Joss

And welcome Sarah, too! Pull up a tutorial make yourself comfortable.... Joss

Not a problem! It maybe that one way or another you will have to deal with each article individually because of categorising, adding comments, adding meta descriptions, adding a summary for listings, author by-lines or other reasons. And you will probably want the final result to be searchable, and that means it needs to be in a searchable form. Articles in a print magazine and articles in a site have some distinct differences simply because the "user interface" is different. In the print world, NOTHING is automated - most articles are presented in a complete form with only some getting a lead in from the front page. On a website, often too much is automated - I have a personal dislike for summaries on listing pages that are the first few words of the intro that is then repeated in the article; unprofessional and unimaginative. But unless you want a huge staff you need some automation, but that means that the articles may need to be broken down into useful bits. It strikes me that you could have two issues here - a site starting from this point in time and what is the best way to present the news information, and what to do with existing articles. Depending on how they are laid out in a text file, one of the clever chaps here could probably write you a small php script that can import text files in batches into the data base (They have now set up a jobs board in the forum). With new articles, "import" is probably a case of copying and pasting so that you have those articles in exactly the form you want them.

Hi Crrsp I certainly would not use flat files for a news website. News websites work best with a relational database like MySQL, which is what ProcessWire runs on. I have worked on several news sites over the years and the one question I always start by asking is: How many authors/editors will there be and what sort of editorial process does there need to be? The problem with a lot of CMSs is they kind of assume that you might have one pile of people that write articles/edit articles/publish articles and then some others that just write. And that is just like a newspaper! Of course, it is nothing like a newspaper at all. Most news sites are really not much different to a blog on steroids. Once you can work out whether your site will have a complicated editorial structure or whether it is going to be very few people and a very simple editorial structure, it becomes much easier to work out how to put the site together. The beauty of ProcessWire is that it does not assume anything - it is designed to be moulded to exactly how you want to work. Once you have worked that out, then it is a case of mapping out the actual structure, how you want to handle different types of articles, how you want to handle images and so on and then creating the fields and templates to achieve your aims. Sorry, that is a bit over simplified, but I think you will see what I mean! Joss

Well, this is my proper job ..... http://dancingbear.co.uk/ Now, if anyone wants music composed for their clients commercials and/or websites, now then I AM an expert! Joss

Thanks fmgujji! But to be honest, I am just the king of Cut 'n' Paste. And that is a tribute to the way ProcessWire works, actually. Since I have been able to put that together relatively easily (I mean, in a way where I understand it) without knowing much PhP and almost no Javascript! Joss

I do recognise that state of affairs. Obviously, my main income is as a composer, so on top of a normal desktop with a couple of monitors and a little server shoved under the desk, I have my music workstation with keyboard, 3 widescreen monitors, pro speakers and mics, various guitars, banjo, wooden flutes, ukes, peddles, another keyboard, percussion, music stand.... My mother keeps nagging me to go and collect the grand piano I have sitting in her dining room. And put it where??

I will make a note of that for later.

hahahah I do have a long established nick name that goes with a plasticine model I made many years ago - Gurubear The model is looking a bit worn and crumbly now and his dreadlocks have fallen off. Actually, I know how he feels. One day I will remake him, or at least try. The trouble is that in some ways he and I look uncomfortably similar!

Boring. Grey. Actually, I am thankfully in Stony Stratford, just outside, and that is okay! Joss

And a slightly more sensible one

Okay, my turn!

The two different Swiss Army Knives of coding, eh?

When I first started playing with Dynamic sites, the one thing I liked was working out my tables to make sure all the data was where I wanted it and then went and created the site round that data structure. When I moved over to things like Joomla the thing I disliked most was the mess that became the database once you added lots of extensions - some had their own tables, some shared existing tables, some shoved all kinds of data all into one column; anybody trying to get the data out of the database without the front end would be completely lost! What I am enjoying about ProcessWire is being able to think about the data again. Okay, so it is collated using one strict system, but that system is logical and clean and as long as you name the tables (er, fields) intelligently, looking at the resulting schema makes sense. Some people like pretty code, I like pretty data. I am funny like that.

This is a profile I am creating for my own use (though I will make it available once a lot of the kinks are out of it) It is still Work In Progress! http://pwdemo1.stonywebsites.co.uk/ This is basically creating a CMS that would be familiar to users of Joomla and similar where a lot of the information is contained in blocks. Perhaps it should be called "Process-Drumlapress" It is also designed to be very localised where many "front" pages can be created reflecting postcodes in a local area and where a phone number is pushed heavily. It will contain a lot of SEO tools throughout - the PW page naming and URL base is really useful here! This is a Twitter Bootstrap based site, though I admit I need to tweak it a bit to get it working completely smoothly. There is a central site settings page where many bits can be configured: Above and below content global banners can be chosen some common side bar blocks can be chosen Common footer information can be added Site name and top banner can be added Bottom blocks can be selected from a list and their width as a span number added Blocks can enable/disable display block title And other bits and pieces. Each page created can choose whether to select the Global Above or Below banner, no banner or a custom banner text box. Each page can choose from additional sidebar blocks Each page can add an additional sidebar text block Products and Services work on a very simple category system where you create a category page (just for a Select option). You then create a display index for the category where you fill in some intro information and choose a category. That will automatically create a list of all products or services linked to that category. (At some point I would like to customise the admin to put some of these links and create buttons on the top menu, rather than navigating through the pages list). The Gallery used Fancy with a carousel - thanks for the Thumbnail module! The front slide show allows text to be laid over the images. Still to do: Add pagination to things like products and news Create a setting so the fixed footer can be un-fixed or removed Add some additional block customisation like border and background color/image Clean up some of the admin fields and improve labelling Sort out the admin permissions properly (they are a bit drunk at the moment) Clean up some of the template files The overall look of the site is intentionally basic and some of the CSS values (like padding and margins) are default rather than pretty. This is intentional as this meant to be a starting point rather than a plug-and-play profile - in other words, it would need to be customised for the specific client. The intention here is that you can change the structure of the site to a certain extent with just a few files without having to change the back end administration at all (though, some thumbnail sizes would possibly need to be changed. Edit: Forgot to mention a couple of tricks: The bottom blocks use JQuery so they are equal height all the time I have used JQuery to place an optional second image in a news article which counts the number of paragraphs for an insertion point. This means I do not need to use the image button in the TinyMCE. Edit 16/01/2013: Just updated the site a little. It now runs on 2.3 News can be sorted by year and has grown itself Bootstrap styled pagination. There are now potentially three rows of blocks at the foot of the site, which looks a bit mad at the moment, but in reality you would have one row of blocks, the next row perhaps a banner and the last row a normal footer. You can select blocks from a library and choose how many in each row and the span size of each. You can also select background colours for blocks. In the backend the forms are sorted out a lot more into tabs and field sets to make them neater - especially the Site Settings page which has a lot of parameters now. I have used Soma's wonderful Teflon Theme, but added a different, customised JQuery UI theme and changed the menu styles to suit my partner for her site. Other than that, it is as original. http://pwdemo1.stonywebsites.co.uk/admin1ss.png http://pwdemo1.stonywebsites.co.uk/admin2ss.png Next to do: Put some better content in it for demo purposes Create a second site using the same basis, but change the template round a bit.

In marketing terms it is a subtle emphasis, to be honest, because when you open the box it is not initially easy to see where the framework ends and where the CMS utilisation begins. I suppose, as was said earlier by Soma, the admin as it stands is the CMS, since it has some familiar CMS type labels like "pages" and "Templates" But, if you went and changed the admin and used different terminology, then it would be much less CMS looking. When it comes to introducing the system, I like Matthew's thought process. Being able to say "here is a core system" and then saying "and here is it implemented as a CMS" is a nice way of laying out the philosophy. Because from that point it is easy to say "using the CMS tools, you can build your basic CMS enabled site" but then add "and be able to use the power of the core and the API to extend your site in any which way you wish" So, yes, it can be broken down into two ideas, while being careful to not split the brand, or course. I don't see why using profiles (and extra admin tweaks) you cannot then create ProcessWire Intranet, ProcessWire Blogging, ProcessWire Community and so on to add to ProcessWire CMS. Just give users slightly different starting points for particular projects to help them find their way in.

That is pretty! I must go and redo my own photo site - you have just put me to shame!!! Joss

OOh, Karate Nice to see another newcomer - and well done getting the site going. Be interesting to see where it takes you My Partner was a black belt when she was younger, but after a twenty year gap, she has started training again. So I might do a site for her club at some point (when I feel brave enough - her sensei is 7th Dan, so I kind of want to get it right .... gulp!) Joss

oops - I didn't even notice the changes!! SORRY PETE!!!!! *guilt*

Thanks Marc - I found that interesting. One thing that struck me is how much of this is very much the music/media industry (which is my natural home). One of the nice things over the years is that there hasn't been a neat and well trodden career path to hem me in. One of the bad things is that there hasn't been a neat and well trodden career path to keep me safe! Onjegolders - You are not the only one in your position. So am I, and not far down the M1 from you. Joss

There is also a slightly more complicated tutorial on the wiki - complicated in that it goes a little father. http://wiki.processwire.com/index.php/Basic_Website_Tutorial Worth doing the "planets" one first, then maybe have a go at this. One of the great things about ProcessWire is you can decide your own way of constructing your site once you get the basics of how the system works. There is not one set way of doing things. That can seem confusing at first, but once you get your head round it, it means that you can design the system YOU want, rather than have to change your ideas to fit with the system Good luck!

The only game I got into for a bit was Wurm Online (created by Notch and Rolf) - but to be fair, I did compose the music for it, so it wasn't quite the same. I also messed with their site for a bit, but they have taken that over themselves these days. I was going to use Liferay and weld it into the game itself, so that actions taken in the game (like creating a village with friends) would be reflected in the Liferay community system. But we couldn't find a dev that was up to linking the systems securely, so it fell over. For a bit of fun, I have been playing Age of Empires 1!

Sounds like one of those snippets that would be useful in Sublime....

Okay, Luis just beat me to it! This applies to a lot of Bootstrap elements like the sliders and the carousel where you have to identify the first element as active. Joss

And you will be very welcome here ... I mean, they put up with me! One important side to support, however, is documentation - if the docs are clever enough, the support load reduces hugely. If they are enormous but unfathomable, then support requests are going to go through the roof. It is one thing that several people here are scratching their heads over - how to come up with various documentation styles from walk-throughs to snippets to the API so that as this grows new users (even with low tech abilities like me) can answer many of their own support questions easily and quickly without the headaches. That leaves the forums for the unexpected, unusual, down-right strange and other general frolics! Joss

This may be a directory problem - in other words it is only working in the root directory, it needs to override all?