Few noob questions

[jukooz]

Hello,

I found ProcessWire today when exploring ModX little bit. It's absolutely amazing.

I have few questions and I must state that I don't have php skills, but PW seems simple enough to implement without these skills.

1. What is the best way to "split" code for better templating? I mean writing head section only once, footer only once etc. I realize that it may be done in many "good" ways, but how would you prefer it being done? Can they be seperate templates so that I could create reusable building blocks?

2. Can I have "global variables" that I would use in templates but don't want to create separate template or page for?

3. How do you differentiate pages when you have 2 menus on website (how to create page added to second menu only)? How 2 menus play with the tree?

I will ask more noob questions soon

[slkwrm]

Hi, jukooz and welcome.

1) For simple websites you could use usual includes to reuse your building blocks. See the home.php and basic-page.php for the example in site/templates/ folder. Also see this really cool thread about different approaches to templating.

2) You could create a page using a special template with all the necessary fields to store your global variables. Then you could access it everywhere in your template them as easy as:

$globalVars = $pages->get("/path/to/your/page/"); // you can also use page id instead of url
$globalVars->fieldname;

You could include it in your header.inc so that you don't have to call it every time.

3) You could use a "show (hide) in secondary menu" checkbox for your pages and then check against its value in your code to show only items you need.

Have you seen this already?

[jukooz]

Thanks. Very interesting thread about templating. I must learn php little bit - ProcessWire actually encourages me to do so

Could you show me example code for 2 separate menus?

I will try ProcessWire on weekend, don't have enough time now, but how it treats not filled fields in pages? Are there some options regarding that - optional/mandatory fields?

Is there possibility to set thumbnails to be resized whole pictures (not only part of it that have to be adapted every time)?

How hard it would be to move website to another hosting and another domain? What is the process? Is there some kind of import/export?

Thanks again and sorry for my english,

jukooz

[ryan]

I will try ProcessWire on weekend, don't have enough time now, but how it treats not filled fields in pages? Are there some options regarding that - optional/mandatory fields?

It depends on the fieldtype. Though for most fieldtypes, values are optional. But in order to create a page from the admin or the API, it must have either a name or a title. If no name is supplied from the API, PW will try to create one from the title.

Is there possibility to set thumbnails to be resized whole pictures (not only part of it that have to be adapted every time)?

Yes, you can choose to specify only the width or only the height, and the other dimension will resize proportionally. If both width and height are specified then it will crop as needed to reach your target dimension, and it will never stretch a photo non-proportionally.

How hard it would be to move website to another hosting and another domain? What is the process? Is there some kind of import/export?

It's pretty much the same as with any other web site where you copy the files and database. However, PW does have a Profile Export module that lets you create a site profile that can be imported elsewhere. This can be useful for migration, as PW's installer takes care of the installation for you.

[Soma]

PW does have a Profile Export module that lets you create a site profile that can be imported elsewhere. This can be useful for migration, as PW's installer takes care of the installation for you.

Ryan, does the profile exporter also export users and premissions?

[jukooz]

Thanks Ryan, exactly what I needed.

Thumbnails - this is the way I wanted it to work, but watching some video it seemed to me that it took thumbnail from the center. Great.

So migration is pretty easy - I like that. I have some experience with wordpress, and it is quite hard there when you change domain name.

Now I'm learnig php little bit encouraged by ProcessWire elegance and simplicity. Thanks for that framework.

When I will have more noob questions, I'll ask here

[ryan]

Ryan, does the profile exporter also export users and premissions?

Users, roles and permissions are not included in a site profile. The module specifically excludes them. Though if you wanted it to include them, it would just be a matter of removing a line from the module, so will probably make this a configuration option on the next update.

[Soma]

Users, roles and permissions are not included in a site profile. The module specifically excludes them. Though if you wanted it to include them, it would just be a matter of removing a line from the module, so will probably make this a configuration option on the next update.

Hmm, so this wouldn't be a good idea to use it for transfering a site? I mean if the site has perimissions and roles, users setup (also on templates) this information wil get lost?

[netcarver]

Soma,

I might be wrong, but I think you'd need to manually transfer the site's salt value from the config file if you want to transfer users (along with their password hashes.)

[ryan]

Hmm, so this wouldn't be a good idea to use it for transfering a site? I mean if the site has perimissions and roles, users setup (also on templates) this information wil get lost?

The profile exporter is good for launching a new site, but not for migrating an existing one (for the reason you mentioned). For migrating an existing site, I think there's no better way than to copy the files from 1 server to the other (I use rsync) and then dump the database on old server, and import to the new. Then update /site/config.php to account for the new site's database host/login/password.