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re599

Posts: 25
Location: Oxfordshire, UK
content folders - Posted: February 28, 2008 - 9:44 AM Quote and reply
Hi,
I would like to build a hierarchy of content. So a folder for example with sub categories of web pages. I have been looking at sitellite and I can't put my finger on how to do this, for example its possible to put a piece of web content under another piece of content, but not to build up a list of content categoires?

Can someone help, I want to find out how to build what could be described as a list of directories for users to pop content into.


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wisecounselor

Posts: 255
Re: content folders - Posted: February 28, 2008 - 10:38 AM Quote and reply
What you describe is how Sitellite works, by default. Pages of content are stored in a 'tree' structure. Once you have your first 'root' level of pages, which can be as few as one, your index page, every other page can go under another page. When you create a page, one of the steps is to choose where in the tree the page is located.

You don't build folders, you don't build html pages as you know them, everything is in the database, including the structure of the site.

Finally there are many different built-in menu widgets to display your navigation automatically.

re599 said:
Hi,
I would like to build a hierarchy of content. So a folder for example with sub categories of web pages. I have been looking at sitellite and I can't put my finger on how to do this, for example its possible to put a piece of web content under another piece of content, but not to build up a list of content categoires?

Can someone help, I want to find out how to build what could be described as a list of directories for users to pop content into.




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re599

Posts: 25
Location: Oxfordshire, UK
gui interface for structure - Posted: February 28, 2008 - 10:52 AM Quote and reply
The next question is how/where do you install/get a module that will display the categories of hierarchy as a explorer like list?

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wisecounselor

Posts: 255
Re: gui interface for structure - Posted: February 28, 2008 - 11:26 AM Quote and reply
I don't know what you mean by "explorer type list", if you are referring to Windows explorer, that level of interface is beyond the core of 99% of the cms products available and would require someone to build a dhtml widget. It certainly can be done, and Sitellite includes something like this.

I can't explain is all here, but Sitellite uses a 'box' concept to make is easy to drop in custom code into your site and templates. There are quite a few navigation 'boxes' included, if you have the source, they are in app/sitellite/boxes/nav

The best way to get a feel for them is to customize the core template included, put these boxes and and see what they do.

There is quite a bit of documentation on how to do most of these things. And, there is commercial support available. I am a full-time developer, if you need commercial help, I'd give you a price, as would Simian and others that read the forums.

re599 said:
The next question is how/where do you install/get a module that will display the categories of hierarchy as a explorer like list?




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lux

Posts: 656
Location: Manitoba, Canada
Re: gui interface for structure - Posted: February 28, 2008 - 11:57 AM Quote and reply
re599 said:
The next question is how/where do you install/get a module that will display the categories of hierarchy as a explorer like list?


In the control panel, you can get a similar effect by going to Web Pages then clicking the 'Parent' column so that it sorts by which parent the page belongs to. This doesn't break it down into a tree, but it does give you pages sorted by their parent page.

For something that collapses/expands dynamically, that actually wouldn't be too hard to build using something like jQuery's Treeview plugin:

http://be.twixt.us/jquery/treeView.php

You could create something like that fairly easily based on the sitellite/nav/sitemap box for example.

Hope that gives some ideas :)

Lux

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re599

Posts: 25
Location: Oxfordshire, UK
thanks - Posted: February 28, 2008 - 12:09 PM Quote and reply
Hi,

Thank you both for the help with my initial questions. It's interesting about not many CMSs doing a Microsoft Explorer like interface, we had previously looked at Asbru and that didn't have it either, but it looks like there maybe a way forward as you mention Lux in building an add on module. That's what I like about the open source CMSs, they seem to be more extendable than the purely commercial offerings.

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wokkie

Posts: 159
Location: Scotland
Re: gui interface for structure - Posted: February 29, 2008 - 8:27 AM Quote and reply
lux said:
re599 said:
The next question is how/where do you install/get a module that will display the categories of hierarchy as a explorer like list?


....
For something that collapses/expands dynamically, that actually wouldn't be too hard to build using something like jQuery's Treeview plugin:

...
You could create something like that fairly easily based on the sitellite/nav/sitemap box for example.

Lux


Didn't we already have something very similar to that in Sitellite version 2 ?

We still have some customers using that version and when we recently upgraded one of them to the latest version, they were quite incensed at the perceived loss of functionality in the latest version over their sitellite version 2.

They were wrong of course, and just needed a wee bit of training.





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lux

Posts: 656
Location: Manitoba, Canada
Re: gui interface for structure - Posted: February 29, 2008 - 10:17 AM Quote and reply
wokkie said:
lux said:
re599 said:
The next question is how/where do you install/get a module that will display the categories of hierarchy as a explorer like list?


....
For something that collapses/expands dynamically, that actually wouldn't be too hard to build using something like jQuery's Treeview plugin:

...
You could create something like that fairly easily based on the sitellite/nav/sitemap box for example.

Lux


Didn't we already have something very similar to that in Sitellite version 2 ?

We still have some customers using that version and when we recently upgraded one of them to the latest version, they were quite incensed at the perceived loss of functionality in the latest version over their sitellite version 2.

They were wrong of course, and just needed a wee bit of training.


Yeah, there was a tree view back then, which pre-dated even the Web View concept I believe. The UI at that point was of course completely rewritten and the search parameters and sorting in the control panel we also felt was a more flexible UI than the old and fairly limited tree view was.

I'm thinking of adding something to the sitemap box so that a more dynamic tree view could be seen there, then if that included the editing buttons it would essentially provide the same thing as we had in Sitellite 2 :)

Still figuring out if that'll work well or not though. I'm also thinking in terms of sorting in the navigation, since we could include the up/down arrows for admin users to control that on that page as well...

Just some ideas I've been toying with at this point :)

Cheers,

Lux

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Russell

Posts: 6
Re: gui interface for structure - Posted: August 5, 2008 - 4:08 AM Quote and reply
lux said:
wokkie said:
lux said:
re599 said:
The next question is how/where do you install/get a module that will display the categories of hierarchy as a explorer like list?


....
For something that collapses/expands dynamically, that actually wouldn't be too hard to build using something like jQuery's Treeview plugin:

...
You could create something like that fairly easily based on the sitellite/nav/sitemap box for example.

Lux


Didn't we already have something very similar to that in Sitellite version 2 ?

We still have some customers using that version and when we recently upgraded one of them to the latest version, they were quite incensed at the perceived loss of functionality in the latest version over their sitellite version 2.

They were wrong of course, and just needed a wee bit of training.


Yeah, there was a tree view back then, which pre-dated even the Web View concept I believe. The UI at that point was of course completely rewritten and the search parameters and sorting in the control panel we also felt was a more flexible UI than the old and fairly limited tree view was.

I'm thinking of adding something to the sitemap box so that a more dynamic tree view could be seen there, then if that included the editing buttons it would essentially provide the same thing as we had in Sitellite 2 :)

Still figuring out if that'll work well or not though. I'm also thinking in terms of sorting in the navigation, since we could include the up/down arrows for admin users to control that on that page as well...

Just some ideas I've been toying with at this point :)

Cheers,

Lux


Hi,

Noticed the comment about a 'wee bit of training' and wondered whether that applied to us also. Our site has approximately 2,000 html pages and having them displayed in an alphabetical list is not really a practical way of working. I appreciate that there are various filters but this can still leave multiple pages to scan through. Are we missing a trick and simply need training?

Regards
Russell

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wisecounselor

Posts: 255
Re: gui interface for structure - Posted: August 7, 2008 - 3:40 PM Quote and reply
Russell said:
lux said:
wokkie said:
lux said:
re599 said:
The next question is how/where do you install/get a module that will display the categories of hierarchy as a explorer like list?


....
For something that collapses/expands dynamically, that actually wouldn't be too hard to build using something like jQuery's Treeview plugin:

...
You could create something like that fairly easily based on the sitellite/nav/sitemap box for example.

Lux


Didn't we already have something very similar to that in Sitellite version 2 ?

We still have some customers using that version and when we recently upgraded one of them to the latest version, they were quite incensed at the perceived loss of functionality in the latest version over their sitellite version 2.

They were wrong of course, and just needed a wee bit of training.


Yeah, there was a tree view back then, which pre-dated even the Web View concept I believe. The UI at that point was of course completely rewritten and the search parameters and sorting in the control panel we also felt was a more flexible UI than the old and fairly limited tree view was.

I'm thinking of adding something to the sitemap box so that a more dynamic tree view could be seen there, then if that included the editing buttons it would essentially provide the same thing as we had in Sitellite 2 :)

Still figuring out if that'll work well or not though. I'm also thinking in terms of sorting in the navigation, since we could include the up/down arrows for admin users to control that on that page as well...

Just some ideas I've been toying with at this point :)

Cheers,

Lux


Hi,

Noticed the comment about a 'wee bit of training' and wondered whether that applied to us also. Our site has approximately 2,000 html pages and having them displayed in an alphabetical list is not really a practical way of working. I appreciate that there are various filters but this can still leave multiple pages to scan through. Are we missing a trick and simply need training?

Regards
Russell


Your question pertains more to your content hierarchy and information architecture and is sort of independent of the cms you select. Manage 2000 pages of content is cumbersome no matter what software you use. Someone must go through the project of setting up your site map before you start dumping it all in a cms.

I have found that most people don't like to go farther than 3 clicks to find what they need. I also find that sites often "over categorize" things and therefore confuse visitors.

I know this might not help, but I think the issue at hand has nothing to do with the cms. Now, if you already have your hierarchy built, then sure, someone needs to learn how to build that hierarchy in sitellite, which is really pretty simple. Then you have to either 1) choose the right navigation box to use which best suits your users or 2) have someone build a custom navigation box for you. I have built quite a few different navigation boxes for sitellite depending on what the user needs. Most php developers can take one of the out-of-the box navigation boxes and use it to build their own.

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