Textpattern Semantics: A General Revelation

andreas · 2004-03-21 09:34:19

> msinger wrote:

> I need a few more pointers here to fully understand the most effecient and logical way to use the structural components in this program.

>I don’t understatnd the relationship of ‘Form’ to ‘Article’ or ‘Page’ and I don’t understand the relationship of ‘Page’ to the sylesheet when it comes to combining static elements like navigation and logo elements with dynamic elements like articles and calendars onto the same page using the predefined style id(s) and classes.

The way I understand it, an Article is the result of a form being filled with actual content. So in the form you specify which elements to use (title, permalink, date, perhaps some additional XHTML like a div around some parts of the form etc.). What TXP put out is the article.

A page is the frame for TXP forms, tags, and hand-coded XHTML. So you can think of forms as dynamically filled containers that you can place anywhere on a page.

>Specifically I have a few pages already coded and referencing css stylesheet files for presentation. I want to incorporate those pages into the database have them be able to diplay additional dynamic info as well as link to new dynamic pages all managed in the same DB.

One way would be to create a separate section for these pages. If they are all similar, one section would be enough, if they are very different in terms of content or structure, make a separate section for each of them.

Then, you paste the XHTML of your pages in the textarea of a new page you create.

Via the “organise” tab you can tell the new section(s) which page to use and, of course, here you choose the name of your newly created page.

Like this, you have a sections being available by www.yoursite.com/sectionname/ . In case the content you already have is in some way similar and is to appear within the same page framework (that is, you have only made one new page but have different content for it) you create a new form with the structure you want, put a reference to that form in your page and just post the contents into this section.

>I was able to make the index.php file bring up the first of these static pages, and display it using the formatting I want by creating a Section called home and assigning a Page called home to that section. The Page is a port of my original home page xhtml. I stripped out the style sheet reference in the code and used TP to link that page with the stylesheet info.That all works and displays as expected. However I haven’t been able to figure out how to incorporate the additional static pages into TP gracefully or how to navigate to them properly.

>I suspect that my initial choice to create a Section ‘home’ and a Page ‘home’ was a bad choice and is at the root of my problem.

It’s not, as far as I can tell. It is exactly what you can do for the rest of your ported content as well.

As to navigation: you can get a list of sections with

<txp:section_list wraptag=“ul” break=“li” />

On the other hand, I found that for the global navigation it may be better to create a form with the relevant XHTML in it and put out that form on all the pages with

<txp:output_form form=“formname” />

Like this, there is more control over the code, e.g. I can put in additional id attributes or wrap the list in a div for styling reasons etc.

I hope this helped a bit.

msinger · 2004-03-21 20:00:15

> jdueck wrote:

> I don’t get it. Static content….there’s lots of ways. The simplest is just upload it to your site via FTP and link to it from within your textpattern pages, like any other normal static web content.

I want my client to be able to manage this entire site from within TP after it is complete, and as I said I want to be able to mix static and dynamic content on any page.

>Did you read the article that is the subject of this thread? Seriously, with that and studying the example stuff that comes with Textpattern it should be at least somewhat understandable. Your questions seem to betray a very fundamental misunderstanding of how this is supposed to work, and I’m not sure exactly where to begin.

Yes I read the article you wrote, thanks for your explanations. I’m not having trouble with the concepts and differentiation between Sections, and Categories, nor am I unfamiliar with the separation of content and presentation. I have used XML based CMS tools including Cocoon.

By the way when it comes to bombs and wedgies I understand atomic versus non-atomic, not sure what it means in the context of TP codes.

I will try again and and repost with more specific questions.
Thanks again.

jdueck · 2004-03-23 16:02:38

<i>I want my client to be able to manage this entire site from within TP after it is complete, and as I said I want to be able to mix static and dynamic content on any page.</i>

Aha, I think this is the rub right here: wanting your client to be able to manage the entire site, including static content. Of course, you and I know how to manage static content using FTP and hand-coded HTML. But this is of course too much for a client. So I see what you’re getting at, I think. I too am looking at implementing txp for a client who also wants static content.

There are two ways to do it, really. One is to create a seperate section for each page of static content. Then in the Write tab, you use that section when creating the static content. The classic example is the About page. Create a section called “about” (and a seperate page too if you want a different layout or other elements than are on the default page) and post an article under that section. This results in a page at www.georgefrankly.com/about/ that will show only that article, and can be edited within Textile/textpattern in the Write tab.

There are limits to that approach, however, and I’ve taken the tack that because static content won’t change very often, I’m going to give the client a way to post news items, for example, but information about what markets they serve – I’m going to create that by hand, upload it via FTP and have my textile pages link to it. I already offer free updates to static pages, so if they want to change it they can just email it to me. Again, this probably won’t happen very often since it’s static.

The main benefit of the former method is that site-wide layout changes can be made in one place. But again, this is something that hopefully you get right before the site goes live and don’t need to change later on.

nryberg · 2004-03-23 16:30:52

I think one of the problems that we keep bumping up against is the way that articles are organized in the content tab.

Right now, they’re just chronological, but if you’re a writer and you simply need to work on a specific area – ‘About’ for example – you don’t want to have to dig through all of the active content entries just to find the static content.

Txp is excellent for managing active content, but it’d be nice to have an easy way of pulling the rest of the site together neatly.

jdueck · 2004-04-02 15:37:56

Updated Textpattern Semantics again…

Fixed massive misspellings of “separate” – thanks to doug edmunds for pointing it out
Added links to A Better Diagram and the Tag Manual
Added “A short note on code” – clarifying the difference between form (‘atomic’) and page (‘non-atomic’) tags
Noted an exception: you can display articles from other sections using txp:article_custom

I hopefully foresee a day when textpattern documentation will be all in one place…right now we have a loose network of user-created sites and pages. Which isn’t bad, but at some point a single point of reference would be good to, like the online php manual.

Dean · 2004-04-02 15:59:31

<small>(this is me quietly whistling, looking at the ceiling)</small>

I’m going to redouble efforts on firing up the knowledgebase this weekend.

And thanks again, Joel, for your excellent ongoing work on the article.

Elenita · 2004-05-16 22:56:34

Total newbie here, and I want to make sure I understand the distinction between categories correctly after reading the article.

My impressions:

sections are concerned with different types of content
categories are concerned with different topics of content

Thus, if I wanted to run a hypothetical site about current affairs, I could use sections to divide my work in the following way:

a blog, linking to important stories
longer essays/editorials
multimedia archive

Within each section, I could use categories for related stories. For example, my editorial section might have the following categories:

elections 2004
security and terrorism
human rights
trade and finance

Does that sound about right?

jason · 2004-05-17 01:01:10

yes, Elenita, that’s right and URLs like

http://yoursite.com/blog/?c=tradeandfinance will pull up different articles than http://yoursite.com/essays/?c=tradeandfinance

tinyfly · 2004-05-29 17:14:50

So you want articles that are written for section X to appear in section X and an occasional article that was written for section Y to appear in Section X and its own section Y as well.

Is this correct?

samuel · 2004-06-08 22:20:13

if i’m understanding all this correctly, it seems to me that lack of subcategories in textpattern is setting up a fundamental flaw in the way it functions that limits expandability. an example:

let’s say your site is composed of two main topics: cereal and omelets. both have a page that lists updates about the topic. both also have a page that tells further info about them and links to places of similar interest. the main page simply displays links to updates of each individual topic.

how would you go about setting this up in textpattern?

Remillard · 2004-06-08 23:40:32

Create two sections, cereal and omelets.
For both, set them to “display on front page”
Create a form to use for lists that only displays the permalink (or permalink and excerpt if applicable).
Modify the default page template to only display the articles with your new form. You probably want to put links to the sections here as well.
Create page templates for cereal and omelets with crunchy graphical doodads for cereal and golden fluffy layout for omelets. Make sure the article form lists body and not just link or excerpt.
On your Sections tab, set cereal and omelet to the appropriate page templates.

I think this would do what you described. Articles about cereal and omelets would both display on the front page. The information on the front page would only be brief information and links to the articles. Clicking on the links will take you to the direct article. Clicking on the section link will take you to the new section page. On each section page, only links about cereal and omelets will be display respectively.

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#25 2004-03-21 09:34:19

Re: Textpattern Semantics: A General Revelation

#26 2004-03-21 20:00:15

Re: Textpattern Semantics: A General Revelation

#27 2004-03-23 16:02:38

Re: Textpattern Semantics: A General Revelation

#28 2004-03-23 16:30:52

Re: Textpattern Semantics: A General Revelation

#29 2004-04-02 15:37:56

Re: Textpattern Semantics: A General Revelation

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Re: Textpattern Semantics: A General Revelation

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