PhotoWebMax

In order to learn more about setting up a PW site I am using an existing MODx site and recreating it with PW. I am doing this locally using MAMP. This site has a static main navigation at the top that is built into a single jQuery driven nav_sprite graphic for active and mouse rollover states. The nav_sprite graphic contains links to basic pages like home, about, portfolio and contact, etc. These links and pages are set in stone and will not change. So this navigation is a static menu called "topNav". The site also has a dynamic sidebar navigation in the main content area of the template for extra single pages and parent container pages. This menu is controlled by the Wayfinder MODx navigation snippet. So, what is the best Process Wire method of setting up this system? How do I set up the sidebar menu, called "sideBarMenu" and make sure the generated page links do not clash with the static "topNav" links at the top of the page? I need to make sure the "topNav" links do not show in the "sideBarMenu" and visa versa. Also, is there a cool, better PW way of presenting the "topNav" links instead of hardwiring them into the template? Thanks! Max

I am a longtime MODx user and sort of fit your description as well. I am still getting used to PW but love what I see so far. It seems that there are a quite a few MODx veterans here at PW... Cheers, Max

Joss, I have done the three tutorials that you have on the Wiki... Doing these tuts was so worthwhile. The quick experience of bouncing around Pages, Setup, Templates, Fields and their sub menus really establishes a working familiarity of PW in short order. I am quite impressed so far! The Ajax user experience with the Admin is very cool and clean. I guess "clean" is the main word that I would describe PW. I like "clean" in website design overall and I appreciate it in the CMS backend experience as well. Coming from MODx, my main CMS of choice, I see quite a lot of commonality, which I think is a good thing. Even though I am not a PHP guy I can see the direct advantage of using purer PHP syntax over the special sub language that MODx uses in its snippet TPL system. Overall what I like about the PW admin system versus the MODx Manager is that there is just less of it. The same goes for the project support forums. I was initially drawn to MODx because the weight of the forum was so much less and more direct than say Drupal and Joomla for example. Since then MODx has become more complex to navigate, due mainly to the Evo and Revo development branch split. This causes some frustration with tracking down issue searches as much of the search engine links are either outdated or irrelevant in a way. I think many new "clean" CMS platforms suffer from this issue: over time the signal to noise ratio becomes a problem. The sites I have built so far have been mostly basic. Brochure sites, sites with nicely presented web photo galleries, streamlined blog or news lists, sites with private areas for registered web users (one with a system that allows only registered web users to post from the front end), etc. MODx really does not have a really good ecommerce/ shopping cart solution. I have not built a shopping cart site yet, but I want to. One of the things I would like to do is offer custom sites to real estate agents that are looking for a more personal portal that relies less on the mothership MLS system. I know building real estate sites can be a major endeavor. One of the professional hats I wear is doing real estate photography. I used to also build custom sites for each house listing but these sites were built using static XHTML with no database or connection to private MLS components. The next step for me is to take an existing MODx site that I have built and recreate it locally using PW. This should be an interesting self assignment... Thanks again... Max

Thanks, I just discovered that was missing... So, my slightly different template, using just one image, for both main and second image Fields seems to work! I am just going to have to get used to the correct PHP placeholder syntax that gets added to my templates. This is sort of a different approach than what I am used to with MODx (TVs - template variables), etc...

Trying to get rid of the whole first/last image option and just go with a simpler add one image system... If I use this in my template the image on the front end page will not display even though I can see it on the page edit in the Admin? <img src="<?=$page->article_secondimage ?>">

One other thing: I tried deleting a template field from the Fields pane but when you hit the delete button you get a message saying you cant delete this field because it is be used by a template? How do you delete a a field if you really want to? EDIT: I guess you have to do this from the Template pane rather than the Field pane itself?

I just did this tutorial: nice job! Couple of things: 1) During the time it took to complete the tutorial I found I was logged out of the admin (several times) unexpectedly? 2) When I viewed the test article page from the front end there was a server error message and no content from the template fields? I removed the two instances of image code from TUT_article.php and the page rendered fine with the text fields generated correctly. Adding the image code lines back returns the error statement. I am unclear how the article_images field works here? Where does the article_mainimage and article_secondimage come from? Here is the code from TUT_article.php <?php include("./TUT_header.inc"); ?> <div id="article-container"> <div class="article-row"> <div class="article-mainimage"> <img src="<?=$page->article_images->first()->url ?>"> </div> <div class="article-introbox"> <h2><?=$page->get("headline|title") ?></h2> <div class="article-introtext"> <?=$page->article_introtext ?> </div> </div> </div> <div class="article-row"> <div class="article-main"> <img src="<?=$page->article_images->last()->url ?>"> <?=$page->article_maintext ?> </div> </div> </div> <?php include("./TUT_footer.inc"); ?> I would like to get this sorted in my head before moving on... Thanks!

Cool stuff Mary! So glad to hear that things are going well and you have client work. One of the things I find frustrating about MODx is remembering all the little syntax differences with snippet calls and their templates. You have to look stuff up repeatedly if you return to a site project after any absence. I like the look of PW and how it seems to function, just smoother somehow. Time will tell once I create a test/learning project for myself... Its really interesting to see how many MODx folks are over here using Processwire...

I am just getting my feet wet with PW. I have built a decent number of MODx sites with both Evo and Revo. I know HTML, CSS, design, using jQuery scripts (adding them not authoring them), etc. I am only familiar with PHP by copying and pasting and skimming through code to get to the idea of the functions. I did look at a few sites that taught PHP but never stuck with it. So, any recommendations to learning a bit of PHP to make working with PW easier? Thanks!

I managed to fix a number of issues with one of my MODx sites (that jump started the search for alternatives in the first place) so my immediate crisis is over. I have checked out a couple of tutorials and watched several videos on PW. I really like what I see. I think the next step for me is to build a test site and just get in there and make the pieces fit. Some of the threads on this forum that focus on moving from MODx to PW are really helpful... Thanks to all!

Nice to see this... Say, is there a live site we can this in action?

I am not sure about this either but I do recall having odd issues with database errors while running MAMP on my Mac during a new install of a CMS. I found that restarting my Mac and then launching MAMP, creating the database, and then running the CMS installer worked fine. As you might be grasping at straws at this stage you never know: give this a shot...

If this works for me (and it looks promising) then I would not mind helping with any documentation down the road. I have writing and forum moderation experience. My view on creating documentation for stuff like this: I like it when you have two people doing the work or tutorial. One should be the expert with all the coding tools and knowledge. And then the other guy/gal: an enthusiastic participant who makes sure the language reads well for readers, especially newbies. I know catering to newbies is a chore than tries regular forum participant's patience. But the better the communication and documentation is the better the signal-to-noise-ratio becomes for everyone...

@Marty, Cool stuff. I have stayed in Katoomba before... @Joss, Thanks for the Wiki links. Heading over there now...

@Joss, Thanks for the basic new template creation procedure. So far so good. I guess the next step is to backwards engineer the default template and CSS and see how things are structured. I am ok with copying PHP code and massaging the main html within. I can edit and create my own CSS. I have an install running on MAMP and will play around with this over the next couple of days. @Kongondo, Nice to "see" you again as well!! I see Mary is here as well! Small world. How deep is she into Processwire? Be great if she could create some tutorials and videos on Processwire like she did for MODx. Her tutorials with carefully chosen language was a HUGE help for many people who were learning the MODx system.

In my early days of moving beyond building static sites I must have tried about eight or ten CMS systems. In the end I chose MODx for its design flexibility and the helpful community. Well established systems like Drupal seemed too "heavy" with a zillion add ons and their forum was just to bloated from sheer critical mass. Since then MODx has split into two project forks, Evolution and Revolution. Add time, increased membership and much of the searchable forum content has become either outdated or irrelevant. I am not sure if I will move away from MODx totally but after stumbling onto Processwire I must say I am intrigued and hopeful that I will click with the system...

Wow, Kongondo was a huge positive force on the MODx forum. He wrote a very in-depth and definitive guide to MODx navigation using the Wayfinder snippet... Thanks for the links! Any pointers on some good template tutorials?

I am new here. My name is Max and I am a photographer. I also do some web design for clients. I have pretty solid Photoshop, photography, HTML and CSS skills. I can not get my head around scripting languages though. I have tried and failed. So, I really cant code PHP for example. Up to now I have been using MODx for my CMS needs. I see several MODx names I know on this forum. I like to design sites in Photoshop, then code the template from the graphics into clean HTML and CSS. I like how MODx handles the build your own template task. But lately I am feeling frustrated and left behind with MODx. I don't fiddle with my sites full time. I find that upgrading modules with the Packet Management system causes issues with my pages, and the templates that I made. So, I am looking for an easier path. I want to edit my own templates and get the CSS to create exactly the layout I want. I then want to build basic pages and have an easy to use image gallery system on portfolio pages that allows me to control the layout presentation of the thumbnails. It would be nice to create more than one gallery (with groups of thumbnails) on a single front end page. I need a basic contact form, some light blogging structure and that is about it. I am hoping that Processwire will allow me to do all this without tripping up on PHP knowledge or the lack thereof. I doubt I will need to build custom modules or blocks of code. I like MODx but I am finding it heavy going with needing to master all the chunks, snippets, modules, snippet calls, parameters, placeholders, template variables, paths, etc, just to present the content (text and photo galleries) in the way I want. I long for a system that relies more on CSS for layout control rather than requiring coding knowledge. So, to keep this short: is Processwire the new CMS for me? Thanks!