Please help me understand the composer feature
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Reading this tutorial
http://www.rynomediaonline.com/resources/tutorial-on-concrete5-s-co...
i have learned that one has to edit the defaults of a page type to add the desired blocks. Having done that, i wonder, what is actually the difference between using composer for adding a new page with the chosen blocks, or simply adding a new page by choosing the page type (which defaults have previously been modified)?
While i understand that composer makes it easy to edit many blocks at once without having to click each block to edit it, i don't understand why the defaults of a page type have to be changed at all, since that affects all pages assigned to that page type.
I would see benefits of using composer, if a copy of the page type would be created, exclusively assigned to composer, so that the original page type with it's original defaults could still be used for new pages.
At the current state, to achieve that, i have to create a new page type (as a copy) manually.
So, for me the only benefit of composer seems to be, that multiple defined blocks can be edited at once, which just saves a few mouse clicks. The drawback is, that the page type defaults have to be modified.
Michael
http://www.rynomediaonline.com/resources/tutorial-on-concrete5-s-co...
i have learned that one has to edit the defaults of a page type to add the desired blocks. Having done that, i wonder, what is actually the difference between using composer for adding a new page with the chosen blocks, or simply adding a new page by choosing the page type (which defaults have previously been modified)?
While i understand that composer makes it easy to edit many blocks at once without having to click each block to edit it, i don't understand why the defaults of a page type have to be changed at all, since that affects all pages assigned to that page type.
I would see benefits of using composer, if a copy of the page type would be created, exclusively assigned to composer, so that the original page type with it's original defaults could still be used for new pages.
At the current state, to achieve that, i have to create a new page type (as a copy) manually.
So, for me the only benefit of composer seems to be, that multiple defined blocks can be edited at once, which just saves a few mouse clicks. The drawback is, that the page type defaults have to be modified.
Michael
The best use of the composer (in my opinion) is when you have some type of page on your site that contains more structured information, in particular one that makes use of custom page attributes. So you wouldn't really use the composer for page types that are more to do with layouts ('left sidebar', 'full', etc). You'd use it for things like blog posts/news, events, products, projects (as in a portfolio), business listings... With these kind of pages, you're wanting to store the information in structured ways (using attributes), so that you can do things like list details from them elsewhere in the site.
When you've got records like the above that you want to be added to a site by a client, to be able to easily create one form that has all the fields that are needed to be filled out presented, and with one click place the new page in the right part of the site, with the right page type, without them having to touch a single block, the composer is a god-send. It's also about locking things down so you can't mis-format things or put pages in the wrong spot.
Take for example this concrete5 site I built that has business listing:http://www.saba.org.au/directory/website-and-internet-services/...
Each listing is actually page (with the listing being page list blocks), with the details such as phone numbers, websites, etc, being custom page attributes. The composer makes adding new entries a one click process as opposed to having to know what page type to pick, how to get to the custom attributes and what blocks need what kind of data.
tldr; it's for creating easy to use forms for adding pages with *structured* information.