CMS Made Simple Forums

I've just started to use CMSMS for a few small websites that I have to administer in my spare time (by day I work on giant Java/JSP sites for corporates). It's all working pretty good and I find CMSMS to strike a good balance between power and ease-of-use for my needs.

However, I'm finding my development environment to be really weak. I have to edit templates, Menu manager templates, Style sheets, User-defined tags, Global content blocks all in the same non-syntax aware editor in the admin screens. I'm mid-way through writing some scripts to dump the entire database of these types to a file, ftp it to the server, and then splat it over the live version (with URLs suitably adjusted) just so I can release in a slightly reliable fashion. And I can't think how I'd get the various fragments of PHP I've written into a debugger. I've lately been using the excellent gallery templates, but again, I have issues with editing, debugging and releasing. Also, having the templates in a database isn't conducive to any kind of version management.

I can't help thinking it would be easier if all this stuff was in files, not in a database, then I could point my own choice of tools at it.

Anyhow, what do others think? How do others set up their dev environment and the relationship between dev and prod?

- Dave

Use the Template Externalizer module.

Thanks for that suggestion - looks promising for the edit part of my concerns.

Any suggestions about how to manage migrating from test to prod (which for me at least, will be between two servers whose only point of contact is ftp)? Might it work to run the template externalizer in both and just copy the external templates across?

- Dave

If your moving all the templates stylesheets etc. out of the DB, what's the purpose of even using a CMS, might as well just use DW?...

Well, I suppose I thought my users would still get to WYSIWIYG edit their content while leaving me to worry about templates, I'd still get to use various plugins to speed the development process, all the usual stuff really. Come to think of it, what benefit of the CMS will I lose by moving the templates and stylesheets out of the DB?

it will mean you will have to back those items up separately, rather than having them included in the db backup.  (obviously there will be a version stored in the db, but it may not be the latest that you're working on).

if you have multiple editors/designers, having external stylesheets and templates means that you have to be extra careful to make sure everyone is working on the same versions...  If you're the only editor/designer, this isn't as much of an issue.

there are pros and cons both ways.  The Template Externalizer really offers the best of both worlds.  Export, edit in your favorite editor, then import back into the CMS db.

I think the Template Externalizer will be fine for me. However...

jmcgin51 wrote: if you have multiple editors/designers, having external stylesheets and templates means that you have to be extra careful to make sure everyone is working on the same versions...  If you're the only editor/designer, this isn't as much of an issue.

I think you're quite right about this being a potential problem, and in fact I do have multiple designers. However, the issue you describe says to me "use a VCS", not "store the latest version in a database": I'd no more coordinate multiple template designers without a VCS than any other dev team. Pointing a VCS at the template folder will also be a better solution to the back up issue as I see it.

- Dave