Grays

This was a bit of an eye opener. So in general, do you guys usually just have one template for your content pages, even across sections? Of course, I realize this would also depend on the site, but this is beginning to sound like: unless it's really pretty darn different, we can really just use the same template even if they're not quite the same (especially if they have similar fields, types of data, or share portions of them)? (Also, good to know that putting all fields in one template shouldn't add much overhead, as that was a concern as well.) And much thanks to you both, diogo & SiNNuT, for suggesting FieldSetTabOpen. That sounds perfect and would actually solve another problem I was having for an actual site I will eventually convert to PW once I'm more familiar with it. Just to make sure I'm understanding this correctly: Basically, using the FieldSetTabOpen is just purely for backend UI and doesn't affect the layout on the template files? So we'd still check for it the same we would any other field without needing to do anything else, correct?

Sorry, I didn't get into specifics because it was a semi-general question that came up as I was talking to a friend about PW, testing things out, and imagining the various ways I could convert existing sites (I've only just discovered PW and it's probably too early for me to be able to truly convert anything right now since a couple of sites I initially wanted to convert is likely way too complicated at this point). So, I'm using his site as a jumping point. If it helps, the site that inspired this series of question is a general TV series blog that the aforementioned friend used to run. Basically, he had three main sections - blog, reviews, and graphics. - The blog: general posts, 95% of which would only require the usual title, body, images, etc. - Reviews: reviews he writes on various series, this one would need other fields like number of episodes, summary, rating, etc. So, a different template if built on PW. - Graphics: various graphics he shares, like wallpapers, avatars, memes, etc. Sometimes these are just single images and other times, there's a mini-gallery (hence the images fields question) The questions I had was related to the main blog. As mentioned, 95% of the posts are just typical blog posts. However, once in a long while, he posts about a series he's watched a bit of or a new one he's previewing. These posts would have additional fields like name of series, number of episodes out/watched, genre, summary, etc. These are fields that wouldn't ever be used on most of his posts... but only when he posts these "preview" posts, which isn't all that often. He didn't have a separate section for it because they were more like an asides type of post that only crept up on a whim. And they weren't in-depth enough to be sorted under Reviews, so they're just under a category, hence all those questions I had. I hope that gives you a better idea of where I'm coming from. Thanks for the input, RJay - always good to hear another person's opinion. I initially thought that'd be the way to go too... but ended up questioning if it's inefficient somehow to have a bunch of fields that would hardly ever be used. And perhaps also a bit cluttered when posting (probably not that bad for a personal site, but maybe not so great for someone else or a client per se). I may very well just do it like you said - just wondered if PW had a different way I could approach for handling such a scenario.

I'm mulling over organization of fields and templates - would love some advice, suggestions, or advantages/disadvantages of, please. Using a blog as an example, let's say 95% of the pages would usually have the fields: title, body, images However, perhaps the remaining 5% of the pages might need several additional fields. Would it generally be better to just use one template that has all the fields even though half of them won't get used most of the time? Or two templates, one of them having all the fields and another only the basic title/body/images fields? Is one or the other more complicated to make happen in the template files coding (I'm guessing I'd be using the if() statement...) OR is this a case where I'd be better off putting those 5% of posts under another section/parent? (My hesitation here would be the URL structure and also the fact that on the frontend, the posts shouldn't be treated as separate sections.) Along (maybe) similar lines, is it possible to display certain fields based on the category chosen (either at posting, or outputting via the template file)? And one more question, please, regarding images. If a blog post may sometimes have a picture in the textarea but other times also have a group of images at the bottom of the post, mini-gallery style... what would be the best way to organize the fields? Two separate image fields, one for inserting into the body text and another for simply displaying like a gallery? Or can they use one and the same image field? Thanks in advance for your help, and sorry for the multiple this or that questions... I'm still trying to wrap my brain around the organization and if there are any pros/cons to the various ways.

This looks really awesome, Soma! Thanks so much for this (and also for helping me in regards to my image management concerns post). I will definitely be giving this a run... er, once I break through this wall of trouble I'm having with learning PW. In any case, this looks like quite the thing that could help me. Questions: How many images can this manager handle comfortably, would you say? And is this something that's server intensive? Also, is this something that you'd recommend for the general handling of all images, or just the ones that would be reused?

horst, thanks for the helpful link on shorthand - I suppose I best stick with the complex. They feel easier for me to comprehend too somehow... As for asking questions, I get the feeling I might become the next annoying person on the block. I promise I'll do lots of good reading, searching, and trials of my own before I bother you lot! It helps much more than you think! I admit to feeling a bit intimidated because I was starting to wonder if PW wasn't suited for someone like me, but I'm comforted in knowing (and hoping) that perhaps it isn't so out of reach for me to be able to produce something more than the very basic site from PW (especially since I know that PW can do so much more). Exactly why I'm still sticking around. That and I'm kind of stubborn when I'm trying to figure something out. Thanks for sharing how you went about learning your way into PW - it helps gives me an idea of the steps I can also take. The frontend problem you mention is probably something to consider, but I think I'll worry about that last! For now, I'm adapting my own sites first, so at least, that's one less worry for the moment... I'm probably visualizing a bit too much and not doing enough of the outputting part, lol. But yes, this is probably another thing I should really try to do as I'm still not completely in tuned with PW's way of doing things yet. I can't wait for the moment to kick in - and for the fun to begin. Anyhow, thanks again all! I'm really glad I decided to unload my woes upon the forum, even at the risk of major whining. I've gone off to read some basic PHP intro stuff, look up the terms Ryan mentioned, along with a few others... and I think something is slowly sinking in somewhere. Then I think I'll tackle some of the docs and get to work. If any of you have any other stuff I should take a look at, please do point the way. Or you can always slap me upside the head for being melodramatic if it turns out my main problem is impatience...

Ah, I've generally learned best/fastest from examples, deciphering the bits and such, hence me trying to pick apart the Blog Profile. Seems I was trying to fly before knowing how to walk! I shall revert back to the basic site and go from there once more as you have advised. Having "no right way" to build a site is actually one of the reasons I like PW, because I enjoy the freedom of being able to build sites the way I designed them (which was also one of the reasons why I was drawn to EE back in the days). So I do take the tutorials as they're meant to be taken... which, I think, is what led me here. I find myself stuck trying to take things "out of the box" so to speak because I don't know how to code any of it. I hope I'm making sense... But, Ryan, thank you so much for listing all those things I should take a look at. It's exactly what I need at this point - a direction to head towards, because I didn't even know where to begin and how much I'm supposed to "know" in regards to PHP. Looks like I'll be doing lots of reading shortly. By the way, in your example for outputting a value, is it generally more recommended to use the shorthand (is that the right term?) of coding or the full <?php echo $value; ?> and so on? I think I've been seeing bits of both throughout the forum and code bits, so it was something I was curious about. I figured it was just a shorter way to code the same thing, but are there any pros/cons of using one or the other and can the shorthand(?) be used everywhere? Just want to make sure I adopt the best practice right from the start! You may be right. As mentioned to Ryan above, I'm likely trying to fly before knowing how to walk properly. Part of the reason is because I'm also currently trying to convert a site built on EE over to PW, so I keep thinking ahead even though I really should be going at it slower instead of stressing myself out. I do have to admit that I'm hesitant to ask stuff in the forum right now, because I feel a bit like a headless chicken running around. I'd either be asking about every single little stupid thing or it'd be a case of not even knowing where to begin searching for what I need. I tend to try and work things out myself, so this is a point of frustration for me because I feel like I'm so stuck right now and not even knowing what specific thing to ask to get unsuck. Oh and thanks for the explanation in regards to page/pages. And to diogo too. I think I'll be heading over to the areas Ryan pointed out to familiarize myself a bit more on what I need to know and perhaps things will start to click in place. (Btw, yellowled, I actually know more PHP than I do JQuery, so that might tell you something about how lost I am...) Thanks all! I'm feeling a bit more, err, pumped up about jumping back in. You guys are awesome. EDIT: Holy, just saw that there were more replies. Will go read them and reply accordingly in a bit. EDIT 2: Um, I meant "to get unstuck"... and not unsuck. But I suppose unsuck works too.

Hi guys, I've been spending the past couple days trying to get myself acquainted with PW... and I find myself swaying between excitement and discouragement. I'm excited because I'm really loving the way PW works but discouraged because I can't help but feel that I'm in way over my head. I'm not sure if this is in part because I still haven't reached the "AHA!" moment, but I'm also just very frustrated with my own lack of PHP knowledge (it's even less than I originally thought - at this moment, I think I'm completely PHP illiterate). Now, I really don't want to give up on PW, so I come here in hopes that someone can help point me towards the best way to approach "learning beyond the basics". I've gone through the various tutorials in the wiki and followed the Basic Website Tutorial as well, felt like I have a decent general grasp of things. Then I decided to upload and take a look at the blog profile. It had a lot of features I'm looking to implement, so I thought it would be good to see how things are done and make changes where necessary... except I think I ended up getting overwhelmed by it. Simply put, I can't make heads or tails out of a lot (most) of the PHP coding I see in the template files - never mind adapt it to the site I want to build! So, I've got a few questions. For someone who isn't a developer, would you say that jumping in and trying to take the Blog Profile apart is a bad idea? Is that considered advanced territory? Should I have just tried to build everything from scratch and add in the extra features step by step? Though, I'm not even sure how I would go about doing that, to be honest. I'm just lost. The basic stuff, I can grasp... like if I were to build a "static" site with various sections and some content, I can do that with PW at this point. The problem is, I think, the more advanced parts - as in, where and how to grow from the basics. I don't know where to even begin to tackle things, especially when it comes to specific customization. For example, I could probably copy and paste code for implementing comments... but then because I can't even understand what I'm copying or how to code PHP, I don't know how to make little changes, like say if I want to make it so that admin comments are styled differently, or if I want to load up Gravatar if one exists and if not then a default avatar, etc. Stuff like that. I'm sorry if this sounds like I'm just rambling randomly... it's just that I think I'm stuck at that point between being able to do the basic stuff but not having a single idea as to how to grow beyond that - short of going off to take some intensive PHP courses or something. So I guess my bottom line question is, how doable is PW for someone who doesn't know any PHP (and isn't just going to build a basic site with some content)? Am I better off not jumping into the deep end without at least knowing some PHP first? I've mostly built sites on ExpressionEngine and a bit of Textpattern in the past, so landing in pages of PHP code makes me feel like a foreigner in a strange country. And while I'm here, may I just quickly ask what the difference between $page and $pages is? The Basic Website Tutorial mentioned it a bit, but I'm not sure I truly understand when to use which... and what it means when pulling content from the page or another page? I sincerely apologize for my newbie whining...

Soma, Yes, the images will mainly need to be inserted into the body text area. They will also be treated mostly as "single images"... well, in some cases, several of these single images lined together, but no, they won't function like a lightbox gallery or anything like that. You can think of them as images that go in blog posts, except there's a lot of reusing going on and sometimes several of the images may be needed throughout the blog post, etc. Some images would go in predefined areas, for galleries type of displaying images, but those aren't the images that will typically be reused over and over again so I think it should be okay here. Thanks!

Oh, thanks for explaining some more on how the module works. That might indeed be an issue because knowledge of where the image was last used would be a problem. The images may be reused at any given time and may go long periods without being reused too so it'd be very difficult to know where/when it was last used unless one does a lot of digging. This other method you've mentioned - would you say it can work "gracefully" if a lot of hidden pages are needed (I'd be needing much more than 3 "directories" here) and also if there are about 100-150 pictures in each of these gallery pages? I'm definitely more than happy to try it whichever way PW handles it best... just wasn't sure if this is a case of "Meh, it's a workaround but probably gonna be clunky." type of thing! I think you may have lost me there regarding the benefits of having images in a field attached to the page - did you mean images that aren't being pulled in from another page but loaded directly on the post? If so, I assume image cropping and such is not available for when pulling in the picture from a "gallery page" right? Anyhow, thank you very much for your help! This might be the way I'll go about doing things if it turns out that it'll handle the amount of images and "gallery pages" just fine. And thank you too, for the welcome. I get the feeling I'll be doing a lot of digging here in the forums, especially since I don't quite speak PHP and I'm more a designer than a developer really... EDIT: Thank you MichaMichaMicha - I certainly do look forward to loving ProcessWire. I do really like EE though... I've been with them since the PMachine days but alas, I think it may be best to move on in some cases!

I apologize if I gave you the impression that I didn't look into how images were being handled on PW. I did. I just felt that my situation was quite different being that, 1.) Almost all the images can be (and will be) reused a bunch of times at any given post/moment, and 2.) There will be at least 1000+ images that needs to be organized accordingly. That said, my primary concern was that I wasn't sure if dumping the images into a page as storage and pulling images into a post from them would be feasible for this particular case, hence the question. But thank you anyway. Thank you very much, arjen! I'll look into this and see if it might be a solution to what I need. Unfortunately, there is no live example of the site at the moment because the site is pulled offline as it's moving servers and also going through an overhaul of sorts. But it is pretty much what I described in my original post. The whole point of the site is hinged on the ability to post and re-post these images an unlimited amount of times. Anyhow, really appreciate your help - I'll give it a whirl. It could be that in the end, PW and the module just isn't suitable for this particular site... it happens. Not every CMS will always be a perfect match with every site after all! (Oh and it seems another reply popped in while I was typing this up, so I hope no one minds if I end up double-posting replies because I'm not quite sure how to reply to those without losing these ones!)

Hello all, I'm currently looking for ExpressionEngine alternatives for a site and stumbled across you guys. I haven't installed or played around with ProcessWire yet, but I did a bit of research and came across a potential issue I'd like to ask for your opinions before I truly dig in, please and thank you. From what I've read, it seems file/image management is handled quite differently on PW in that there's no file manager per se to pick and choose media files from. I'm open to a different way of doing things, but I feel I must ask about my case because how this particular site uses images is rather unconventional. Basically, a majority of the images on the site will be reused tons of times and there will be a lot of images (currently nearing a thousand images that may be resused at any given post and the amount of images may continue to grow). Ideally, these images should be grouped to make browsing through the files a little easier. So, taking this into consideration, can something like this be easily handled with PW, and if so, can someone give me an idea of how to approach it? To give you an idea, on my current EE setup, I have images uploaded in their respective directories (grouped accordingly). For example, Directory A: 100 images Directory B: 60 images Directory C: 220 images ... and so on. Then I'd just use the file manager to load whichever images that's needed for a post. About 90% of the posts will include/re-use several images from these directories. I realize this sounds quite odd, but it is what it is (and yes, it is necessary). From what I've seen of PW, I'd really love to be able to try it as I'm looking for options to migrate various sites from EE. However, this lack of a file manager is a real concern for this particular site I'm working on. I'd appreciate any insights or suggestions. Thank you!