Joss

HI Matthew Yes, I am getting a growing pile - I used bxslider before on a Seblod site. This is another I am looking at: http://tympanus.net/codrops/2011/11/21/elastic-image-slideshow-with-thumbnail-preview/ But there are loads. My main criteria is trying to avoid plugins that say "and all you have to do it load these other 30 jquery plugins and off you go..." I feel I am loading plenty on my site already! Joss

Matthew, One thing I do have trouble with is my brains natural want to make the sentence make sense. So, with if (something) { echo something; } I really want it to say: if (something) then { echo something } The missing "then" really upsets my writers brain ....

My first experience of programming (I am old enough that it wasn't called coding back then) was with a large Prime mainframe owned by Ed Ross of Quantime. (and the incredible statistical analysis program called Quantum) I was only in my teens and my brother was working there in sales. Now, I would love to tell you how what I did related to what I do now, but since it was all on punchcard and there is rather a large gap in the middle, I haven't the foggiest!! By 1977, things had leapt on in, well, leaps, and I remember going into the company to play the brand new game they had just been sent - Zork! Never did solve it though ... I have a copy somewhere, perhaps I should try again! Joss

I am really pleased I have solved this particular problem! Flexslider has an out-of-the-box issue when using the "fade" animation type. Basically, there is a huge gap before the animation gets going - once it starts it is fine. I have searched long and hard to find a solution and keep coming up with people saying you should set .slides li { display:none} That does work - unless you have captions, in which case they vanish completely. After staring at the live code with Chrome dev tools I noticed the problem is that if the show starts on the first slide, it has to wait for all the hidden slides to go through their animations before the loop comes back to the beginning and the visual show starts - hence the gap. However, if in the initialisation script for flexslider set startAt: to the last slide (if you have 4 slides, set it at 3), then the next slide is the first slide and the problem is solved - PROPERLY. Whoopee! Now, relating that to processwire, and in this case a repeat field with images and captions, all you need to is set up a count. $totalslides = -1; foreach($page->slideshow_repeater as $slideshowrepeater) { $totalslides++ ..... and then insert the result into the initialisation script at the bottom of your template, for instance: <script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"> $(document).ready(function() { $('.homeflexslider').flexslider({ selector: ".homeslides > div", initDelay: 0, startAt: <?php echo $totalslides; ?>, animation: "fade" }); }); </script> And there you have it - it all works properly. And I am going to brew a nice hot jug of good Italian coffee to celebrate! Joss

I quite agree - especially the last bit. I regularly set up Managing Editor - Section Desk - Author relationships on sites, in true newspaper style. Where Authors can write for any section, section desk editors can only edit their own section and managing editors commit to publish. Works especially well on magazine style sites where you have set publishing days to help make an impact. The other thing that could be added is public and private commenting. Public would be simply that - standard nested commenting system that the public can read. Private would be more like the Talk section of Wikipedia, but only available to the writers. You could have 5 publishing states: Published - Viewable to the public Commissioned - not yet published, but open to view from other registered users and private commenting Sent to Desk (or pending) - Awaiting editing and commissioning (only viewable by author and editor) Un-submitted - Still with the author Archived - withdrawn and kept for reference only. This should have notes with it explaining why it was withdrawn and an optional lock if it should not be re-published for any reason. And then versioning - though I find the Wikipedia's version of this confusing as hell! Google Site's versioning can be a bit better, as can MS Word. Maybe do something with showing edits and comments. A lot of that, of course, is luxurious stuff that can be grown onto the initial structure Joss (Note, I have a real bug-bear about the use of a "publisher" role in some CMS like Joomla where the publisher presses the publish button - Publishers are not editors and do not finalize copy. Publishers generally are the owners.)

I am not going to do this yet (I don't have time and am not sure how) but this could be a fun project: Basically, it is to create a hierarchical wiki site with Processwire. The way this would work would be all from the front end and is all about parents and children and their brothers and sisters. The site starts with only a home page, a login page and a registration page. Once you are registered and logged in, your only interest is the home page. It comes with one BIG button Create Child Child pages get two buttons: Create Sibling - Create Child And that is it. You decide which one is appropriate and create it,. The resulting form is very simple: Page Name Long Page Name (title|headline stuff) Body text Some fields that allow cross family relationships (cousins?) Tags to help searching - call them "familial traits" just for fun. Additional things that can be added like charts, sidebar stuff, citations - these are luxury items that can be added later. So that it is. You then go and create a wiki site that is all about relationships. Everything is done on the front end (ish - this can be cheated using modal windows) and it can be a free for all or not. (for instance you can give users publish, edit, edit own, create rights as required). Someone can have a lot of fun designing a JQuery based browsing system that actually maps out the relationships in a family tree and can be rearranged by family traits (show me all pages that have ginger hair??) Cant think of anything else to add, to be honest. Joss PS - the first use would be a meandering hints and tips site for Processwire itself, of course! PPS - Why not use Mediawiki? Because it is boring and is arranged in long lists from categories. This is a family tree of information. It is both more fun and more confusing.

As the complete newbie here, I haven't had a chance to take anything from previous projects yet. However, the test projects I am developing are very much aimed at doing exactly that - mostly from the template point of view. So I am trying to split the markup up a bit by using inc files. For instance, I have a very small file that displays fields for a news post, another that will be an index for the same news, another that is a bootstrap collapse widget for the same news - all grouped together. Next time I do a site that needs a news, I will create the same named fields just reuse these mini-templates and include them into whatever main templates I am creating. It does make me think of the idea of "Sub Profiles" These would be addon bits that could be put onto an existing profile rather than replace it. I haven't thought this through properly (actually, I have literally only just thought of it). Each one would be a template (or incs, maybe), associated fields and their DB tables and would just add some premade functionality that would then need to be incorporated into a system by the designer. I don't know ... there maybe something there.

Well, that woke me up! Yep, very nice. The great thing about Processwire is that it is different, clever and really really modern. The bad thing is that the website used to make it look old fashioned. The new site addresses that - which is a good thing. (and it is responsive) I hope the standard install of 2.3 will look as fresh and bubbly - all good marketing stuff this! (And PW deserves some good marketing stuff) Joss

Matthew .... PLEASE rephrase that!! It is the only neck of which I am currently in possession! (Just to prove that I can write proper when I want to) I am slowly collecting together these tips, by the way. I will make them public at some point - a nicely disorganised jumble of PW bits! Joss

Ta! It is amazing what is lurking beneath the hood. Must find a way to have the hood a little more open? haha!

Okay, not sure if this is a question or a wish list item, or maybe even both! I want to display the authors name next to an article, but of course this is just displaying the username which is not pretty. Is there a way of adding additional fields to user profiles so that I can display better names or preferred names? Joss

I had a birthday this week ... I am now a bit further into my second half century. I probably ought to speed up a little ..... hah! Oh, and I had to give up drinking (more or less) because of the first half century. I am sure there is something deeply philosophical in there somewhere. Now, I must get back to my new PW site. I have just found a right old headache between how PW likes to be organised and how Bootstrap menus work. Typical.

Really? I sometimes need one of those .... Edit: Well, at least it is related. In real life I was a sound engineer and dubbing mixer for 25 years (with lots of copywriting and padvertisign thrown in) and been a composer for the last 10 - I do things like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISaXZ5j6gv8&list=PLF9DEA78045F0988C&index=6&feature=plcp But I don't get a lot of call for commissioned music on websites. Pity, audio is really rubbish on the internet - very underused.

hehe Thanks Diogo I will go through it properly at some point soon - I have a lot of other stuff to learn too, like some basic php! I have bookmarked this post, however, to help me. The problem is that I am not a developer king, I am a cut and paste jester, which means I somehow manage to get things working, but more by luck than judgement. I spend a lot of time being surprised when things actually work! I get there eventually... sometimes! Joss

Hi Diogo Yes, I had already looked at that and decided going out and getting drunk was the next move. Once I feel more secure with the system, I will creep up behind it and have another go ..... Joss

I would keep this thread going so that the rest of the community can see what you are up to and can throw ideas at you. It will get messy, but you may get a lot of great information that way! Joss

Morning Soma Yes, I read through that just after I posted, though I need to look at a processwire installation to understand it properly. I hadn't noticed you can create a template without a file! I notice that my system is possibly a little closer to Ryan's (well, sort of, but without all his clever bits), The main difference is that I split header, footer and the bit in the middle. The only reason I have done that is that in the site I am doing, I need to vary the header and footer for some parts of the sites, so I already had them split up. The good thing about PW is there are so many ways to skin a cat. It is less clear, however, which is the BEST way to skin it!! Joss

Hi Obviously, I am still only a couple of weeks or so into ProcessWire, so still at the foothills of my learning. I needed to come up with a system so that if I want to radically change the construction of my site, I can without having to break into too many files. They way I am working works, but is it a sensible way to proceed? ######### Create three main files - header.inc, main_layout.inc, footer.inc and store them in a subdirectory - lets call in "includes" These contain the main construction for the site. Introduce some variables that will do the job of including specific markup for a specific template variation. For instance put this in your main_layout.php somewhere in the markup: <?php include("./includes/" . $maincontent); ?> Create a file in your subdirectory that will have the markup (including fields) for some particular content. Lets call it my_template.inc. Create a specific template file as normal in the main template directory - for instance, my_template.php. Add the following content to the file: <?php $maincontent = "my_template.inc"; include("./includes/header.inc"); include("./includes/main_layout.inc"); include("./includes/footer.inc"); ?> When this template is called, it will construct the template, adding the content from "my_template.inc" where the variable $maincontent is called. This has now simplified the template process. If you want to change the layout of the site entirely, you only need to follow the same basic rules and edit the three main files. ######### Obviously, this is pretty basic. In my working example I have three variables rather than just the one, but the principle holds. What I am trying to do is keep it all as simple as possible without introducing a lot of php that a) I don't understand properly ( ) and b) I will have trouble following in a years time when I want to change things round! Interested in any opinions Joss

The key to a lot of this sort of thing is automatically and cleverly linking people and ideas together. So, if someone posts an image to a time line, another person can either comment or link to another part of a timeline. History, community history in particular, is not just vertical, it is horizontal, and that is where the most interesting bits can be. By the way, you chaps might find these interesting: http://timeline.verite.co/ http://tympanus.net/Tutorials/LateralonscrollSliding/ http://timeglider.com/widget/index.php Joss

Oh, okay. I hate internet communications sometimes (well, a lot of the time.) So ambiguous and messy. It will never replace talking!

Keep one finger permanently over the tab button ..... Joss

Hey, my maths is fine .... it is only my sense of humour that is badly out of line!

I and a friend used to sit in the office looking at all the book titles trying to work out difficult to guess passwords that were easy to remember. I asked my mother if she had any suggestions. She worked on the Ultra Secret during WW2 (look it up) so I was interested in her take. She made one little suggestion, so I tried it on my friend who was a bit of a hacking genius. He tried for three days and failed miserably. He gave up and said "okay, what is the password?" "There isn't one," I said. "That was her suggestion." She did the same trick with coding. She was talking to some students about how they worked with the Tipex and Engima machines and about simple codes. "Try this one," she suggested. "I like cream cakes." They battled for days trying to break it, before she gave the solution, which was "I like cream cakes." The lesson: before you waste hours trying to break a code, make sure it is actually a code in the first place! Apparently, that was a serious lesson back in the war. You had to be certain something was a code before you wasted many, many valuable hours. Joss

The result, which is directly aimed at Bootstrap, means that I can line up blocks in a row and the client can change them just by re-ordering the pages. I might add a count so that if there are 3, the class is Span4, if there are 2 it is span6, if 4, span3 and so on. Might be fun ..... or confusing! Joss

So much more fun would be "if left empty, we will pick a random incredibly long word from the full version of the Oxford English Dictionary, and email it to you next Christmas." There are some good reasons why some people think I should be kept as far from design as possible.... Joss