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#1 2008-10-18 00:33:28
- masa
- Member
- From: Asturias, Spain
- Registered: 2005-11-25
- Posts: 1,091
Giving clients access to meta descriptions, footers etc.
I’d like to give clients more control over certain bits of static content, such as meta descriptions for sections, taglines and footers, instead of either automatically generating or hard-coding these. (I know about methods like this.)
For individual articles the excerpt field can easily be used as the as the meta description. However for footers and such, the best I’ve come up with so far is to create those as separate articles published in an invisible section called something like extras and pulling them in with article_custom.
Are there any downsides to that approach and how are others handling that?
Any suggestions would be very much appreciated :-)
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Re: Giving clients access to meta descriptions, footers etc.
I don’t like the use-an-article approach.
There were a few threads about this: 1, 2
I have suggested something like this:
What if we (well, devs) add a new type named “snippet”? Then, a form classified as “snippet” will be editable directly from “Content” -> “Snippets” (a new tab similar to “Presentation” -> “Forms”).
With the help of upm_textile forms can be written using Textile, as if they were an article.
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#3 2008-10-18 11:04:30
- els
- Moderator
- From: The Netherlands
- Registered: 2004-06-06
- Posts: 7,458
Re: Giving clients access to meta descriptions, footers etc.
I’d go for articles. Julián, I know you feel that articles are for content and this is not content, and of course you are right, but from a ‘works well for clients’ point of view I think it’s the best solution (if you don’t want to give them access to forms, and given that your ‘snippets’ don’t exist).
To prevent the ‘invisible’ section from being accidentally requested or indexed you could add a redirect to .htaccess.
You can also use etz_striptags for articles that are meant to go in meta tags.
Last edited by els (2008-10-18 11:06:16)
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Re: Giving clients access to meta descriptions, footers etc.
Els wrote:
Julián, I know you feel that articles are for content and this is not content, and of course you are right.
No, I think this kind of chunks are content, but an article seems a little overkilling for the task.
That’s why I suggest that some forms (tagged as “snippets”) become content (on a Content tab).
But in 4.0.7 I think it will be a lot more easier (for the developer setting things up) to use articles as snippets, being that article/article_custom tags will also act as container tags, so reducing the task (the current way) of creating forms for just putting a minimal set of article form tags.
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#5 2008-10-18 19:36:10
- masa
- Member
- From: Asturias, Spain
- Registered: 2005-11-25
- Posts: 1,091
Re: Giving clients access to meta descriptions, footers etc.
maniqui wrote:
I don’t like the use-an-article approach.
I agree, it’s more of a workaround. Thanks for the links to the other threads, some good ideas in there and I like you suggestion.
However for the moment the article approach will have to do.
In the past I had the idea of adding individual section description fields in the sections tab, which could then be used for the meta. But that wouldn’t help, since I usually don’t allow clients access to sections, pages, forms and styles.
Thanks also Els, for the .htaccess tip. I was going to rely on robots.txt to prevent indexing of the invisible section.
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