block <> application.
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What is the difference about a block and an application. I already saw from remo the german tutorial of how to make your own theme, but now I was wondering, is there a tutorial ( in english, (swiss)german or dutch) on how to make an application?
recent real world discoveries are pushing us to use packages for everything..
remo is right: in the past we had blocks (which were entirely contained in their respective subdirectory under /blocks/) themes (which also only touched their own directory) and then packages - which could update just about anything across the file system...
the reality is the line is not very clear on much of this stuff... a good theme might come with some custom templates for formatting blocks.. a powerful block might need a single page.. its confusing...
since 5.3 has some powerful hooks for auto-installation, we're moving everything we distribute here into package form.. .. which of course we'll do a better job of documenting soon. ;)
remo is right: in the past we had blocks (which were entirely contained in their respective subdirectory under /blocks/) themes (which also only touched their own directory) and then packages - which could update just about anything across the file system...
the reality is the line is not very clear on much of this stuff... a good theme might come with some custom templates for formatting blocks.. a powerful block might need a single page.. its confusing...
since 5.3 has some powerful hooks for auto-installation, we're moving everything we distribute here into package form.. .. which of course we'll do a better job of documenting soon. ;)
does this mean I should build a package if I want to publish a theme for 5.3?
yup. ask andrew for details, check out the new theme guidelines
http://www.concrete5.org/help/building_with_concrete5/developers/th...
http://www.concrete5.org/help/building_with_concrete5/developers/th...
I couldn't find any note about packages there.. But I will check the new themes once the first one is finished.
Do I have to install a theme by using "add functionality" in the future? Would be a bit confusing..
Okay too many questions, I guess I'll see how it turns out (:
Do I have to install a theme by using "add functionality" in the future? Would be a bit confusing..
Okay too many questions, I guess I'll see how it turns out (:
I can probably answer this, since I'm the one implementing it. Themes will still be installed the same way they are now (from the user perspective). Themes that come from the marketplace will appear very much like themes you have unzipped into your 'themes' directory but haven't installed yet. You'll just click a button and they will be downloaded and unzipped onto your server. You'll then be able to install/activate/etc. them as normal.
Packages that contain blocks types as well as themes will be installed from "Add Functionality", so these will be a bit different.
Is there somewhere a document where you can see the relasion of the application with the database? Mostly it helps me beter to understand how this al is put together and also i know beter hoe to make an application myself.
I was thinking about an image gallery ( yes, again a gallery ) with some more features than the current I'm using. I have alot of pictures ( 25000+ ) and it is very... very... very... annoying to instert a picture one by one. Now is was more thinking about a drag and drop feature using ajax and a db backend. But because of the complexity of queries the current site runs, when you acces 1 page, I was wondering how everything was put together so I can make some more things easier and do not make any double database entry or tables.
And one more thing. Would it be an option to make an optimalisation of the DB/tables button in the maintenance tab?
(maybe for this question, i could beter wait for the release of 5.3)
I was thinking about an image gallery ( yes, again a gallery ) with some more features than the current I'm using. I have alot of pictures ( 25000+ ) and it is very... very... very... annoying to instert a picture one by one. Now is was more thinking about a drag and drop feature using ajax and a db backend. But because of the complexity of queries the current site runs, when you acces 1 page, I was wondering how everything was put together so I can make some more things easier and do not make any double database entry or tables.
And one more thing. Would it be an option to make an optimalisation of the DB/tables button in the maintenance tab?
(maybe for this question, i could beter wait for the release of 5.3)
Just to confirm this - does it mean that everything in the marketplace will be a package, including themes? (This is what I understand when reading frz' answer)
todd is right..ish.. ;)
the end site owner experience will be simple. This is why we're heading this way.
the stuff we're hinting at with 5.2 where you can preview a theme right from the edit page interface, or look at blocks from the marketplace in that third tab of the add block interface - that's all maturing to a more functionally elegant place with 5.3.. We want a site owner to be able to add some stuff to their cart on our site, click a button, and have it show up in their dashboard.
we're not going to bury it somewhere under a bad label - we're doing this to make it easier for site owners, or just shlubs like me that don't want to be ftp'n files around..
what that does mean, is that its much easier to not have 3 separate delivery mechanisms on the backend. That, coupled with the fact that after the first Theme-Throw-Down we quickly realized we wanted to include some custom templates for the content block with some of the themes led us to the "everything should be packed up as a package... behind the scenes"
in terms of labeling.. we'll still talk about Themes and Add-Ons as we do today.
the end site owner experience will be simple. This is why we're heading this way.
the stuff we're hinting at with 5.2 where you can preview a theme right from the edit page interface, or look at blocks from the marketplace in that third tab of the add block interface - that's all maturing to a more functionally elegant place with 5.3.. We want a site owner to be able to add some stuff to their cart on our site, click a button, and have it show up in their dashboard.
we're not going to bury it somewhere under a bad label - we're doing this to make it easier for site owners, or just shlubs like me that don't want to be ftp'n files around..
what that does mean, is that its much easier to not have 3 separate delivery mechanisms on the backend. That, coupled with the fact that after the first Theme-Throw-Down we quickly realized we wanted to include some custom templates for the content block with some of the themes led us to the "everything should be packed up as a package... behind the scenes"
in terms of labeling.. we'll still talk about Themes and Add-Ons as we do today.
1. theme.. no explanation needed
2. block: just like a video, content block
3. package: a bunch of blocks, page types, elements
A package can have all the elements you can use in c5. This is quite useful if you want to build a big extension which also adds stuff to the dashboard (like the advertising package)
There's a tutorial on how to build a very simple block in German too:http://www.codeblog.ch/2008/10/concrete5-block-code-ausfuhren/...
I wanted to write one about building a package too but couldn't find a nice and not too big package which would be useful...