I have few queries regarding CQ. Your reply will really make the difference to my understanding.
1) Why exactly do we need template when what all template do is to have a resourceType property attached to a content-page component. At the time of creating new page, shouldn't authors directly select that component ?
2) In other CMS like Vignette, content authors create the contents separately (not directly on the page) for ex. products details and then those contents are iterated / processed to display on the page. But in CQ, the scenario is other way round. Authors directly create the content on the page. Now if same content is needed on other page, how will that be re-used ?
3) For pages like product details, there is a fixed structure of the content like product image, description etc. Now if there is parsys component used (widely used in geometrixx demo site), there will be possibility to add the any of the allowed components in any order in parsys. Will not this create content chaos ? OR it will be author's responsibility to add it as needed by page structure ?
Regards,
Ronak
1) That is actually a good question, it would make more sense to somehow identify a component as page template. Though there is one reason for a template: The developer can already have some properties and even components within a parsys preset.
2) There is a Reference component in the foundation components which is for this exact use case. Within the dialog you can select any component from any other page. So you can create a dummy page outside of the navigation with frequently used text and reference them when needed.
3) That is always the problem between defined structure and author freedom. Each customer has to decide what is best for him. Though usually I end up having to give the author too much freedom for my liking: Welcome the infamous HTML component, because some marketing guy will have a fancy campaign online within 2 days...
EDIT (As requested some more detail to 1):
In many projects I have a rather generic page component with layout options (hide the navigation, hide or show a teaser column, etc.) in the page properties. The most common used options have a separate template for the author to choose. So the underlying page component is the same for the templates but the preset layout options are specific to a template. I hope this clarifies it a bit. Else please create a seperate question as Dave suggested anyway and be a bit more precise of what you need to know.
Related
I am a little bit confused. How do we reuse areas from another page? Lets say I created an article in an articles area on my index page. How do I display that same content in another page?
Ive read the following https://documentation.magnolia-cms.com/display/DOCS53/Reusing+area+content
Seems kind of complex. I dont understand the pom file.
Cant we acccomplish this purely in light modules? If not, could someone show me an example of a simple content reuse scenario?
Yes you can do it purely w/ light modules. Look at this article. Example there is custom "quotation" app and the quotes you create you can render and reuse in as many different pages/page-types you want.
However it is slightly different than what you ask. In your question you want to reuse content from the page, which is also possible (you just need to address that content and feed it to appropriate cms tag in your page template (you can forget all about maven and so on, just focus on your templates). In the example I point you to, you create custom app for stories, articles or any kind of content and then just refer it from all pages where you want to render it. This allows you not only to share the content, but also separate it's editing from the page structure which makes life of editors easier in long run.
Am I able to add the following field to a content type, so that each piece of content I create can be conditioned to a page?
Or is there a module to extend Publishing Options, where by it adds all the pages I have created (just like 'Promote to Front Page')?
If not, why is no one doing this? As a new user to Drupal this seems like it would be a handy operation. (I have already tried this module but it doesn't achieve the results I'm after).
If none of these solutions are available, what would be the best alternative way of doing this?
I've posted this question on Stack Exchange for Drupal but I need a quick answer and there seems to be a bigger community here :D
You should use Context. With Context, you'll be able to manage contextual conditions and reactions for your drupal like Regions.
Have you used Views? it is one of the most common used drupal modules. It doesn't extend publishing options directly but it does replace it in a way. You can say by example put a list of al content-types: your_own_Content_type that have the publishing options of promoted to front-page. then sort them by title, date, what ever you like.
you could also create only one view and create multiple blocks out of it. you have to understand the logic of drupal: if you want different blocks on different pages, you have to create the different pages AND different blocks
create the view for one type of content-type and make one block out of it. put this block on the desired page. All your other blocks are made with the same view, just adjust a condition in your view and create a new block out of it. You should also put all your blocks in the same region, and set the to the right pages
here you can find a lot of documentation if you run into any problems... drupal.org/project/views
Views is the best at creating a slideshow of images or any type of data on your site.
Used in combination with nodequeue it might offer near or the full functionality you are trying to achieve (check this out ... and this too) - but I don't understand your question entirely.
By my opinion Views is too complicated task for much simple request.
There is a few ideas for solution:
Easy way - You can create a specific template file or add some if statments to the node.tpl.php(specific tpl better)
For minor changes - Create a new context with "path" filter and "theme html" reaction, than hide the field by the css
Best but complicated(large usages) - create a new "view mode" and implement the display by new "hook_menu".
~ Almog
I was wondering if someone with Drupal experience could advice what are the best practices in the following situations. I think they are all common tasks for any website that you build.
Display a custom HTML of a certain content type at front-page (e.g., only the link and title).
Should I build a module only for this?
Customize the login form HMTL, including inputs, labels etc, to something very different from the default login block.
Again, another module?
Format the node view of some content types; for example: showing additional fields values. I have some Joomla experience and with it, it's very easy to override the template on your theme.
But with Drupal, it seems HTML is hard-coded on PHP files and there are very few thing that uses templates. Or am I missing something?
You should create a view (from Views module), and for this create display 'block'. This block you can use later on your site. Within your view settings you can choose what and how you will display.
It depends what you would like to put there. If you put just some static text, change theme could be a solution. But still, a bit smelly. What you should do, is to create a module use hook_form_FORM_ID_alter and add both - field to your form, and code to use values which user added.
Change templates for this content type in your custom theme; or use Panels module - here you have nice introduction; or use Display Suite module - which do pretty much the some work as creating a template
html is in php files, but where else can it go? Drupal also has it template overwrite system. The customization of the theme can be usually done using that alone.
As for your questions (there are also other alternative)
load the content type in view/block, display in list format on home page.
create your own theme for css changes. create custom tpl.php for
layout, and div naming etc.
same as above.
It doesn't hurt to create a new module, but generally it's not necessary unless you are going for something like a muti-step form.
You can use both Views & Panels in order to achieve what you've mentioned above.
For instance, Panels gives you the option to override the home page with your own content. This content can be organized with Views.
From drupal.org:
"The Views module provides a flexible method for Drupal site designers to control how lists and tables of content (nodes in Views 1, almost anything in Views 2) are presented."
"The Panels module allows a site administrator to create customized layouts for multiple uses. At its core it is a drag and drop content manager that lets you visually design a layout and place content within that layout."
Can any one help me out on how to theme a view.
For each view created i want to have different templates.
Theming views can be somewhat tricky, depending on the kind of views you have created and the changes you need to make. Check out this introduction for Views 2, and make sure to install the Advanced Help module to get at the views2 documentation from the views module itself (there will be a link to the documentation on your views overview and edit pages, once you activated the Advanced Help module).
You can also find some questions/answers here on SO (e.g. Drupal 6: How to quickly theme a view?), if you search a bit.
I actually did this the other day. Ill give you a brief overview and expand a little later.
Set up your view; by going to Views -> Add View
Once, your view is completely set up, at the bottom of the view (left column in D6, right-most "Advanced" column in D7), you will see a link called "Theme: Information", click on it.
What you will be presented with is a list of templates (.tpl.php) files that the views uses to theme your data. Basically the file names that are bolded are the files views is using to theme the data.
To Customize Your Views
Select the page you need to theme. For Example, if you created a "Block" view, and I wanted to customize the basic html layout, I would pick a name (other than the one that is currently bolded) that is being displayed to me and create the file in my themes directory (sites/all/zen/custom-file-view-fields-views.tpl.php) - this is if views told me that I could use the filename custom-file-view-fields-views.tpl.php
The next step is knowing what code you need to put in there. The quickest way, is to go back to the theming information in views, click on the link of the file your replacing and grab the code that is presented to you. Paste that code in the file you created.
From here on out, you can now successfully customize that view.
Keep in mind that the theming information presented to you is presented from basic to complex (up to down). So choose which file you need to edit carefully. Ill put up some images in this answer a little later.
Hope this helps! Cheers!
Is there something specific you're trying to accomplish? There's a lot of ways to "theme" a view, unless you mean "theme" in the strict Drupal sense.
Personally I just give the fields classes and use those, rewriting the output to include variables as classes if need be. This tends to be easier and more manageable than modifying TPL files directly.
I'm hoping my cryptic title isn't too cryptic, but I'll try to explain what it is I actually want to do.
I have a master page 'A' which has child pages 'B' and 'C'.
This is implemented with the standard master page model in ASP.NET just fine.
My site has two themes 'T1' and 'T2'.
They actually represent different partners, T1 being our own company and T2 is a partner.
I want to display specific things on pages 'B' and 'C' depending upon which theme I'm using. For instance I may want to insert additional buttons or graphics on page 'B' specific to partner for theme 'T2'. This content would be at an arbitrary point on the page depending upon the page itself. Some partners may not even use this feature.
The problem is I want to do this as declaratively as possible, and minimize the knowledge that the pages have about the theme.
This is where the 'reverse' master page concept comes in. I want to define an area on a child page into which 'theme' specific content can be inserted. (I'm saying 'theme' because thats what ASP.NET uses - and most likely what I'd tie the content to).
So you may be wondering :
Why can't you just use a master page for this and add extra content sections? Reason is that the content may appear anywhere on the page in a location that is specific to that page.
Why can't you use a 'nested' master page? Essentially the same reason.
Possible solution:
I'm wondering about creating some kind of user control that would have a textual key representing what type of content would be inserted there. The user control would have to know what to display for each 'theme' - probably by dynamically creating the relevant additional user control.
This seems a little clumsy - so I'm wondering what kind of solutions others may have created for similar situations.
you can use CSS to position your content sections anywhere on your page. so i wouldnt worry about page locations, etc.
if it were me, i'd just dynamically load the 2 different css files into the one masterpage and based on the same logic render the different content into the placeholders.
I'm currently working on a site that has similar requirements that are too much for CSS. In one layout the login is horizontal towards the top of the render order, and in another its in the right hand column.
We're using standard ASP.NET themes to push out CSS, logo URLs via SkinID, etc.
To obtain the custom layout I've created a "Loader" control that loads UserControls via a list specified in a Loader attribute. The attribute can be defined directly in the loader markup, or via a .skin file in the theme.
Each key in the list is just the base name of a UserControl (I add the path and extension). The controls are created via Page.LoadControl().
Do you have fix layout for different partners ? Or do you want the partners to choose the layouts on runtime ?
If the layouts are fixed than 1 way is to create zen style CSS (http://www.csszengarden.com/) and than dynamically load it as per the client/partner. If you want the partners to modify the layouts on runtime than probably you might want to use Webparts.
Hope this helps.
You CAN use nested master pages in VS2008!
See here --
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