Forums / Setup & design / Modifying the sample site's templates

Modifying the sample site's templates

Author Message

Chuck Knight

Sunday 11 January 2004 1:23:44 pm

Context:
I installed the "Corporate"sample site, with the assumption that, since it matched my final objective quite closely, it would be "easily" modifiable to get what I wanted.

Leaving the infinite frustrations of almost un-useable documentation aside, I must confess that I am starting to doubt that I am using the software as intended:

* Look at templates from the admin interface: 37 pages of templates that are not the ones actually producing my site pages (all in admin/xyz???)

* Try to follow instructions from the tutorial but customizing them to the "corporate" sample I installed: forget it, a million "misterious"mixes of protected files, caches that NEVER clear, eternal .var files, horrible mazes of trying to understand where in hell THAT particular behavior comes from (e.g., the headers in the corporate layout)

* Try to trace the operation of the system. Forget it. All instructions on how to print templates and other objects as they are invokes are flawed. You get only one piece, never the whole story.

The questions:
* Are the templates INTENDED to be modified, so that users accelerate implementations? For example, has anybody modified the "corporate" sample of 3.3 to produce a working site? If so, would you mind sharing your experiences with me (see my email address below)?
* Is there any use for the 37 pages of templates accessible from the admin interface? What role do they have?
* When, after spending hours tracing down something, you understand that you need to change, say, core.css. Do you just change it on the ste's file system, or should you use some variation of the admin interface too misterious to grasp? I ask that because it's literally impossible to get eZp to follow the supposed behavior of Override --> Site --> Standard: the ./var files will NEVER DIE!
* Why have very detailed cache clearing menu entries in the admin interface if none of them REALLY does anything? Is thata behavior only native to the sample files?

Any help will be appreciated. If you are an eZp specialist, and prefer to charge me for your help, please contact me at cc_asap@yahoo.com. Thanks

ck

Chuck Knight

Monday 12 January 2004 8:05:58 am

Mark, thanks for your support!

Let me make use of your offer, and use this channel to ask you a couple of questions... If you would prefer me to contact you privately please let me know how at cc_asap@yahoo.com and I will clear out of this forum.

You say:

> The corporate site tries to use CSS for all layout - I
> initially tried to stick with this but couldn't achieve
> what I wanted (in fact even the standard coprorate
> site didn't seem to display correctly IE6/XP). I then
> checked ez.no site itself and noted it used tables.
> [snip] I hacked that to use tables instead of CSS.

:) I love it... I went as far as buying sitepoint.com's excellent book on replacing tables with CSS, as well as every other book I could find in the local B&N on the subject... But I am stuck... Any hints on how to start mixing tables in templates? Do you just use something like Dreamweaver? I assume you stay away from fixed-measure tables?

> soon realised there were hard-coded references to
> 'corporate' in some of the templates.

Same here. I just decided to keep the site called "Corporate" :) The URLs suffer, but hey, they are not perfect in a Non-Virtual Host setup to start with...

> I got the impression you shouldn't change core.css > so I only modified my own kdrec.css file and that
> seems to be fine. There's a lot in there you don't
> really need (it seems!).

After training myself on CSS, I actually *like* core.css. The problem I had with modifying was two-fold:
* Why hasn't the override mechanism extend to CSS? It would seem logical, specially considering how CSS works.
* Every time I edit core.css I have to brute-force write it to the cache, because my cache is eternal: nothing kills it :) Did that happen to you too, when you tried to replace graphics that came with the template, such as the logo?

> It is also still rather a movable feast and you can
> see look and feel things being stored tentatively in
> the database - I just steered clear of these as they
> seem a bit of a kludge just now.

That was one of my key questions, thanks for bringing it up... Two of the most misterious behaviors I have encountered are:

1. My admin interface puts out alerts about me having modified the site.ini file off-line for values contained in the "Look and Feel" section. In retrospect, that is a COOL piece of functionality, but...

2. All of the sudden, copies of my pagelayout.tpl showed up in their respective directories "deprecated" and renamed #pagelayout.tpl#... (?!)

1. and 2. above started me thinking that perhaps the ONLY way to modify the templates was through the interface... just to find out that the key site templates are NOT reachable through it...

Can I assume from your comment that you do all editing on .tpl, .css directly on the file system? Is that true of .ini files as well? and finally:
Do you store the graphic files of your look and feel as content? (I seem to understand that you don't, but I want to make sure...)

Thanks a lot for taking the time to support this newbie. I immensely appreciate it

Cheers
ck

eZ debug

Timing: Jan 18 2025 22:28:34
Script start
Timing: Jan 18 2025 22:28:34
Module start 'content'
Timing: Jan 18 2025 22:28:35
Module end 'content'
Timing: Jan 18 2025 22:28:35
Script end

Main resources:

Total runtime1.1400 sec
Peak memory usage4,096.0000 KB
Database Queries189

Timing points:

CheckpointStart (sec)Duration (sec)Memory at start (KB)Memory used (KB)
Script start 0.00000.0060 587.8281180.8281
Module start 'content' 0.00600.9532 768.6563456.6641
Module end 'content' 0.95920.1807 1,225.3203337.7969
Script end 1.1399  1,563.1172 

Time accumulators:

 Accumulator Duration (sec) Duration (%) Count Average (sec)
Ini load
Load cache0.00410.3591210.0002
Check MTime0.00140.1256210.0001
Mysql Total
Database connection0.00080.067910.0008
Mysqli_queries1.066093.50951890.0056
Looping result0.00190.16711870.0000
Template Total1.105297.020.5526
Template load0.00200.176820.0010
Template processing1.103296.772120.5516
Template load and register function0.00020.015410.0002
states
state_id_array0.00140.119310.0014
state_identifier_array0.00100.085420.0005
Override
Cache load0.00170.1499490.0000
Sytem overhead
Fetch class attribute can translate value0.00130.111720.0006
Fetch class attribute name0.00110.096820.0006
XML
Image XML parsing0.00040.035820.0002
class_abstraction
Instantiating content class attribute0.00000.000520.0000
General
dbfile0.00320.2775210.0002
String conversion0.00000.000430.0000
Note: percentages do not add up to 100% because some accumulators overlap

CSS/JS files loaded with "ezjscPacker" during request:

CacheTypePacklevelSourceFiles
CSS0extension/community/design/community/stylesheets/ext/jquery.autocomplete.css
extension/community_design/design/suncana/stylesheets/scrollbars.css
extension/community_design/design/suncana/stylesheets/tabs.css
extension/community_design/design/suncana/stylesheets/roadmap.css
extension/community_design/design/suncana/stylesheets/content.css
extension/community_design/design/suncana/stylesheets/star-rating.css
extension/community_design/design/suncana/stylesheets/syntax_and_custom_tags.css
extension/community_design/design/suncana/stylesheets/buttons.css
extension/community_design/design/suncana/stylesheets/tweetbox.css
extension/community_design/design/suncana/stylesheets/jquery.fancybox-1.3.4.css
extension/bcsmoothgallery/design/standard/stylesheets/magnific-popup.css
extension/sevenx/design/simple/stylesheets/star_rating.css
extension/sevenx/design/simple/stylesheets/libs/fontawesome/css/all.min.css
extension/sevenx/design/simple/stylesheets/main.v02.css
extension/sevenx/design/simple/stylesheets/main.v02.res.css
JS0extension/ezjscore/design/standard/lib/yui/3.17.2/build/yui/yui-min.js
extension/ezjscore/design/standard/javascript/jquery-3.7.0.min.js
extension/community_design/design/suncana/javascript/jquery.ui.core.min.js
extension/community_design/design/suncana/javascript/jquery.ui.widget.min.js
extension/community_design/design/suncana/javascript/jquery.easing.1.3.js
extension/community_design/design/suncana/javascript/jquery.ui.tabs.js
extension/community_design/design/suncana/javascript/jquery.hoverIntent.min.js
extension/community_design/design/suncana/javascript/jquery.popmenu.js
extension/community_design/design/suncana/javascript/jScrollPane.js
extension/community_design/design/suncana/javascript/jquery.mousewheel.js
extension/community_design/design/suncana/javascript/jquery.cycle.all.js
extension/sevenx/design/simple/javascript/jquery.scrollTo.js
extension/community_design/design/suncana/javascript/jquery.cookie.js
extension/community_design/design/suncana/javascript/ezstarrating_jquery.js
extension/community_design/design/suncana/javascript/jquery.initboxes.js
extension/community_design/design/suncana/javascript/app.js
extension/community_design/design/suncana/javascript/twitterwidget.js
extension/community_design/design/suncana/javascript/community.js
extension/community_design/design/suncana/javascript/roadmap.js
extension/community_design/design/suncana/javascript/ez.js
extension/community_design/design/suncana/javascript/ezshareevents.js
extension/sevenx/design/simple/javascript/main.js

Templates used to render the page:

UsageRequested templateTemplateTemplate loadedEditOverride
1node/view/full.tplfull/forum_topic.tplextension/sevenx/design/simple/override/templates/full/forum_topic.tplEdit templateOverride template
2content/datatype/view/ezxmltext.tpl<No override>extension/community_design/design/suncana/templates/content/datatype/view/ezxmltext.tplEdit templateOverride template
9content/datatype/view/ezxmltags/line.tpl<No override>design/standard/templates/content/datatype/view/ezxmltags/line.tplEdit templateOverride template
10content/datatype/view/ezxmltags/paragraph.tpl<No override>extension/ezwebin/design/ezwebin/templates/content/datatype/view/ezxmltags/paragraph.tplEdit templateOverride template
1pagelayout.tpl<No override>extension/sevenx/design/simple/templates/pagelayout.tplEdit templateOverride template
 Number of times templates used: 23
 Number of unique templates used: 5

Time used to render debug report: 0.0002 secs