I run a design firm and have frequent need for Drupal development. I'm looking for a bit of guidance on a Drupal workflow that will work best for my company.
My experience working with Drupal developers in the past has been great for back-end development, and chaotic for front-end development. Projects end up with multiple and inconsistent CSS styles, and doing quality control on the visual aspect is very time-consuming.
Moreover, I'm a front-end coder, and use HMTL/CSS/JS prototypes for all phases of projects. I would prefer if the front-end coding I do to was used by the developer instead of going to waste.
However, this workflow hasn't been compatible with Drupal dev partners so far. Because they use themes, and retro-fit them to the design I give them, they aren't able to use the HTML/CSS/JS work I do. Moreover, I have a responsive framework that I like (Foundation), and my developers want to work with the standard responsive Drupal theme (Omega). I don't like Omega because it isn't fluid.
Then there's things like my developer telling me they can't do a carrousel that uses CSS (background-image), because the available Drupal carrousel modules are all based on using the HTML img tag. Does everything have to be based on modules?
Going back to the HTML/CSS inconsistencies and the time-consuming design QA, I think this comes from trying to retrofit a theme. The code is very messy and it makes it hard to target elements for styling. It also makes it impossible for me to do my own CSS changes if I want.
So, in short, I'm looking for a completely different design workflow, and I'm looking for feedback on whether it's workable in Drupal without inflating costs.
Is it possible in Drupal to use front-end code (provided by me), throw in some PHP tags, and end up with cleanly-coded pages, instead of relying on themes? Would this reduce costs (because the HTML/CSS/JS is provided), or would it inflate costs (because it's easier to use a theme)? Are there any security issues involved? Are there update issues involved? In short, what's the big advantage with working with pre-fab themes?
I really, truly appreciate your comments.
We usually develop from the backend to the front end. Modules like Views add many div tags, classes and tags so the theme developer can make better use of them and fine tune the design.
I do not think that is a "messy" code unless you are doing all of the work in tpl.php files.
Modules simply processed the data. It should not heavily theme the output. For a better understanding, see the image below (from drupal.org):
If you want to do any database intensive work in the template level, you will have to load many stuff again that you could simply do in a module.
In my opinion, if your developer is not hardcoding the HTML stuff, he is doing it right.
Keep in mind that you can override most of the theme functions so you already have the flexibility if you want.
Is it possible in Drupal to use front-end code (provided by me), throw
in some PHP tags, and end up with cleanly-coded pages, instead of
relying on themes?
Yes. But you can't simply use slider-image.php like files for that. You will have to add necessary theme functions to and pass the variables to it. IMO, it's relatively more work if you need to completely rewrite the theming functions.
Would this reduce costs (because the HTML/CSS/JS is provided), or
would it inflate costs (because it's easier to use a theme)?
I do not think so. If you have multiple backend developers working on code, ask the theming team to make changes to HTML/CSS. CSS can make your site look worse, and a security bug can ruin your business, expose all your user information or even worse.
Are there any security issues involved?
Most likely. Default theme functions tend to come with much better security. Even though few bugs come out, they will get fixed soon by the community.
Are there update issues involved? In short, what's the big advantage
with working with pre-fab themes?
Because there is a whole lot of work that you can simply adopt. That will also block you from adopting others' CSS work though.
I work somewhere with highly stylized well thought out front end builds which are almost not compatible with the way Drupal theming is handled currently. Having front end developers track down bugs is also very problematic. It looks like there's some acknowledgement of this in Drupal 8 at least. At this point we frequently rework Drupal to work as an API and then build a lightweight PHP Framework app on top to pull content when we need it which gives us total flexibility to do anything we want with the frontend. Another alternative is to checkout Expression Engine where you are explicitly telling it what markup you want outputted and how you want your content to be placed in the markup.
The holy grail would be a very lightweight layer that was part of Drupal where we could use Twig to pull the content the way we want it and all HTML output was defined in Twig.
Related
This is a serious question, specifically relating to the many frameworks out there for Wordpress and Joomla - Warp, T3, Gantry etc. What I dont understand is how they are different to a starter template and what exactly you are supposed to do with them - simply child theme them or is it a whole other codex to learn? I mean, all of the native codex is there with Joomla and WP anyway to construct a theme simple enough so what good does a whole proprietary app do between your design and the CMS? Are they faster to develop with?
What confuses me is that people seem to love them and claim that they make life easier but I dont get how adding another technology to learn can make things easier. Like I say, it is a serious question, not one for effect to make a point.
Can anybody define the difference between a framework and a starter template? I ask in part because I am one of those anxious developers who always feels like I am somehow missing a trick or doing things the "wrong" way - what am I missing?
This is definitely mostly an issue of definition, and I can guarantee that some cases will not follow what I outline below. Obviously, anyone is free to call the template/framework by whatever they want.
Generally though, a template is comprised of basic HTML and CSS that works with the platform (Wordpress, Joomla, etc) that is used to build the output to the page. In Wordpress, this contains the loop and other constructs to get all the content for the page. In Joomla, it outlines all the module positions available and such.
Typically when you purchase a higher end theme, you will have significant choices on the backend to customize the theme without having to actually code. These parameters let you typically change colors and such.
Some of the theme developers and others have taken this parameter settings system to the next level and made it into a framework. In all the cases that I've seen, "framework" is really the basis for the template parameter system. In this way, you can have consistency between different themes and expect the same settings and features between different themes. This is why they use a different word, because it really isn't a "theme" any more. It really is like a "theme engine" in that it is a backend system for changing things in the theme.
Yes, many platforms offer some basic options for editing the theme out of the box, so in most cases, the framework is really an improvement on the base platform's theme engine.
It's been my experience that a theme will be a visual style along with a set of theme options available in the admin (in addition to Customize if it's supported).
Theme Frameworks on the other hand, like Thesis, are installed just like a theme but have a very vanilla visual style that you build your theme on top of. Usually the framework provides many added features that aren't available in WP core.
tl;dr - Themes frameworks aren't installed and used right away, they are installed and built upon to deliver a site.
I'm looking for tools or libraries that load simple but old existing websites and produce an output which can be loaded into wordpress or other CMS. The goal is to keep the existing websites navigating structure and content.
Any hints?
What I've discovered is that it really depends upon the CMS. I would recommend a "tag-pair"-based CMS like the new Craft or ExpressionEngine's free Core version (there're others too) where you drop in a looping control area, replace the fields with the tags and then it just runs. I personally like those because they offer a cleaner separation between content and design.
I'm trying to learn Wordpress now and it's backwards of what you want - you create template environments and half the design seems to be controlled by the code. Great if you want to swap generic templates around, but if you customize them you're doing a lot of work. I'm looking at a site I inherited and conditional statements are a nightmare - half in the templates and other in the plugins themselves (Events, I'm looking at you).
I am working with a client who has already purchased Magento -eCommerce CMS. I have never worked with this program and after reading over there extremely lengthy material I am not sure if I should take on the project. I am worried that this is a little outside of my skill set. I mostly do Design and Front-End Development. I have worked with Wordpress somewhat regularly without any problems, however that is extremely well documented. My understanding of actual programming is limited. Has anyone created a skin for Magento and if so, how complicated was it?
It depends on how you define complicated. Anyone with a good understand of Magento's architecture MAY actually call it intuitive. I can say that it has a significantly higher learning curve than many other packaged application in frameworks due to its shear number of features. It's extremely easy to think you done and found out from a client that there's a page you failed to style.
To better answer your question I'll tell you what you'll be facing.
CSS:
It is possibile, though difficult, to skin Magento using purely CSS. This can be made easier depending on your design.
HTML:
There are more individual templates than I'm willing to count. I want to say upwards of 40 ".phtml" files that you can edit each with an uncomfortable amount of logic to my taste (and I'm a programmer). For the most part you can manipulate the HTML within these files as you see fit with out any trouble. You probably will have trouble if you need to edit anything logic wise or that output by PHP
XML:
Magento uses xml files for what it calls layouts. These files are actually what puts the template files mentioned above together. To do some significant changes to the default layout you will have to change these.
Realizing that you referenced wordpress. Magento is SIGNIFICANTLY more difficult to skin than wordpress. Even after a very thorough understand of magento's architecture I still get hung up when changes. Magento is full of complex caches which can prevent your changes from being visible and unexpected dependencies which you can easily break if your not careful.
This is probably a horribly written answer but I hope it helps.
For about a year and a half I used Codeigniter to build my sites. Then a client begged me to build theirs in Wordpress. I soon found the joy of using a CMS (if Wordpress can be called that). So for about the last 8 months I have been using Wordpress as much as possible to buld my sites - I made the content fit the design.
Well, I began to grow very tired of the limitations of Wordpress - I needed more control and flexibility over my sites. So, I have recently started using Drupal 7 (not 6.x - I really like the admin panel).
After working with Drupal now for a little under two months - I have begun to feel like I'm using Stone Age Tools to build Space Age equipment.
So my question is: does Drupal get any better? Do you really have to use Views to display your content? Asking for help on the forums is just a shake better than asking a wall. I feel like to do anything requires a module. Why? Is one better off sticking to a framework?
"After working with Drupal now for a little under two months - I have begun to feel like I'm using Stone Age Tools to build Space Age equipment."
Well, my intiial reaction is that this is what you're going to feel like you're doing when you're working with Drupal 7, which isn't out of alpha yet. A good number of the folks who maintain modules haven't started upgrading to 7 yet, and that means that you're missing out on one of the great features of Drupal, which is it's wide and deep space of premade modules.
Try 6.
Do you need to use views to display all content? No, not at all. You can go in, create a new module, and write the sql and presentation that you want. Or you can find a module that will display things for you. Or, depending, you might be able to get the effect you want just by adjusting the theme you're using.
(As a side note, using an admin theme really pretties up the Drupal experience. I'm fond of rootcandy, although Rubik is nice too. Problem with Rubik is that it's not on drupal.org.)
The strength of Drupal is that by using modules, you don't have to re-write code that someone else has written - you can instead take that code and modify it (with hooks) to do what you want. This means you don't have to write an authentication/autherization system again - it's there in core. You don't need to write up openid handlers - it's in core. You don't need to write code to integrate with twitter directly - there's a module that contains an api that helps out. You don't have to write an xmlrpc server from scratch - you can use the services module.
You don't need to write a website from scratch. Instead, you can start with Drupal, add most of the functionality you need, and then spend your time making it fit what your client wants.
Firstly, you can install the Admin module to pretty up Drupal 6 admin. You don't have to use 7. 7 is still in alpha, by the way. Garland sucks, but, Garland is just a theme- its not 'the' admin itself. The Drupal admin can take the form of any Drupal theme, which is useful in its own right, depending on the use-case.
In Drupal, you can create content types clicking through the interface in Drupal 6 or 7. As far as I can see in WP3, you have to script it. A few clicks vs scripting, the choice for me is not hard there. The first way is a lot more efficient, and a task you can hand off to a non coder to get done.
You don't HAVE to use Views to display content.
You -can- use Views to make the display of content easier, by telling Drupal to gather data and provide a Page, Block, or Feed to display . This lets you create specific sections of content for areas of the site. Otherwise, you would have to create a node, and hijack its template, run a direct sql query yourself AND write the pager functions just to show something easy like the latest 10 "Press Releases" content type. Then, if someone added a new field to that content type, you have to update all that SQL code and display code. Views makes your life easier in that respect. In minutes you can flesh out site sections and arrange content in a myriad of ways. In Wordpress, this method of arranging content without functionality of Views is/was a modern nightmare and a reason I do not want to use it at all unless its a blog and nothing more.
The Drupal Support Forum is tricky. Not all modules are as active as say, Views or Pathauto (being two of the most popular modules). However, SO is also at your disposal. I answer a lot of Drupal questions here. The trick to the Forum there is you have to ask it in the right spot. True, sometimes you may have to wait a few days to get an answer, then again no one -owes- you an answer for a free product. Thats the nature of open source.
Every developer has their favorite modules to use with Drupal, and more often than not, its the same 20 or so modules. It depends on what you are doing, what you are trying to implement. It's not that 'everything needs a module' its that Drupal is such a vanilla install because Drupal does not want to assume your purpose nor overwhelm with options. The UX is something they are trying to improve anyway, and popular modules are making their way into core.
Well, I began to grow very tired of
the limitations of Wordpress - I
needed more control and flexibility
over my sites. So... I have recently
started using Drupal 7
Why not go back to CI? Drupal certainly has it's strengths, but I don't think Drupal will give you any more "control and flexibility" than Wordpress.
If the standard modules/plugins, themes/templates, from WP, Drupal, or Joomla, fill your needs, then using a CMS can be a lot faster than building a site from scratch. But, if those CMSs do not fill your needs, you could find yourself "fighting the framework" and never really getting what you want.
You're just coming out from WordPress, which has great support and is relatively easy to extend to overcome what you call its limitations, if you know basic PHP, HTML, CSS & JavaScript. Every framework has its own potential/limitations.
As a user of WordPress my humble opinion is that you should have stayed with it.
As of you last question, It depends, to stick with one and only one framework has its advantages and disadvantages, the best of all is that you get to know it very well and eventually learn how to extended it. The bad part is that very often frameworks lose popularity and you are left to you own without an active user community and support.
Regards.
All of the popular CMS products (I'd maybe add Expression Engine to the mix) are great for 80% of what you want to accomplish and a huge pain to handle the other 20%.
That's just the nature of the beast.
On the plus side, it's OS so there's lots of people hacking away at it just like you which opens up the potential for someone else already having invented the wheel.
And with bulky enterprise CM solutions like SharePoint I find that you have to reverse the equation to 20/80 (ugh!).
If you're discouraged with Drupal and prefer to stick with WP, WordPress has many thousands of plugins, including ones that can overcome the limitations you're running into and make WP behave more like a normal CMS.
Just do a Google search for "top Wordpress CMS plugins." There's a lot of articles out there that can recommend ways to get WP to do exactly what you want.
I'm going to be moving my website to a CMS in the coming months I'd I need some help on choosing an appropriate CMS. Many of the websites I've seen tend to say "use Drupal, hands down". However, my website truly doesn't have a need for commenting or community features. Its pages will need to be modified occasionally, but not extensively. My website will also consist of many programs, each with their own sub-pages and menus.
There are probably 25 people that will need access to the content on my website and will need the ability to update it.
I do like the idea of being able to tag and categorize the content, and the modular aspect of Drupal but is it really right for my website? If not, which CMS may fit my needs better?
It sounds like Drupal would be an excellent solution to your company's needs. I used to recommend WordPress for smaller, single-blog type sites, but now, even for those, I recommend Drupal because you can start small and scale up as your needs grow. It has a very dedicated community and there is a module for just about any need you may have.
I would agree with Drupal. The thing about Drupal is that you start out very small and add on as you need things. There is a ton of documentation, it is well coded, always being expanded on, good forum support, and free. It's the easiest to install, most problem free, and most maintainable CMS system I've seen so far.
You can turn Drupal commenting off with the press of a button, and if/when you decide to add onto your website, perhaps you want an ad rotator, more extensive user permissions, etc, etc, it is all already developed for you and ready to go.
I am not sure if Wordpress supports multiple users on a site.
The smallest you can go for a CMS is something like 10kCMS or the more popular TinyMCE
If it is something small I will go with WordPress as it is easily themed and extensible. There are a lot of community plugins and support. Their documentation is also fairly simple as they don't have a thousand of functions and stuff you need to remember and understand. With some creativity the basic functionality of WordPress is sufficient to solve almost all problems that might arise in small to mid-size website.
I also like Drupal, but you may consider Umbraco as well. http://umbraco.org/ I'd use Umbraco over Drupal if your team is stronger in .Net than PHP. (Really, I think that's a larger concern - what are your organization's strengths? Play to suit them. You are making a decision that will pave the way for many developers besides yourself, and business decisions of your company.) Both are extendable and open source so you can write your own modules/components to customize. It may be cleaner to import into Drupal tables than Umbraco, since it goes down to xslt files. (EDIT: This looks to be no longer the case in the new version - http://umbracohosting.com/umbraco-4---get-excited/one-cms-any-database) From a front end dev perspective, both offer great control of the final output.
From working on legacy stuff a lot, you may end up hiring interns to do the gruntwork. There's bound to be tons of inline tables and all sorts of un-reusable code in there, it may be easier to scrape the content manually and start w/clean markup for the content portions.