Is it possible to use bootstrap themes on a Mezzanine/Cartridge website? - django

I am a newbie web developer tasked with creating a website for a client in the art industry. I've decided to roll with Mezzanine + Cartridge for the project as it seems like an accessible way to get started. I now have the server up and running with no issues, but obviously can't use the default Mezzanine theme for such a project.
I'm finding that theres a highly limited amount of themes available online for Mezzanine, and that there are a lot more Bootstrap themes available floating around. Is there a way I could use the two together? Ie the UI/front end being a Bootstrap theme while still maintaining the functionality of Mezz/Cartridge?
If so, how would I go about doing this? Not expecting a step by step guide, but any advice/guidance would be highly appreciated. Like I said, I'm incredibly new to this (first website ever!) so if I'm misunderstanding something, please let me know. Thank you for your time.

You'll override the base template as the starting point for customizing the look of everything. In there you'll find the stylesheets for bootstrap used, which you can modify/replace/etc.
https://github.com/stephenmcd/mezzanine/blob/32dc38778d296f508a23b729de04a02075994df5/mezzanine/core/templates/base.html#L18-L32

Related

Which UI toolkit are you using with your Ember.js apps?

I just started using Ember.js recently and I love the functionality. I'm wondering which UI toolkit you might be using to tie into design side of your applications.
For Bootstrap integration with Ember, take a look at this project I started two days ago:
https://github.com/ember-addons/bootstrap-for-ember
It really fun and easy to use and lightly integrate bootstrap and ember components altogether.
Personaly, I am using Twitter's bootstrap library, which is quite low level, but pretty clean.
Twitter Bootstrap is my preffered choice when it comes to UI especially when prototyping something quickly, recently i have started to use EmberJS and have looked into this as well. So far i have found https://github.com/emberjs-addons/ember-bootstrap
I will update this as my search continues.
Hope this helps with your project!
Twitter bootstrap is a great UI frameworks no doubts but I feel it is too mainstream these days. Hence my personal preference is Metro UI CSS, it's sleek and great for developing mobile applications using HTML5
I am just starting with emberjs also. Actually I use JQMobile. But I have some issues with it. As I want have a Mobile look and feel, I will try more.
But even if have not use bootstrap with EmberJs I think it will be easier to use as it's only css.
With a UI toolkit that use JavaScript and is owns attributs(exemple : data-role="List"... with JQuery Mobile) you can have rendering issues. I think this is because that Metamorphose/Handlebars and JQuery Mobile both modify the DOM on the fly and it can be tricky to get all work right.
But I am not a EmberJs or JQ Mobile Guru :-)
Sorry for my english, it isn't my mother tongue.
Just one Question .. what is a OSS framework and do you have the links on GitUb
This maybe old but I've used this addon on over 5 projects so far with great success. The project is well maintained and flexible. The maintainer is active and takes pull requests efficiently.
http://kaliber5.github.io/ember-bootstrap/
Disclaimer: I am not officiated with this project beyond that of an end consumer.
You could have a look at Ember Paper if you like Google Material:
http://miguelcobain.github.io/ember-paper/

How can we improve our web development workflow?

How can multiple developers work on the same website (CSS, JavaScript, ASP.NET).
We use SVN as source control, but the problem is more in regards of testing and general workflow.
I know we could do unit tests and we have for our API, but I don't see how we can do unit testing for our frontend?
We get a lot of problems in the frontend like:
Developer 1 changes CSS and it messes up CSS for developer 2.
Developer 1 changes JavaScript and components developer 2 made stops working.
Developer 1 removed an ID or a CSS class in C# (code behind) and CSS styling is lost or JavaScript stops working.
It's basically things of that nature.
What we do now is manually test everything in all major browsers and we spend too much time on that.
Any good suggestions on how we can improve our way of working? Keep in mind that it's a website and we are struggling with problems related to that.
This is a management issue rather than a workflow issue.
You need to be proactive at managing the situation and be tough.
You have a source control system in place, what you need to do is:-
Enforce day end (or more frequent if preferred) check ins.
Rollback work if it doesn't work. You have to be tough on this point to ensure the developers understand that you mean it.
You need to actively communicate the above to your team to make sure they understand the new work procedures.
It'd only take a few weeks for it to sink in, after that you can relax the controls.
Introduce releases/iterations/milestones; and publish them only from the repo.
Can you not possibly break the site areas up into segments and assign developer responsibilities to each, even if it means sandboxing the "base" code of the site (framework / main CSS / main JavaScript) and assigning a specific responsibility to it? You can then task developers to keep their CSS / JavaScript separate from the main files and merge them before testing and release.
We've had similar problems where I work and this approach seemed to sort it out for the most part. For each segment we built we created a new folder in each of the respective projects (DAL / BL / Presentation), based on the functionalities / modules / segments, each with their own site content (JavaScript / CSS), but still making sure that some generic styling and JavaScript being available to all developers.
An official Agile project management methodology (like Scrum) has huge benefits in an environment like this, as you get to discuss these issues on a daily basis and, if over-arching requirements for new CSS and JavaScript are identified by all developers, it can be integrated into the site's base content.

Is there a self-hosted google-sites like solution?

I am looking for a wiki type software to keep something like a wiki/knowledge base at my university. I tried MediaWiki (with FCKeditor), DokuWiki and MoinMoin, but they seem too hard to use for an average user - at least not without some trouble.
I found Google Sites to be almost ideal for my purpose, but as I mentioned the wiki is to be used at my university, there will be a strong demand to host it on our servers.
Do you know any software similar to what Google Sites offers? What I really want is a WYSIWYG editor and a hierarchical menu structure - without cryptic "categories" or lots of colons or brackets.
Actually, providing some hacking every CMS (Drupal, Joomla, Wordpres...) could help you.
You (the developer) just have to build the site (design, use cases, deployment...etc) according to your (University) needs: simple & intuituve UI, simple tasks..etc

Good Site Builder

I am currently working on a website and i kinda need something like a cms/site builder to be integrated int the site, but not very complicated.
for example let's say i have a few templates and the users can modify them as they please(add a picture, some text, etc)
Please help.
Thank you!
look at N2 if you are working in .Net http://n2cms.com/
try joomla, drupal, or wordpress. There are also some basic wiki sites that are easy to setup and use like TWiki.
If you want to keep things very basic then SnippetMaster is an option. Your users can edit odd bits of text and even add pictures. It works best for sites with only a few pages to update. For a large site you may want to look at something more advanced.
You can build a site these days with WordPress. Actually I recommend this even if you have more complicated stuff. There are a lot of plugins and themes and over all support. If you want something simple you can have it in minutes.
You could use Joomla (PHP) or Windows SharePoint Services (.NET), but it depends what kind of thing you are really after...
Also, you could use something like VS Web Developer 2008 Express edition which'll create a basic template for you.
Here's an awesome link that I just happened to have someone send me yesterday:
Top 10 free content management systems for web site designers

Need help choosing a framework for bilingual site

First, some background information... I'm coming up on a medium-scale website for a non-profit that will require both English and Korean translations. Feature-set includes: CMS for normal content, a blog, some form submission/handling (including CSV/PDF exports), a job posting board, a directory of related businesses and non-profits (that accepts visitor submissions), and a basic (probably blog-driven) newsroom.
I have a fairly strong development background, and I've done some sites using Drupal, built some basic custom CMSes using frameworks like CodeIgniter, and I've recently started getting into Django. These are the primary options that I am exploring, and I would consider using different tools for different portions of the project, but what I'm mainly interested in, is if anyone has any experience to share with regards to localization/internationalization. I haven't yet put together a site that supports multiple languages, so before I get in trouble by underestimating the task, or making poor assumptions, I'd like to get some input to help guide my decision-making process.
Do you have any recommendations for frameworks (Drupal, Django, CodeIgniter) that handle localization/internationalization/translation well for a CMS? I know they all support it, but I'm looking for real-world experience here (or suggestions for modules/plugins given explanations).
Sorry for the longwinded question, but I wanted to be clear as possible. Thanks in advance!
There is a distinction between "site" translation and content translation. Django handles the site translation great, out of the box. The content translation, however, requires making some decisions (there's no one right way at this point). This probably makes sense, because of the very nature of Django as a lower level framework (when compared to something like Drupal, which is intended to serve as a complete CMS).
There are applications for Django which are meant to add this functionality (in the form of translations configured at the model level):
Django-multilingual
Transmeta
Also, I found this question that is related.
The bottom line though, is that this is still being explored in the Django world, and neither approach has been decided upon for the framework. Also, although I haven't used it, Drupal has module support for this in the form of the i18n module.
I will update with more conclusions as I come to them. If you have anything to add about content translation in Django or in Drupal, feel free to add your own answer as well.
You probably already know that the native i18n support in django is quite good. As for translation, you might try the django-rosetta app which allows you to grant translation rights to a subset of users, who are then able to translate through an admin-like interface.
Zend_Translate is pretty comprehensive. And if you decide to use PHP, I suggest you take a look at it. It provides multiple interfaces (e.g. an Array, CSV, Gettext, etc.) to manage your translations, which makes it IMHO unmatched when it comes to PHP.
I'm not sure how well it plays with Drupal, since Drupal is hardly a framework but more a CMS -- or maybe a CMS framework. I'm pretty sure that Drupal either has a thing build in or that there is a plugin for it.
With CodeIgniter you would start from scratch and Zend_Translate plays well with it.
I liked Drupal over Joomla. You should also look into DotNetNuke, out of the box it has lot of things that will meet your needs.
Checkout django-blocks. Has multi-language Menu, Flatpages and even has a simple Shopping Cart!!