demo alike search box

[franci77]

hi,

I am new to this form and PW also and i would like to know a little more about it, i find it very interesting cms. i have quite extensive knowledge with joomla cms, i am using it now for 3+ years, but i would like to make a change now, have a different approach. besides i am eager to learn programming in PHP, i am a begginer, and i tried to find a good framework for php with quality cms, and PW seems to be quite a first candidate on my "list".

for instance, i would like to know, how can search with the dropdowns be created? like the one we can see on Skyscrapes demo site? is it also possible that the dropdowns are dependent, so calles "chain selects"? i know this can be done wuth jquery, but is it maybe integrated in PW?

how about security of PW? i didn't find any article about that...

also, since i am eager to learn programming, i haven't found good article on how to begin with development in PW? i mean, yes there is API, but i was thinking something like examples or so. many people likes to learn from examples, and this way they learn the most.

thank you in advance for your kind response.

best regards,

Franci

[kongondo]

Hi Franci,

Welcome to ProcessWire!

Regarding tutorials, have a look at this if you haven't seen them already:

http://wiki.processwire.com/index.php/Basic_Website_Tutorial

http://processwire.com/talk/forum/13-tutorials/

Many examples are provided right here in the forums but that can be difficult to find if you are new. I am sure others will provide more helpful answers but I can add PW is very secure. I'll let the more seasoned PW pros chime in here.

By the way, learning PHP is good but you don't need advanced PHP knowledge to use PW. 

Coming in from Joomla, you will be amazed at the freedom PW gives you. You will need to unlearn Joomla ways though , e.g. be willing to get your hands a little bit dirty with some code. Once PW clicks, you will wonder why you hadn't used it before . Anyway, this is a very helpful forum and someone will soon give you better answers than mine!

Cheers

/k

[SiNNuT]

Hi there and welcome to the forums. I'm a little short in time right now so i won't go into specifics about search with dropdowns.

Some general info:

- I don't think that there is a dedicated page on this site detailing the security(features) of PW but you can be assured that it is excellent security-wise. A strong password mechanism, session fingerprinting and a lot more. I haven't heard of PW installs being hacked or otherwise compromised.

- PW can be an excellent way to get acquainted with PHP (programming). Some basic PHP combined with some PW API 'magic' will enable you to become productive in a short period of time. Of course, if your serious about learning PHP it will require some effort to learn a language and general concepts of programming.

- The best advice i can give is just install PW and do some tutorials that are on the wiki. Once it all starts to make sense definitely read through the API documentation on the site.

- Also, browse the forums. A lot of great info can be found, although admittedly sometimes a bit hard to find. Post like this could be interesting for you

[Joss]

A couple of tips when moving from Joomla.

1. Forget the idea of Categories and Articles. To be honest, Joomla is more of an Article Management System than a CMS (until you add tons of components) and so it has a very restricted way of looking at things.

2. ProcessWire uses pages as data containers - exactly what data is up to you. It could be a page made out of lots of fields, or pages could be lots of alternatives for a select field (pages field in PW), they are also users and all kinds of other things. So, try not to think of them like pages in a book or even web pages - though they can be both of those if you wish.

3. When you design a site with Joomla, the easiest way is to change your site to work how Joomla wants you to work.

But, the best way to start with ProcessWire is to not think about PW at all, but just think of your website. Try and ignore how PW works and just work out how YOU want YOUR website to work. Once you have done that, you can work out how PW will help you achieve what you want. It really is that flexible.

You can create anything that is familiar in Joomla in PW. For instance, Once you do the Basic Website Tutorial that Kongondo mentioned, there is a link at the bottom to the Simple News System. This shows how you can do Joomla type articles with categories. But you will quickly realise that this is only one way you can achieve that, and because you are doing it yourself, you can make it work anyway you wish.

So, Welcome, and have fun!

[franci77]

Hi all,

Thank you again guys. For helping and welcoming me.

Yes, I have realised now, that the best way to start is to go through the tutorials. Kongondo, I think you are right, been with Joomla so long, that I will definitly need to unlearn it's ways. Because I think that when I am exploring PW, I always have in back of my mind, how would some solution for site would have been made in Joomla.

I agree, Joss, I noticed PW doesn't have a system with articles and categories like Joomla. Don't say that this is the bad thing, probably is better (otherwise I wouldn't believe that PW would have such thing ), but I see that whole hierarchy of content is made just by pages and subpages, right?

As Joss stated, maybe I want too much to explore and get acquianted with PW at first how it works, than to use it, as I probably should. I believe that this way will probably help me the most to understand PW.

Although as far as I was exploring it, I definitly understand how (custom) fields are working, and that you assign the to each page and so on. But I am not quite sure, what are pages fields? What are they for and what is their use.

How about templates, I know that they are easy to build, but are there any designs yet made? Or must each template design be custom made? I know, yes, that if it is custom made, that  every site is unique then, but many of programmers or administrators are not also designers, they don't have the "touch" for design... as I do not.

And one other thing... I see that there is not yet made translation of PW in my language. Maybe I should contribute a little to the community. Any pointers on how to make translations?

Best regards,

Franci

[Joss]

Page Fields

These basically list and select pages, normally where you specify a parent or a template or some other limiting criteria.

You can set it for single or multiple select, and you have the options of various ways of doing that - a simple select dropdown, browsing the page tree, or the asmSelect system that is used for adding fields to templates.

There are countless uses for this field:

• Creating a select options dropdown (each page is an option - this is not overkill, as I said before, pages are just data containers/objects, so it is perfectly fine to use them like this and means you can change the options!)
• Using them to select pages that represent categories
• Using them to select pages that represent tags - you can also set the field to create a new page (just the title field) so you can create tags on the fly.

You can find more info here: http://wiki.processwire.com/index.php/Page_Field

And there is more in the API

Templates

First of all it is important to realise the difference between a template and a template file. If you do my Basic Website Tutorial, it all becomes clear, but briefly:

• A template is what you use to collect fields together and control aspects of how a page is created. It does not need to be associated to a template file (though the resulting page cannot be displayed directly without a template file). For instance, in the Basic Website Tutorial I create a settings template that has no file. The values of the fields are called directly and individually into the website rather than being rendered as part of the page. 
• A template file is the HTML markup plus any JQuery and PHP logic that handles the output of a page made with the associated template. In its simplest form it is basic html where you use a very simple bit of php to output a field:

<?php echo $page->title; ?>

<?php echo $page->body?>

Templates Files are up to you to design. You can add any markup you like or use a framework like Bootstrap or Foundation or whatever you like. You could even put the site together with FrontPage '97 if you were mad enough - it would work! (Though, I haven't tried adding Front Page extensions...)

It can be surprisingly easy to reproduce really complicated Joomla Extensions like galleries, slideshows and so on. You just need to go and grab a useful JQUery (or other) plugin that you like and use it pretty much as the instructions say - you just grab the data using the PW API rather than write in static values.

You might want to go and play with my Bootstrap Demo Profile (http://processwire.com/talk/topic/2411-bootwire-basic-twitter-bootstrap-profile/) - it demonstrated several basic ideas using the Bootstrap framework and you can see how simple the code is. 

Put it this way, I come from using Joomla and Wordpress and I am certainly not a php coder (I am a composer, in fact) - but I manage!

Oh, and I think translations are always welcome!

[Macrura]

the best way to learn how to do the dropdowns search is to download and have a look at the skyscrapers profile; it's all in there, and i just built a site with advanced product search (dropdowns, field, calculations etc..), based off of the code in skyscrapers

[diogo]

For making a translation:

1. Install the language module (it's on the core, just press the install button) and create a new language.
2. Pick any language pack to serve as the base for your translation and upload it to the "language translation files" field on the newly created language.
3. On each json file that will appear represented on that field there is an "edit" button on the far right, use them to translate all the files.
4. When you are finish translating, take note of the ID of the language page that you created (last number on the url when editing) and look for the folder with that number inside the /site/assets/ folder.
5. Zip that folder with a nice name and release it into the wild!

I know, yes, that if it is custom made, that  every site is unique then, but many of programmers or administrators are not also designers, they don't have the "touch" for design... as I do not.

It's easy peasy to convert one of these to pw

[Joss]

Wow, do people still say "easy peasy?"

I haven't heard that in thirty years!

[diogo]

In international english we do

[franci77]

Hi,

Thank you Joss for extensive explanation and help. But I see more and more that there is no point in banging my head about how PW works, before I go through the tutorial. So first, I'll to that before everything else, I just need to find some time. Although I am really looking forward developing custom plugins/apps in PW. I think PW is quite the answer/solution I was looking. And will look little bit more about templating system. Anyways, more about my impressions about PW afterwards.

Diogo thanks for explanation about how to make a translation. My language has accented characters (č, š, ž), where I can find encoding for those characters in JSON? For example I downloaded croatian translation, and so that there was some encoding for these characters, but I wasn't familiar with it, e.g. HTML encoding.

Thanks again,

Franci

[ryan]

i would like to know, how can search with the dropdowns be created? like the one we can see on Skyscrapes demo site? 

The skyscrapers profile is available for download so you can see how it's put together. But for the most part, you would build these things the same way as if ProcessWire wasn't there. Then once working, take advantage of the fact that you can pull the data to populate these things from PW. 

is it also possible that the dropdowns are dependent, so calles "chain selects"? i know this can be done wuth jquery, but is it maybe integrated in PW?

This is not something PW will do on the front-end for you, since it's not generating markup. But this is something you can do very easily on your own… again set it up as if PW wasn't there, then modify it to pull the data to populate from PW. 

how about security of PW? i didn't find any article about that...

While we're probably not big enough to be a target, I feel good about the security of the core product and have always made security the first priority in development. But security is a factor that goes well beyond the core product. First, PW will only be as secure as the modules you have installed to it. I do my best to keep up-to-date with modules that go into the directory and notify the author if I find any potential security issues. However, this isn't guaranteed as I can't always keep up with everything. Secondly, PW is about as secure as PHP. Meaning, it can be very secure, or not secure at all, depending on how you code your own templates and use PHP. So if you get into handling user input, as you would with processing forms, search engines, etc., then you yourself have to follow PHP best practices towards maintaining good security. ProcessWire does provide several helper functions via the $sanitizer API variable, and I recommend using them when handling user input.