Wordpress Developer to C5: What should I know?
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I'm very familiar with WP. I'm a beginner to C5, but I love what I've seen already.
I want to move the majority of my development to C5 in the future but I'm so used to WP that it's hard to wrap my mind around things.
For instance, if I want to make an image editable in a template(client can delete image and upload a new image). How would I go about doing that? There are little things like this that I'm afaid will take longer in C5 as opposed to WP for me, but I'm willing to learn.
Also, is there a limit to how many different editable regions a single page can have?
Thank you so much for your hard work, it's not un-noticed. It's well worth the time and effort.
I want to move the majority of my development to C5 in the future but I'm so used to WP that it's hard to wrap my mind around things.
For instance, if I want to make an image editable in a template(client can delete image and upload a new image). How would I go about doing that? There are little things like this that I'm afaid will take longer in C5 as opposed to WP for me, but I'm willing to learn.
Also, is there a limit to how many different editable regions a single page can have?
Thank you so much for your hard work, it's not un-noticed. It's well worth the time and effort.
Thanks for the info, much appreciated.
You know what might help is a infographic or post comparing the 2 systems. I know a lot of WP devs that would jump at the chance to offer their clients simple site edits though a front end interface. That's actually why I'm attracted to C5 so much, the ease of use for the clients.
So, say I have a page with an H1, 2 separate text areas and an image. That would be 4 blocks correct?
You know what might help is a infographic or post comparing the 2 systems. I know a lot of WP devs that would jump at the chance to offer their clients simple site edits though a front end interface. That's actually why I'm attracted to C5 so much, the ease of use for the clients.
So, say I have a page with an H1, 2 separate text areas and an image. That would be 4 blocks correct?
Yeah I'd love that graphic.
In your example, probably - yes. You might choose to deal with the H1
as part of the content block if they are right next to each other.. or
you could put the H1 in your theme and create a new block area inside
that tag so your client couldn't mess it up as much. Just use the HTML
block instead of the Content block if you don't want them to get the
formatting toolbars.
That Content block would also let them place in-line images with the
content, but again if you want to fix a image in the header that could
be it's own block.
You should also explore page defaults a bit too. That lets you define
a starting point for any page type.
best wishes
Franz Maruna
CEO - concrete5.org
http://about.me/frz
In your example, probably - yes. You might choose to deal with the H1
as part of the content block if they are right next to each other.. or
you could put the H1 in your theme and create a new block area inside
that tag so your client couldn't mess it up as much. Just use the HTML
block instead of the Content block if you don't want them to get the
formatting toolbars.
That Content block would also let them place in-line images with the
content, but again if you want to fix a image in the header that could
be it's own block.
You should also explore page defaults a bit too. That lets you define
a starting point for any page type.
best wishes
Franz Maruna
CEO - concrete5.org
http://about.me/frz
Once I get more into C5 I'll try and work on a tutorial or infographic depicting the differences/similarities of the two. Right now I'm a noob, I'd like to make a decent site or 2 before jumping into it.
Digging the CMS, can't wait to start my first site tomorrow! I'm sure I'll have some more questions as I dig deeper.
Digging the CMS, can't wait to start my first site tomorrow! I'm sure I'll have some more questions as I dig deeper.
I've built some fairly large and complex websites using Wordpress, to the point where things started falling apart on the editing side -- dozens of different "custom fields", with a long document explaining what each one was and what acceptable values were. On one project we eventually had to build our own admin interface for the non-content stuff because it was too difficult to make it work with custom fields alone.
Which brings me to my point... to me the key insight to understanding Concrete5 is that in addition to designing the front-end (with HTML and CSS and themes and templates), you are *also* designing the editing interface. Where Wordpress confines you to basically one huge content block per page and some widgets on one sidebar, Concrete5 lets you the designer choose what the confines for the user are as it best makes sense for your design (one sidebar? two sidebars? no sidebars? 2 content areas stacked on top of each other? whatever you want!).
There is a whole spectrum of choices you as the designer can make in terms of setting up the editing interface as best suits your design -- things like how many different page types you set up and where you put the editable areas into those page types (as Franz describes above), using Page Defaults and global scrapbooks for content that changes less frequently and is common across the entire site, hard-coding blocks into templates where you need their functionality but don't want the user to be able to change them ever (e.g. the main navigation menu), not to mention using the sitemap itself as an organizing structure -- e.g. setting up a "Recent News" section of your site, and every new page added to that section gets a new excerpt automatically displayed at the top of the "News Index" list via the "Page List" block.
Here are a few free tools that I use for pretty much every site I build (not so coincidentally most are made by me :) ...
*http://www.concrete5.org/marketplace/addons/page-list-teasers/...
(this makes the Page List block much more useful by allowing it to show actual content from the pages it's listing instead of just the "description" property)
*http://www.concrete5.org/marketplace/addons/designer-content/...
(lets you create your own blocks -- hard to explain but SUPER useful -- check out the screenshots for a demo)
*http://www.concrete5.org/marketplace/addons/form-tableless-layout/...
*http://www.concrete5.org/marketplace/addons/ajax-form/...
(if you want to style the form block -- e.g. contact forms -- use one of these)
*http://www.concrete5.org/marketplace/addons/autonav-exclude-subpage...
(fixes some problems with the autonav menu)
*http://www.concrete5.org/marketplace/addons/global-areas/...
*http://www.concrete5.org/marketplace/addons/scrapbook-display-basic...
(these two provide similar functionality, but with a slightly different interface -- they let you have shared content that spans an entire area -- basically if you have a sidebar that is common across most of the site, and you need users to be able to edit it but not just edit content in the existing blocks but also add new blocks and rearrange them over time -- you'll want to use one of these)
Hope that helps -- good luck!
-Jordan
Which brings me to my point... to me the key insight to understanding Concrete5 is that in addition to designing the front-end (with HTML and CSS and themes and templates), you are *also* designing the editing interface. Where Wordpress confines you to basically one huge content block per page and some widgets on one sidebar, Concrete5 lets you the designer choose what the confines for the user are as it best makes sense for your design (one sidebar? two sidebars? no sidebars? 2 content areas stacked on top of each other? whatever you want!).
There is a whole spectrum of choices you as the designer can make in terms of setting up the editing interface as best suits your design -- things like how many different page types you set up and where you put the editable areas into those page types (as Franz describes above), using Page Defaults and global scrapbooks for content that changes less frequently and is common across the entire site, hard-coding blocks into templates where you need their functionality but don't want the user to be able to change them ever (e.g. the main navigation menu), not to mention using the sitemap itself as an organizing structure -- e.g. setting up a "Recent News" section of your site, and every new page added to that section gets a new excerpt automatically displayed at the top of the "News Index" list via the "Page List" block.
Here are a few free tools that I use for pretty much every site I build (not so coincidentally most are made by me :) ...
*http://www.concrete5.org/marketplace/addons/page-list-teasers/...
(this makes the Page List block much more useful by allowing it to show actual content from the pages it's listing instead of just the "description" property)
*http://www.concrete5.org/marketplace/addons/designer-content/...
(lets you create your own blocks -- hard to explain but SUPER useful -- check out the screenshots for a demo)
*http://www.concrete5.org/marketplace/addons/form-tableless-layout/...
*http://www.concrete5.org/marketplace/addons/ajax-form/...
(if you want to style the form block -- e.g. contact forms -- use one of these)
*http://www.concrete5.org/marketplace/addons/autonav-exclude-subpage...
(fixes some problems with the autonav menu)
*http://www.concrete5.org/marketplace/addons/global-areas/...
*http://www.concrete5.org/marketplace/addons/scrapbook-display-basic...
(these two provide similar functionality, but with a slightly different interface -- they let you have shared content that spans an entire area -- basically if you have a sidebar that is common across most of the site, and you need users to be able to edit it but not just edit content in the existing blocks but also add new blocks and rearrange them over time -- you'll want to use one of these)
Hope that helps -- good luck!
-Jordan
I've made the transition from WordPress to C5 and although it's early days it might just be one of the best things I've done recently.
Don't get me wrong, WordPress was ok as a CMS but C5 is just so much slicker for the end user, and it's easier to integrate and work with IMO.
One of the first things I did is create my own "PlainText" block which accepts just a text string - no paragraphs, no formatting, no HTML. I use this block inbetween fixed tags such as <h1></h1> which allows the user to edit the heading but not apply any kind of crazy markup or formatting.
@wilwaldon - I like your idea of breaking the page down into seperate blocks (and this is what I do) because it allows you to keep control of the page and the markup rather than just splurging everything out via the WYSIWYG editor and allowing the client to destroy it all in one fell swoop!
Don't get me wrong, WordPress was ok as a CMS but C5 is just so much slicker for the end user, and it's easier to integrate and work with IMO.
One of the first things I did is create my own "PlainText" block which accepts just a text string - no paragraphs, no formatting, no HTML. I use this block inbetween fixed tags such as <h1></h1> which allows the user to edit the heading but not apply any kind of crazy markup or formatting.
@wilwaldon - I like your idea of breaking the page down into seperate blocks (and this is what I do) because it allows you to keep control of the page and the markup rather than just splurging everything out via the WYSIWYG editor and allowing the client to destroy it all in one fell swoop!
Let's see.
You want to read up on page types & themes. In wordpress you've basically got blog post and "pages". That's where you're going to work as a designer from a templating prospective. With concrete5, you can define as many Page Types as you'd like within your Theme - all of which is mostly your clean chopped HTML.
Any time you reach a spot in your design where you want to make something editable, you'll need to add a line or two of PHP to create a block area. You can use these areas to contain a single or multiple blocks - which you might think of as more like Widgets in WP terms.
In terms of limits - technically no but practically yes. If you're rolling around with more than a dozen or so block areas on a page, it's likely something may be off in your approach. You'll likely see a performance hit.
Same is true with layouts, which are handy in a pinch but not really meant to be a primary design/use tool.
That help at all? I'd love to get a nice how-to for just this type of reader together.