NorbertH

First, i always  tend to experiment a lot , helps me understand how things might work.

Second i want to use one file, namely the _init.php but i don't want to break the default template handling mechanism inside the backend.

Third, i like the idea of having one central file to allow for template wide functions , for example a loginscript that allows me to have a loginbox on every page and don't need any redirects as  i simply can post the form to the current page itself.

Fourth, maybe its possible via hooks , so again its about learning how things work ;-)

Is there a way of suppressing the automatic  loading of the Templatefile?

I was experimenting with Somas template approach

https://processwire.com/talk/topic/740-a-different-way-of-using-templates-delegate-approach/

The problem is that you have to bend all Templates to a single file.

I thought of putting  the script into the _init.php($config->prependTemplateFile) That way you can use the default template structure. But if i do this, all templates get included again after _init.php is loaded. So now i am thinking about if there is a way to suppress that additional loading.

@woop

How about helping Ryan with rewriting the templates content?

Is there something against abusing it this way ?

// a filename array abused  for plain scripts 
$config->headScripts = new FilenameArray();

// add scripts to the  FilenameArray
$config->headScripts->append("jQuery('a.gallery').colorbox(); ");

// this one s added in main.php
<? foreach($config->headScripts->unique() as $script) echo "\n\t<script type='text/javascript'>$script</script>";?>

If i have a template that requires scripts added in head  and at the end of body.

Do you have any idea how to handle this whith $config->scripts.

Another point is how to handle if its necessary to add not just files but small scripts that need to be added at the head or bottom.(like google analytics).

Is there something like :

$config->scripts-bottom

$config->scripts-direct

Maybe there is a way to make such an array, besides from silmply creating the var.

Why sorry ?

Checked the youtube channel ... like it very much!

Whoa great music, who is  the singer at 10:30 ?

What I'd really like to do as the next step with this is make it support upgrade by FTP. That would provide a nicer and safer solution for those that don't have writable file systems on their servers.

Please consider using  SFTP/SCP instead of  FTP

Maybe this one could help, but i guess you already know about it   :

http://phpseclib.sourceforge.net/

Had no trouble upgrading/downgrading my test installations

 http://processthemes.com

No functional download , actually no themes :-(

@Martijn Geerts

Thats exactly what i was talking about ...

Plus it would be nice if modules that create templatefiles would obey these standards so they interact seamelesly.

A friendly and powerful open source CMS with an exceptionally strong foundation.

Nope its a CMF , a content management framework that allows you to make an easy CMS for your HTML

Not being precise causes lots of frustration

Wikipedia again:

A content management framework (CMF) is a system that facilitates the use of reusable components or customized software for managing Web content. It shares aspects of a Web application framework and a content management system (CMS).

here we go , and btw. we are listed there.

A lot of people seems to be very much concerned about this topic.

Quite a while ago drupal stated "we stay OOP free", then they added OOP step by step caused by pressure from outside.

At last they are now based on Symphony framework. So Drupal once was special now its like any other crap around.

So yess, i can understand that fear.

Taken a closer look, you are right this one is great.

Now i understand why they say use your own Jquery and plugins in the frontend...

A small quote from Wikipedia.

A content management system (CMS)is a computer application that allows publishing, editing and modifying content, organizing, deleting as well as maintenance from a central interface....

   ...CMSs typically aim to avoid the need for hand coding, but may support it for specific elements or entire pages.

As i already stated its perfectly ok to say , nope no standards. As PW is a system that attaches to almost any thinkable HTML/JS Template in a  perfect way its a great thing as it is. But if you think that way you have to make sure not to attract people from conventional CMS with false promises.

A friendly and powerful open source CMS with an exceptionally strong foundation.

First sentence on PW homepage.

As it is its a CMF that allows you to build the custom CMS for your Template in an instance.

Maybe we should even invent  a new paradigm for this one, like PW is a new PFT CMF  (Page Field Template)

The PFT concept allows for extremely easy generation of content that integrates easily into your existing HTML/JS Template.

That way designers can concentrate on designing and a developer can easily convert this design into a fully functional webapplication.

The powefull selection engine completely removes the need for complex data models...

...

The problem is that pepole(non developers form WP, Joomla..) expect a CMS and got really frustrated. As science found out , if you got angry about something you tell that to an average of 10 people thats a hell lot of bad publicity. So we better should advertise PW as a CMF and make people happy about finding how simple this can be instead of making people unhappy if they expect something like a normal CMS ...

I've used Magnific popup (which is used in the PW admin)

Ahh, the i got it wrong. I thought Fancy is used in PW admin, not sure why ....

Here is so much talk about fancybox around here and many pepole seem to use it i guess thats the reason.

You are right Colorbox is far better + there are a few very smooth and cool lightboxes on codecanyon that even cost less.

From : http://fancyapps.com/fancybox/

fancyBox licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 license.
You are free to use fancyBox for your personal or non-profit website projects.
You can get the author's permission to use fancyBox for commercial websites by paying a fee.

Concerning to that i have to pay 15,00 € for each domain i use Fancy ?

So maybe its not a good idea to use Fancybox at all ?

Asking myself if that counts for backend use too, so in had to pay 15 bucks anytime i use PW on a commercial site?

btw. i am not sure if the wiki is linked on the PW homepage at all. At least i cannot find it in http://processwire.com/docs/

wiki.processwire.com

I just wanted to remind that this discussion originated in the question how to get PW more widespread.

Its a decision to say No this is a framework this stays a framework but this will completely stop availability for mass users, then it must be advertised a as a framework and not as a CMS. That would be perfectly ok. Its a decision that is up to Ryan. 

Having no options for commercial templates  that can link into it is a big minus and no way to build modules that rely on a few standards and can be easyly installed inside the basic installation will stop quite a lot of professionals.

The most wired thing is that with a few minor standards all this problems are solved.

I hope you read my previous post about templates and modules ?

The is no change in PW core necessary at all, just a better default Profile, and a few minor modifications on some modules to make lots of pepole happy  whith PW.

And i really would like to see PW becomming as popular  as WP, Drupal or Typo  as its the far better solution.

 <irony>Smoking is still very popular, drinking too, drugs too  .... it must be good .</irony>

Btw. we should be happy about Argos telling us what kind of problems he has, most people just test , got stuck and throw it away.

So thanks to Argos !

We should listen to this.

• Comprehensive users / usergroups / roles / access permissions etc etc
• File management and secure file hosting
• Draft to staging to published workflow
• Related to above, ability for admins to review stuff before it's live (including getting notified when pages are ready for review) and share pages with other team members for review
• Form wizards so they can build their own forms
• Media management 
• Custom dashboards for their "own" areas
• Round the clock support
• Approval from their IT department etc who review security, upgrades, patches etc etc

Again correct me if i am wrong.

• Comprehensive users / usergroups / roles / access permissions etc etc

We have roles management on template base and optionally a page based one .

And if it comes to highly complex Roles management its never easy to set , Typos and Drupals roles systems do not really look simple.

• File management and secure file hosting
• Media management

Do we have this ? If not put it on the todo.

• Draft to staging to published workflow
• Related to above, ability for admins to review stuff before it's live (including getting notified when pages are ready for review) and share pages with other team members for review

As far as i can see there are a few modules concerning about history of pages  but nothing that covers this points -> todo?

• Form wizards so they can build their own forms

We have a pretty nice Form Module , its not free, but great.

• Custom dashboards for their "own" areas

As whith other CMF/CMS this clearly is a thing that has to be custom build to the exact demands of that company.

• Round the clock support

Most of the time you get silly hotlines outside the business hours ;-)

Lets make a list of peoples willing to offer support.

• Approval from their IT department etc who review security, upgrades, patches etc etc

As peoples aren't open to new things alll the time this part is a thing that needs some luck if you are not using Typo.

The funny thing about standarisation is that, if done well, you don't need much of it.

Lookt at the templates:

Just have a default instalation that uses Ryans main.php in your templates and you are done. Now modules can create template files that bring their default formating into the main page.

Now for the modules:

For the modules the only standard must be, if you create template files you  have to put the name of the module in front of the file name like: blog_display_categories.php. If those template files already exist then don't overwrite as the template designer already made some files for this module.

Does someone really thing this would kill PW ?

Using main.php ist the better way anyway.

What it does is, it opens a whole new world of  exchangeable templates.

If you do this little standarisation you can create modules that work like new pepole would expect .

Another few things that should be done:(At least in my opinion).

• Have a simple stripped down version of the commercial Form module(Form generation is an impossible nightmare for users and not being able to make a contact form is a killer criteria)
• Have a default install whith a nice looking full featured basic template

If we modify a few modules to comply to the Standard above we don't even need many additional modules in the default install .

Just a nice made basic page whith some features.

And again it would be extremely helpfull if Ryan would extend his Profile module so it can save a full installation as profile. That would make creating a ful featured CMS out of PW extremely easy. That way it could even be a community project. Right now creating fully featured Profiles looks like a lot of work(users, language support...), correct me if i am wrong.

Made a new thread about making PW more easy for end users as this does not belong here.

https://processwire.com/talk/topic/7565-making-pw-more-userfriendly/

In this post we had a small discussion about making PW more userfriendly(for new, non developer users)

https://processwire.com/talk/topic/7184-lets-highlight-processwires-ability-to-be-an-enterprise-cms/page-2

Personally i think the technical details belong to another thread, so i opened one.

When you install PW you got basic pages and nothing else at least from the view of a newcomer that is not a developer.

What does a newcomer expect from something that is propagated as being better than WP?

• Basic pages whith more than body and titl. At least they need title, browser title, meta description, publish date controll, a main image, image uploadfield for images in the MCE editor, short text, long text(Tiny MCE), tags, optinally a small gallery for additional images(whith lightbox), an easy option for comments.
• A basic Blog/News system as news and blog can easily be used interchangeably.
• Image cropping on default image fields.
• Premade RSS feed.
• Premade sitemap.
• Premade search.
• A basic form module
• An Image gallery with mass upload, description,title,  title tag, alt tag, fancybox option.
• A Template system for easy template change and an option for modules to link in
• Module installers that are able to deinstall a module completely.(for example the blog module does not)
• Site settings and maybe Template settings
• Simply install and go.

The interesting part is that almost everything from this list is already there in PW.

A few words about PW in general. Im my opinion PW is not a CMS, at least not now. Its a CMF whith an extra comfortable backend , and it really schould be advertised as that right now. Many of the stuff that pepole expect from a CMS is not present (installable templates, modules, calenders...) it has to be build by yourself. Even if thats pretty easy to do, its not click install and go. So its a framework and not a CMS.

Ok, let's look at the reality of most CMS. Either they got far to many modules or they do not have enough modules. Many modules are unmaintained or broken or lack some important functionality. Often installation of any module or updating the CMS breaks a lot of things. even paid modules often come whith lots of problems inside plus you  literally have to test hundreds of modules before you find a combination that is functional, compatible and affordable.

So from this point of view PW is even better than any CMS, as almost all  stuff is build with plain core functionality, but still its a framework not easy to understand by a user.

So what do we need to make it a CMS? The keyword is standarisation. An user does not want 100 ways to make a news page, he exactly wants 1 way to do that. Its great if you easily add some fields but basically he just wants a news page.

Standarisation does not need to take away freedom, it only allows to make components that interact in certain defined ways.

Standarisation can never be perfect but it can help alot in interaction between different parts.

If we look at PW templates there are endless ways to get the result you want so its almost impossible to make a module that creates at least a halfway decent looking default template for its functionality that links into the basic site structure. Would it be bad to create a standrard way for making templates that allows modules to link in ? Would it be bat to have a bunch of default modules that allow templatebuilders to produce templates that already have a well made formating at least for this few modules.

You still have the option to do it the way you like, you can build your own stuff or just modify the existing stuff but in addition to that  you now got the option of installing a few modules, buy a template, do a few modifications and you page is ready. So it even adds more freedom to the system not less.

Lets take a look at WP.

Most templates only support the basic blog and maybe a few modules. as soon as you start to install additional modules you either have to live whith an often ugly default output and often it  fails completely. So you start modifying the template or even worse you need to modify the module. The next module update kills all your changes and you have to start over.... The fun starts if you have a bunch of modules that need modification .

A big company called Templatemonster has a solution for that problem. They sell WP themes that are a complete installation bundled with all the necessary modules and all addons fully functional, but don't try to upgrade the WP system, simply don't do this.

Maybe this is the perfect way for PW to make premade templates ? I guess not. You still run into trouble if you want to change the look of your page. But still it may be an idea to earn some money whith PW. at least i would pay for a nice installation package whith blog and gallery and a really nice modern template with some color, background  and logo control in the backend.

For the easy creation o something like that we would need an extended Profile Module that allows to store a complete page as an installlable Profile. Right now i had some trouble storing multilanguage support and pre generated user and a few other things.

So i guess the best way would be to define a bunch of standard modules, define a default way to do templating and  for interaction between modules and templates.

More about that tomorrow(more technical details ), i need a bed right now

I am relatively new to PW but as i am a full scale developer i really loved the concept right from the beginning(thx to Mr_Fan who informed me about PW) , but still even i had a: "huh, where is the template installer ? No default templates ?". I really can understand the problems Argos faced . You install, then whats next, how do i get a page from that point?  There are a lot of tutorials but any newcomer, who isn't a developer yet, wil say "damit" and goes back to Wordpress or whatever. Many pepole start as users and than they begin to learn. PW does not offer a user level and that's a real pity.

Lots of  young pepole start building a private blog(homepage) whith Wordpress and they say: "hey, thats simple, lets see what else we can do.".  And so they start experimenting, just to find that WP is still very limited ;-) .

Now imagine they the find that there are no real limits , that this simple basic CMS can do anything they ever dreamed of?

This leads me to the fact that pepole use what they already know. Even while there a lots of limitations in using WP there a still thousands of company websites done whith WP. So one way to spread the word about PW is to make it user friendly (that shouldn't be too hard ).

These Pepole grow up, they had made good experiences whith PW or at least they heard of PW and some of em become decision makers .....

As it is right now PW is a Framework/CMS only for companies that have a developer available. Ok, lets start from here. How about spreading the Word ? How about offfering presentations for companies interested maybe founding usergroups ?

If i Google for "simple php framework", i get a lot of stuff  but nothing about PW.

Come people spread the word!

Google For "simple php framework", "non mvc Framework"..... and similar searches , and whenever there is a comment function add PW. If there is a dev forum advertise PW , put Links on all pages , in you Facebook site , twitter about it. And the best is anyone can help! If we get to a point where the decision maker does not say "Processwire, whats that ?" but instead says "PW isn't that the new promissing CMS i heared about?" then we have won.

Managers often love bullshit, so why not make a subpage about PW in enterprise environments. Even if this page is only full of senseless diagrams and time saving examples and loads of bulllshit talking. They will love it. A list of companies offering professional PW support would help too. (Is there really only Ryan who can offer this ? )

So what we got so far?

- Make it userfriendly!

- Spread the Word!

- Bullshit page for enterprise ;-)

- List of supporters.

- Give it some time

That's all things that should not be too hard to achieve.

Just my 2 cent .

Using my default window size, the forum link on the PW mainpage is hidden below the search field, that way its unclickable Increasing window size does not help but making the window smaller lets the navbar hop one line below so i now can click it.

FF31 Linux

This maybe because of FF doing this silly page resizing on very big screens.

Just wanted to mention as its quite annoying.