I have a CMSms web designer who convinced me to use CMSms over WordPress. Now that I'm 90% done with the site my designer is telling me my layout requirements can't be accommodated with CMSms... I'm Frustrated!
Here's my "job"/ Question, See the attached layouts below. I simply want to be able to manage the icons displayed on the left and the associated text on the right. My designer is having me use the wysiwig editor to embed Icon's mixed in with Text to achieve this layout scheme and it's a nightmare. He's convinced managing this layout is not possible with CMSms templates... Really?
Can someone PM me if you think you can help me and if you think my layout needs are easily configured using the CMSms template layout tools?
Bradesp
See Layouts Below:
Last edited by bradesp on Sun Nov 29, 2009 11:51 am, edited 1 time in total.
For what it's worth, Wordpress would not have made this problem any easier. Nor would anything else other than needlessly bespoke solution. I say "needlessly" only because I assume that these icons are not changing hourly, hence the labour investment in the solution would never be worth it. I don't think complex blocks, with conditional clauses in all your templates is the answer either.
I think the problem you have is one that is very common on websites that incorporate any level of design at content-level (which most good-looking sites do). In large organisations, this isn't normally a problem. The CMS is a time-saving tool for the web team, who are technical, and could in fact build everything by hand if they wanted too. In smaller organisations, content editors sometimes find that certain editing tasks, on highly designed sites, aren't as easy as just typing into Word. My boss, for example, is sometimes frustrated that he can't get in and deep edit a page because of the presence of design elements, exactly like the icon/text blocks you have on your site.
In an ideal world, my boss would never make direct changes on content pages. He'd pass the changes to me and I'd do them. Writing blog entries and news stories (i.e. text content) is fine, though.
Assuming the person who built your site didn't do anything insane, I would say your best bet is a little user training and some pragmatism. The WYSIWYG editor is perfect for swapping in and out pictures, so I'd be curious to know what issues you're having.
Last edited by Deak on Sun Nov 29, 2009 1:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I've attached two pics. One is a screen shot of my current site showing the problem I'm having using the wysiwig editor to force the formatting I'm after. One is a is the layout I'm trying achieve, which I can't believe can't be achieved, but my CMSms developer is convinced I can't achieve the outcome without some goofy formatting "work arounds".
I'm wondering if a more robust WYSIWIG editor is the simplest solution? TinyMCE for example looks likethe easiest way for me to achieve the formatting I'm after?
Basically there is a small trade off, which is some design stuff will need to be in with your content. This means you will need to be a little careful when editing. Also, in putting these blocks of content into divs you will need to double-click them when using TinyMCE to edit the content inside.
Here's roughly what I'm thinking; I wouldn't do this on a live page or whatever, but it might be a helpful starting point.
For the two columns, paste something like this into the WYSIWYG:
Put your image here.
Put your text here.
And the CSS you'd need to add to your stylesheets would be something like:
.boxContentLeft
{
width: 200px; /* just a guess at the width */
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
float: left;
}
.boxContentRight
{
width: 600px; /* just a guess at the width */
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
float: right;
}
.clear
{
clear: both;
}
.clear: after
{
content: ".";
height: 0px;
visibility: hidden;
display: block;
clear: both;
}
<div class="container">
<div class="image"><img src="image.png" width="50" height="50" alt="" /></div>
<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, vel illum dolore eu feugiat nulla facilisis at vero eros et accumsan et iusto odio dignissim qui blandit praesent luptatum zzril delenit augue duis dolore te feugait nulla facilisi.</p>
</div>
As for the fixed layouts on the left you can use global content blocks inside another div tag floated to right, so you don't see the entire content while editing the WYSIWYG area.
Thats some info that may help.
Last edited by Golf Gti on Sun Nov 29, 2009 9:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Where ever possible you should NOT include formatting such as DIV's in content blocks, these should be in the template or a global content block. This is one of the main points of using a CMS to separate content from formatting.
1. Content is then reusable and can be formatted in different ways for different purposes.
2. Ease of administration and maintenance.
3. Reduces errors.
CMSms can do ANY design layout and very easily, that is one of the main beauties of it. It is far far easier to do your layout in CMSms than it is in Wordpress.
applejack wrote:
Where ever possible you should NOT include formatting such as DIV's in content blocks, these should be in the template or a global content block. This is one of the main points of using a CMS to separate content from formatting.
Of course you should avoid it, if possible. The trouble is that some sites just look obviously "content managed" -- and I really mean that in the pejorative sense. Rigid blocks of text, very similar page layouts, content generally looking "undesigned". Sometimes, like in this situation, design elements in an editable block are the only logical solution. If you credit the content editor with reasonable intelligence, it should not be a problem.
Re: The trouble is that some sites just look obviously "content managed"
That is undoubtedly true especially with some other CMS's. This is one of the main reason why I use CMSms because of it flexibility and ease of different layouts / templates. To do the design which the original poster asked about I would use cgisimplesmarty to pull in the content and use a global content block. Alternatively you could just float the images left and give them a margin etc
.
