How simple, really?

[FinnK]

It has been a fight to get cmsms do what I want, and I am actually quite proud of what I have done so far - I am not a programmer, you see.

To be honest I dont think it is really simple to get CMSMS to work the way you want, but then again I dont think any CMS system is. I have tried some other cms programs that either was too simple/crude - or it was too complicated to understand the logic behind the way it worked.

CMSMS was a good alternative because it is possible to start with a simple site and develop functionality as you learn more about HTML, CSS and CMSMS itself. Another good thing is this forum and that the dev team is very supporting.

What I miss is a even simpler starting point. When I did my first install and began digging into the templates and css-stuff it was a lot of code I did not understand the workings of (still dont).  I know you dev folks are really busy developing and it is difficult to keep documentation and tutorials up to date. It may be a danger for loosing the people in need for "the simple thing" in the prosess of getting cmsms up there among the" cms-stars" for really big and commersial sites.

Well, I relly dont know what kind of people you target CMSMS for. I think CMSMS is a really great project so far and I would hate it if it gets too complicated to understand for people at the level I was some 6 month ago. -A guy that had two short courses in pascal some 20 years ago and have only been fiddling with HTML now and then on my own for 3-4 years.

Getting my cmsms site working has been really fun and educating. I hope the best for CMSMS. Keep up the good work dev people!! Thanks.

regards
FinnK
www.filmklippere.com/cms  - soon www.filmklippere.com
It's a site for a group of Norwegian film editors.

[pgoneill]

You make valid points.  It's going to be hard to jump into any CMS with only a basic knowledge of HTML.

It's true in most things that the quality of the product is only as good as the quality of the producer.  Someone with a professional level understand of XHTML and CSS and excellent design skills is going to have a better result than someone who's at more of a hobbyist level.  Just like a model airplane enthusiast designing a jetliner isn't going to have as good a result as a trained aerospace engineer.

In saying that, I'm not trying to be derogatory or offensive, of course - just pointing out the reality.

As someone who designs and codes websites for a living, I've found it incredibly easy to jump right in and go to work.  Naturally, things like Smarty tags and modules take some getting used to, but those become second nature rather quickly.  From my perspective, CMSMS is quite simple.

CMSMS is one of the better open-source CMSes I've used.

Now, if there were a good way to manage multiple stylesheets the way I want from within the CMS, then I'll jump for joy (I use @import a lot...).

[Dr.CSS]

how do you (I use @import a lot...).?

EDIT: ok why?

[Ron@Spikecity]

how do you (I use @import a lot...).?

I've been playing with the CSS import function as well and it works really good.
The way I do it is strip the base css file down to the essentials only and import the rest inside the main css file.
This makes loading css in CMSMS a lot faster (even after the load fix in 0.13 it is faster) and allows you to import third party generated css with one simple line inside CMSMS base css file.

[cyberman]

how do you (I use @import a lot...).?

Use this in header

Code: Select all

<style type="text/css">
<!--
@import url("blablabla.net/stylesheet.css");
-->
</style>

or

Code: Select all

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="path/to/stylesheet/stylesheet.css">

[FinnK]

Yes, I think the CSS sytem is quite confusing. Not all CSS files connected to templates show up in the admin/layout/stylesheet section... Maybe the philosophy behind this system really needs some extra explanations for non-programmers like me? -Yes, I would not turn it down.

[99debra99]

Hi FinnK,

I think half the battle or maybe even more is understanding CSS and the stylesheets that come with the templates.

Understanding "What does what and why does this move here" on a page can be helped greatly by installing the firefox browser and downloading some web developer extensions.

That way you can view your page and select all the DIVS etc to be viewed on screen, making editing alot easier to understand.

Hope this helps, Kind regards, Debra. 

[Dr.CSS]

actually i was asking how they use it in particular...
do they have CSS hand coded with say perhaps notepad or a syntax hilited program like PSPad editor...
then FTP to the root and call them from there, or in a folder in uploads...

i came from learning HTML, CSS, with placement by reading some articles on standards for web design, i've never designed with tables, a lot of what i had seen was tables and it looked like too much coding, calls for fonts and or colors on every line in the html, i liked the idea of designing for web sites. i had looked at some open source web templates, some i really liked but they were table based and so i started converting them to CSS thru trial and error, reading what i could, i picked up a lot from the w3c online 'school', i hand coded a lot and with muliti page sites it was gettind tedious putting the menus, content, and extras  on every page, so i looked for some sort of automated way of developing and that's how i came upon CMS as a way of building web sites, and i will say that of all the ones i looked at CMSMS was the only one i found that had a logical, to me, way of putting it all together. other ones had pages with boxes to put your CSS/style in, a lot like some other web site software i had looked at, i had grown used to putting my styles on a page the same way it's done in CMSMS albeit i was using mostly 2 sheets one for placements one for color, with a cut and paste JS thrown in here and there. making templates and associating style sheets with them and then just putting {stylesheet} in the header, {somemenu} in the menu box, {content} where you need it has turned my design world into a fast track event, i'm able to find a template or site i like and have it converted to CMSMS and on my site as a template in about 1 hour or less some times, as for simple, well for me it don't get no more more simpler than this...

[tsw]

If one understands some css I think that cmsms way is quite efective and easy. For users coming from different systems (which are most table based) it will be hard - for a while. I know it was for me, trying to place those divs took time, and all the time I knew I can do this with tables in 2minutes.

but tables arent versatile (take a look at csszengarden

here are some layout suggestions that might help people (and this is something Im thinking about doing a module for)

http://blog.html.it/layoutgala/

40 different layouts with one html file.

and here is a video about converting oswd layout into cmsms
http://cmsmadesimple.org/uploads/media/ ... colate.htm
Its my first draft of these kind of videos. recorded in realtime (only had one test for it before recording

oh, had to slow down the cursor movement from wink quite a lot, as it was kind of jumpy on the normal speed

[newclear]

I saw the video and i can say that its awesome.

And the 40 layouts looks great too.

I hate tables too but I only cannot understand how to pull down the columns to the bottom without setting the height in pixels.

[tsw]

You mean like two / three col layout?

best way is to use a technique named faux columns:

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/fauxcolumns/

or liquid:

http://www.communitymx.com/content/arti ... ?cid=AFC58

hope these help

[newclear]

they are really great articles.
exactly the main problem.

thanks tsw

Ouh. about the CMSMS.
Its really simple to use it but i feel like learning something new everyday because the CMSMS is based on W3 standarts which help me rising on the Web.

Thanks to the whole Team!

[iNSiPiD]

There are at least two very good reasons to use @import.

Firstly, it is only understood in v5+ browsers, so it's a good way to hide advanced CSS from earlier versions.

Secondly, you can wrap your @import in an IE-only conditional statement. This means you can load custom fixes in a separate stylesheet ONYL if the browser agent is Internet Explorer; something which the CMS Style Manager still can't handle.

e.g.


@import url("./css/IE-override.css");

[cyberman]

and here is a video about converting oswd layout into cmsms
http://cmsmadesimple.org/uploads/media/ ... colate.htm

Wow, thanks for that nice tutorial. Perhaps there should be a special user visible area for downloading swf tutorials.

from wink

Thx for program suggestion too - searched, but never heard before from  .