Evolution gives you enough flexibility to build a custom input around your real editorial needs.