Best Practices for Modifying an Add-on

MIGx and its cousin MIGxDB allow you to have a TV with multiple fields (each field is either a default text input field or another TV that has no template assignment, such as richtext, an image or file type TV). You can even use another MIGx TV!

Not only does it do that, but it allows you to create as many of these items as you like. The regular variation (MIGx) stores the values as a JSON-encoded string in the regular Template Variables tables in the database. MIGxDB allows you to use custom tables to store the values in your own tables in the database. It is also very useful for creating a Custom Manager page to manage your custom database tables.

This particular implementation is a simple one for maintaining a list of "what's new" items for a scrolling list on the home page. It uses one "url" type TV and a default text input field.

The sample in the MIGx documentation is a great resource; I usually just copy/paste its grid and form examples and edit them to suit my needs. Unfortunately the docs site is down at the moment, or I'd post a link to it.