Ade

I do not think that you understand why I may struggle to read it. I'm disappointed to receive an unconstructive comment like that when I am asking for assistance. But message received: "don't bother us".

As I say, I've looked at almost every page of the docs: I've read the output pages more than once, but they don't make much sense and they lack real and usable examples. Once it starts using multiline PHP, I struggle to read and comprehend the more complex code. PW Tuts looks useful. Thank you.

Although I've read almost every page in the documentation — I even understood some of it — I had to wing it to get this far. By guesswork, I saved some blank template files for content types, made the corresponding templates, and created some simple fields to fill in one of those templates. Summary, body, image, tags, basically. (By the way: the warning message shown when trying to make a new template is not very informative!) Some example text in the body field and <?=page()->body?> added to an otherwise empty template (keeping it simple) and one very small step was made. So what are the next steps required to print the entire page content? I am comfortable with hand written HTML, but I have some questions about how build a complete template system. Should each template be a complete HTML doc or just a segment — or does it not really matter? If it should be segmented, how is it divided up into other templates and how are those templates loaded? How is an HTML region which contains several content elements — such as URLs and titles in a typical <nav> and <ul> structure — populated with those elements by PHP?

That website does not load anything in my browser, but thank you anyway.

Thank you for the replies. There is some positive and some negative feedback there. I am surprised that an important — partly in the sense of its value, but also in the sense of security — function as member log-in is not provided by a core module, even an optional one. As I am no expert, I cannot know whether any third party code is secure and reliable and I would not be comfortable without knowing that. I do have local empty installations of this and Drupal, being tested and sort-of-developed concurrently to see which wins. My web host provides them as well, so I have two demo-content installations in folders on my hosting, which has been useful to see how they perform. I have also read most of the ProcessWire documentation, but a lot of it was not very clear and thorough, so it left me with a lot of unanswered questions. Still, it is not as bad as the Drupal documentation… **** The fact is that I am still undecided. Drupal's core features are compelling, but I am yet to tackle the theming. I think that the ProcessWire theming is likely to be easier, but only if I can manually replicate what I have learned to do with Drupal's Views, etc. So far, my attempts to create content and templates have failed at early hurdles and I can find no solution when I search the web.

In order for you to answer this, I should give you some background first. I am not a web professional of any stripe. But I understand HTML and CSS and have kept up with them quite well. I have built static websites with only these languages. I have very little understanding of PHP, despite trying on and off over the years. I can understand simple statements, but if I use some example code, it must work as provided because I cannot alter it or add context. I once used Drupal for a magazine site, with my own theme. I am familiar with the interface but theming is extremely esoteric (and only seems to have got worse) and it can be very frustrating to implement anything a bit different. I have tried Wordpress and hated it; it made no sense to me and only got in the way of how I think. Why that is so popular, I don't know. I intend to set up a hobby magazine website and I want distinctiveness, flexibility, and expansion potential without going down a dead end and ending up out of my depth – mixed metaphor! – invested in a CMS which was the wrong choice for me. Here is a short list of some of my requirements, those which I am not sure are met by ProcessWire. Member log-in required for comments – its absence would be a deal breaker. Potential for later integration with services such as donations or Patreon. Taxonomy, ideally capable of building strong relevance between content. Not forced to use blog-like next/previous article links, pagination, chronology, etc. (These seem to be difficult to avoid in Drupal.) One newest article from each category in a “featured” section on the home page. Custom image galleries for showcases in masonry grids. Custom form building for a feedback form. (I would like to have control over the HTML but let the CMS provide the PHP as I have been successful in implementing PHP form processing.) RSS feed. Ability to paste Markdown into a content textarea. (I cannot get this to work in Drupal either, though.)