Links and pages structure? A bit confused?

Alfie · 2007-11-08 11:02:37

Hello again, after finally managing to get my head around the working of TXP i have created my template and posted an article however, i now find myself faced with another problem.

I have (what seems to me) a fairly simple site structure, however i cant seem to re-create this within TXP and i was hoping that someone here could point me in the right direction :D

My menu/page structure is as follows:

Home
	Contact us
		Details
		Enquiry Form
		Helpdesk
	Guest book (feedback form)
About MCS
	Profile	
		Background
		Ethos
		Governing Body
		Specialist School
		Awards:  relevant logos to appear at bottom of page, heading to go from here
		Ofsted: one page; link to Government website
		The School Aims
	Departments
		Art					( Home page
		Business Studies	        Staff Names
		Drama			             Course Details	
		…					 Useful links/ weblinks page)
	Employment
		Teaching Staff
		Support Staff
	How to find us
		Brackley
		MCS
	News Archive
	Policy Documents
		Admissions
		Anti-Bullying
		Attendance
		Behaviour
		Child Protection			
		Computer Use
		Equal Opportunities
		Gifted and Talented
		Health and Safety
		Home and Community
		Homework
		SEN
		Substance Misuse
		Visits and Trips
	Prospectus and Admissions
		11-16 Prospectus
		Year 6 Induction
	School Calendar
	Term Dates
		Term Dates 2007/08
		Term Dates 2008/09
 Community
	Brackley 50+
	Brackley Carnival
	Courses at MCS
	Old Brackleians
	Partner Primaries
	Partnerships
		Brackley Means Business
Sixth Form
	EMA
	Induction Day
	Pre-Sixth Form Options
	Sixth Form Prospectus
	Staff Details
Students
	Exam Timetable
	Homework
		Homework Timetable
	Canteen Menu
	Clubs and Activities
	Competitions 
	Gifted and Talented
	Image Gallery
		Art
		Clubs and Activities				 
		Maths
		Primary Sports Day 				get students involved
		Sixth Form					in providing/updating these
		Visits and Trips
		Web Design Challenge
	Links/ log-ins
		E-mail
		Network
		SAM Learning
	Student Bodies
	The School Day
Parents
	Bus Service
	Exams Office Details
	Newsletters
		May 07
		…
	Leaders of Learning Details 7-11
	Sports News
		Boys Fixtures
		Girls Fixtures
	Uniform

.

Now to me thats not a particularly complex sitemap however, i just cant seem to A. create the page structre in TXP and B. work out how to imitate that link structure on the side of the layout (ideally using collapsable links)

Please please help me :)

Thanks

Alfie

Alfie · 2007-11-08 17:48:13

Anyone :(

Regards

P.S this is what i have so far: http://www.alexblundell.co.uk/TXP/

Alfie

Last edited by Alfie (2007-11-08 17:49:11)

Timid&friendly · 2007-11-09 09:37:44

I for one will be very interested to hear what advice is given on this subject.

As I have understood TXP aims with it’s semantic xml tag structure and support for meaningful markup to clearly separate markup-layout, from style and from content.

Unfortunately the situation is that the creation of semantically meaningful site navigation structure is practically impossible. One has to resort to workarounds using categories which semantically speaking are not wholly correct. And even there you can only go two levels deep. Of course a top level navigation is structurally catered for with the use of sections, but the lack of subsections en subsubsections etc is IMHO a real weakness, and hindrance to having TXP more readily adopted by the open-source user-community.

Don’t get me wrong I LOVE TXP. I think the people that give their precious free time to supporting and developing this are real gifts from above and I am extremely thankful. Clever people doing clever stuff!

But I just wanted to be frank about this issue and find a solution which is why I posted these comments in the first place. I am a TXP noob and still have a lot to learn. So please correct me if i am wrong.
Show me the way to the light ;-)

Last edited by Timid&friendly (2007-11-09 09:43:44)

Alfie · 2007-11-09 13:18:28

I totally agree! I think there are some major issues with actual usability when it comes to txp. yes its a great bit software, but it just seems to fall short in so manu areas. It seems to me that although it’s no longer considered JUST a blogging tool, it is still essentially built uppn/based around this and therefore anything other than single level static pages becomes very hard to comprehend within TXP.

I know im going to get shot down with this but i have been working with TXP for over a week now and only really mamanged to get my site 50% completed using TXP. SO………………….. (eek) I have just installed Word press and setup and template and static pages all within about 30 minutes. I have also been able to write “pages” and nest them within parent object/ pages within the menu to get something similar to the menu above. Piece of cake!

For some reason I just cant drag myself away from TXP even though I find it so frustrating! It must be because I hate to give up because it certanly not because it the easiest piece of kit to use.

http://www.alexblundell.co.uk/TXP/

Thanks for listening :D

Alfie

Last edited by Alfie (2007-11-09 13:30:17)

civex · 2007-11-09 21:56:50

For some reason I just cant drag myself away from TXP even though I find it so frustrating! It must be because I hate to give up because it certanly not because it the easiest piece of kit to use.

Hi, Alfie,

I can’t offer specific help, but I do offer encouragement. I’m just starting out with TxP, and you are still ahead of me. My thoughts on the topic are that TextPattern is aggravating for two reasons: the help files presume you already know it all and just need a specific tip for a specific issue; and its difficult because it’s so powerful. It’s like learning emacs – a horrible learning curve, then power flows from your fingertips to the screen as you hit the curve and get familiar with it. That’s my hope, anyway.

Good luck, stick with it, and have fun.

Timid&friendly · 2007-11-13 07:36:02

I’m not trying to be provocative or artificially manipulate this thread, “honest indians”.

But i guess the silence on this issue does speak volumes.

jstubbs · 2007-11-13 08:02:05

Well I don’t know how far you have come with your page, but it is pretty simple to use section_list and categories for navigation. In addition, you can use articles as navigation links. What is it you would like to do? Do you have a simple example?

iblastoff · 2007-11-13 20:37:35

Alfie wrote:

I totally agree! I think there are some major issues with actual usability when it comes to txp. yes its a great bit software, but it just seems to fall short in so manu areas. It seems to me that although it’s no longer considered JUST a blogging tool, it is still essentially built uppn/based around this and therefore anything other than single level static pages becomes very hard to comprehend within TXP.

I know im going to get shot down with this but i have been working with TXP for over a week now and only really mamanged to get my site 50% completed using TXP. SO………………….. (eek) I have just installed Word press and setup and template and static pages all within about 30 minutes. I have also been able to write “pages” and nest them within parent object/ pages within the menu to get something similar to the menu above. Piece of cake!

For some reason I just cant drag myself away from TXP even though I find it so frustrating! It must be because I hate to give up because it certanly not because it the easiest piece of kit to use.

http://www.alexblundell.co.uk/TXP/

Thanks for listening :D

Alfie

honestly if you’re more comfortable with wordpress then by all means use it. personally i can’t stand the way their templating system is set up. and when you have ruby scripts like pwnpress in existence which can pretty much take out a huge chunk of wordpress installations out there (last time i checked the latest wordpress it worked against was 2.2.2 which is still a relatively recent release) while the last textpattern exploit that was known to work was probably over two years ago. granted wp has a much larger user base but i don’t think thats an indication of anything really.

it took me a couple of months of ‘off and on’ experience to finally reach that lightbulb moment where i just ‘got’ how textpattern works. now i can’t see how i could possibly be without forms.

in regards to your example, subsections is clearly something textpattern needs. the developers know this and they’re already part of textpattern 4.1/crockerys core (although many have waited for it for quite a while). as for now, most people who need this functionality go the section/category route. many plugins exist to help this idea along.

zoo_section_and_category_list
gbp_permanent_links

just use whatever you’re comfortable with. not trying to scare you away but if you ‘get’ your lightbulb moment with another blog/cms tool, then why bother frustrating yourself with something you’re clearly not comfortable with?

Alfie · 2008-02-08 16:03:50

ok just a bump on this thrad,

after SO MUCH time of looking around for XHTML comliant CMS systems I cant help but look back at TXP. It took me 2 seconds to add my 1.0 strict layout to TXP and have it working (took me a great deal longer to interpret my design into a working template for joomla! and that was only transitional).

The more I work with TXP the more i like it, I just wish i could use it for my final site.

Still really need an accordian style menu for my sections (and subsections), most of my sites need such a menu as there is so much contents!

If anyone has any ideas, love to hear them

Cheers

Alfie

els · 2008-02-08 16:40:46

If you need accordion style menus, then why not use accordion :)

About your site structure: looking at your first post, I think it can be done with /section/category/article (and gbp_permanent_links to get those URLs.
Do you still need help with the menu?

Alfie · 2008-02-08 17:35:21

Yes still looking for help with the menus :) (waited ages for someone to say that!)

this is what i have so far http://alexblundell.co.uk/txp

EDIT: just so you dont think i have been ignoring the advise in this post (of which iam very greatfullfor) i have tried a few of the suggestions.

iblastoff: zoo_section_and_category_list: it seems that (as far as I found when using this plugin) that it will give you sub categories but they wont actually collapse. The same with “stw_category_tree”.

gbp_permanent_links: does this update the links in real time, e.g when someone creates an article/category/section the links within the menuwill auto update? Dont think i looked into this one as well i should have.

I have also tried wow_menu (http://textpattern.org/plugins/507/wow_menu) which has to be the best so far due to the ability to order the list, but again, not (as far as i can tell) collapsable and with a menu as long as mine when fully expanded, it needs to be collapasable down to the 8 main section.

AS FAR AS MY “LIGHTBULB” moment, iim almost there. The template system is engeniuose and the way you can create forms (small snippets of code) to appear anywhere on the site i.e the sidebox on the left. This needs to have content added and changed all the time and as far as i see it the form will allow me to put editable articles within the sidebox for my clients to edit.

So im nearly there. Just the menu thing!!!!!!

thanks for the replies

Alfie

Last edited by Alfie (2008-02-09 01:22:42)

els · 2008-02-08 18:36:44

OK give me some time. I’ll try and have a go at it later this evening after dinner ;)

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#1 2007-11-08 11:02:37

Links and pages structure? A bit confused?

#2 2007-11-08 17:48:13

Re: Links and pages structure? A bit confused?

#3 2007-11-09 09:37:44

Re: Links and pages structure? A bit confused?

#4 2007-11-09 13:18:28

Re: Links and pages structure? A bit confused?

#5 2007-11-09 21:56:50

Re: Links and pages structure? A bit confused?

#6 2007-11-13 07:36:02

Re: Links and pages structure? A bit confused?

#7 2007-11-13 08:02:05

Re: Links and pages structure? A bit confused?

#8 2007-11-13 20:37:35

Re: Links and pages structure? A bit confused?

#9 2008-02-08 16:03:50

Re: Links and pages structure? A bit confused?

#10 2008-02-08 16:40:46

Re: Links and pages structure? A bit confused?

#11 2008-02-08 17:35:21

Re: Links and pages structure? A bit confused?

#12 2008-02-08 18:36:44

Re: Links and pages structure? A bit confused?

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