Best resource for template development

Author Message

Dave Smith

Tuesday 23 June 2009 1:05:22 am

Hello

I'll come clean and say that I am new to ezPublish but I am pretty experienced in a range of CMS systems (TYPO3, EE, Drupal,TextPattern etc.). I don't want to waste loads of busy people's time or be spoon fed, but my question is this:

What is the definitive reference for themeing a site? I would like to take a plain install, brand it up to match my company's new L&F on a test server, and move the content and style to a production server.

I've read the user and tech guides but it's just not clicking for me. I understand siteaccess, i have no issue with the template language but the big picture of what goes where and when/why has escaped me. There is lots of top class documentation but it doesn't quite hang together for me yet. ezwebin?

Thanks to all

Dave

André R.

Tuesday 23 June 2009 2:06:23 am

"ezwebin?"

Its an extension that gives you web content management software features, as in being able to edit content directly on the webpage using a interface that is far easier to use then the admin interface. It's included in the Webinterface and Flowinterface packages that you select during install.

Have you had an look at this tutorial?
http://ez.no/ezpublish/documentation/building_an_ez_publish_site

It's a bit outdated, but the concepts are still the same, and the code will still work.

eZ Online Editor 5: http://projects.ez.no/ezoe || eZJSCore (Ajax): http://projects.ez.no/ezjscore || eZ Publish EE http://ez.no/eZPublish/eZ-Publish-Enterprise-Subscription
@: http://twitter.com/andrerom

Dave Smith

Tuesday 23 June 2009 3:31:54 am

Thanks for the quick response.

I had come across this but not studied it yet as it looked a bit old. If old articles still work then it shows the platform is stable which is a good thing!

Thanks again

Robin Muilwijk

Tuesday 23 June 2009 11:26:01 am

Hi Dave,

I've tried the following article once, as an example, just to play and change an eZ theme: http://ez.no/developer/articles/how_to_skin_an_ez_publish_now_site.

Board member, eZ Publish Community Project Board - Member of the share.ez.no team - Key values: Openness and Innovation.

LinkedIn: http://nl.linkedin.com/in/robinmuilwijk // Twitter: http://twitter.com/i_robin // Skype: robin.muilwijk

Dave Smith

Tuesday 23 June 2009 12:55:40 pm

Is there any approach that is considered 'best practice'? Would I be best to
1) tailor ezwebin using css, or
2) go with the plain site and sort out the templates that I need to override?

I can see that 1) is more less complex but I imagine 2) is more flexible (i.e. complete control).

I want to make sure I start off on the 'right' road.

Thanks

M Wright

Thursday 02 July 2009 3:37:25 am

I too have created sites with textpattern, joomla, drupal.

I am trying to get my head around ez.

Frankly the learning curve seems very steep for something that purports to be easy.

Where are the <b>up to date</b> tutorials.

This appears to be aimed at extremely technically minded users - pity.

I am amazed at the apparent complexity of the back end.

Mike

André R.

Thursday 02 July 2009 4:38:04 am

> I am amazed at the apparent complexity of the back end.

Thats why we have a front end (webin and flow), so normal editors don't need to take a course to be able to publish / edit / handle content and other daily tasks.

> Where are the up to date tutorials.

Well there is the skinning tutorial that Robin mentioned, but other then that there won't be anything new on documentation until 4.2 (September / October) since we've just hired a new doc writer and he won't be up to speed before then.

eZ Online Editor 5: http://projects.ez.no/ezoe || eZJSCore (Ajax): http://projects.ez.no/ezjscore || eZ Publish EE http://ez.no/eZPublish/eZ-Publish-Enterprise-Subscription
@: http://twitter.com/andrerom

Dave Smith

Thursday 02 July 2009 5:06:35 am

Joining back into my own topic I'd recommend you go through the http://ez.no/ezpublish/documentation/building_an_ez_publish_site tutorial. Old yes, but also good.

I now have a pretty good mental idea of how things fit together.

My next main issue is with the fact that my new templates are in my design, yet the overrides are part of the siteaccess. I can move the design to a new server quite easily, even making a package, but nothing will happen unless I manually move information from the old siteaccess overrides to the new site.

There may be some way to make this semi-automatic but I haven't found it yet.

Stick with it though.....

Gaetano Giunta

Thursday 02 July 2009 5:12:34 am

@dave you can put your own design (plain templates and override templates) ^mis override.ini in an extension - then it is a snap to package it

Principal Consultant International Business
Member of the Community Project Board

M Wright

Thursday 02 July 2009 6:08:39 am

In both Drupal and Joomla it is relatively straightforward to design site templates - upload them and apply them to a site.

With ez this seems to be a very complicated process indeed. I was looking to design sites for customers with a robust backend to access and use. I'm sure that ez is a very powerful system, but, considering its age, it is just far too complex to get into.

I started to look at the old tutorial - of courese, i had already installed ez - now it appears that i should have installed just a plain example and then delved under the bonnet to try to get something worthwhile. Hmm.

May come back to it again.

Mike

Igor Vrdoljak

Thursday 02 July 2009 9:09:10 am

The process that works the best for us is more/less:

1) install eZ publish with ezwebin (and ezflow if you can make use of it)
2) make your own design extension that overrides ezwebin (CSS, javascript, templates)
3) override those ezwebin templates and CSS files that you need to customize

With this, you can make use of all the work eZ crew put into ezwebin, and also have full flexibility of a custom tailored solution.

http://www.netgen.hr/eng
http://twitter.com/ivrdoljak

zurgutt -

Friday 03 July 2009 10:09:58 am

If your site layout is somewhat similar to what ezwebin offers, i suggest you use it and try to bend it to your needs with css and overriding some templates.

Creating new classes of embedding templates is can be very useful tool, to make customized boxes for your frontpage and sidebars. Experiment with embedding objects using different classes like "vertically listed sub items" etc, then use their code to figure out how to make your own.

In the other hand, if your site is going to be heavily customized i suggest you use Plain install as starting point and the ezwebin install as a reference, to search for useful template code snippets.

The ezwebin template code is very complicated and not documented at all, so it can be very hard to figure out how it actually works inside.

Certified eZ developer looking for projects.
zurgutt at gg.ee

Jozef Baum

Friday 03 July 2009 3:47:48 pm

"Frankly the learning curve seems very steep for something that purports to be easy." M Wright

To me, up until now, the learning curve seems to be a vertical one.

I know that, if one has the impression that a road is vertical, it's a clear sign he has drunk too much. However, as eZ Publish is so difficult, I never drink during the last 24 hours before tampering with it.

Yes, with eZ Publish, publishing is easy. As coolscreen.de states at
http://www.coolscreen.de/portfolio/ecms_anwendungen/ecms_ez_publish/typo3_ez_publish, one hour of training is sufficient for most editors, whereas this takes very much more time with TYPO3.

By the way, for all those who consider TYPO3 to be at the same enterprise level as eZ Publish, Coolscreen makes a clear statement at the same page. I translate: "TYPO3 is for Internet pages, so for web content management. eZ Publish is about content in general, be it for the Internet, printing, Flash, WAP, or mobile devices. This means that eZ Publish plays in another ligue than TYPO3."

But as far as I know, eZ Systems did never state that learning to develop websites with eZ Publish is easy as well.

Keeping the entry level for eZ Publish high has its advantage as well as its drawback.

The advantages is that it will incite some people to spend (lots of) money, going from acquiring a book (which is outdated after 6 months), to work with eZ partners, or to subscribe a commercial license.

The drawback is that probably many people, after having spend more or less hours to realize the huge investment in time (= money) learning eZ Publish requires, simply drop it. This is sad for eZ Systems, as well as for the people concerned.

Ekkehard Dörre

Saturday 04 July 2009 1:28:33 am

Hi Jozef,

thanks for quoting us,

<i>
"The drawback is that probably many people, after having spend more or less hours to realize the huge investment in time (= money) learning eZ Publish requires, simply drop it. This is sad for eZ Systems, as well as for the people concerned." </i>

Yes this a challenge for a long time, to get oo PHP developer with eZ Publish knowledge. When they feel the quality and the potential of the development framework, the persistent object things, the eZ Components and much more, they'll love it, if not, then they are gone

With eZWebin or eZ Flow it is more easy to start, but then to , but by the time you'll have your own classes and templates and perhaps one or more multi site installation for the smaller pages.

Yes, it is an investment, but then you'll have very good job opportunities worldwide. And I think, it much more easy to start then years before. There were many improvements, but still many to do.

Greetings, ekke

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