Dreamweaver nested templates - templates

So I'm trying to achieve something like this in Dreamwaver CS5. I have one optional editable region (optional because I do not want that thing in certain webpages) and another editable region in my "master" template. So what I'm doing now is to create a new template from my master template, and then change the optional editable region to be displayed, saving it as a new template, and finally creating new webpages from the new template.
Unfortunately, it seems everything that was editable in the new template is editable in the new webpage I just created. I want only the non-optional editable region in the master template to be editable in all new webpages created from the new template. How can I accomplish this?

It's annoyingly simple (and kind of strange).
In the second-level template, add this expression: ##("")## anywhere in the editable region you want to lock. Now all pages derived from that template will display it as non-editable.
You can do some fun things with Dreamweaver's template expressions and variables, but finding any real documention has proven difficult. Mainly because it's essentially useless if you can use PHP. And it took some time figuring out that ##(lang!="fin"?(lang=="swe"?"Swedish title":"English title"):"Finnish title")####(sub!=""?" :: "+sub:sub)## was the specific expression i wanted for a non-PHP client's page title. So, yeah.

When you add a new editable region in an editable region passed through to the nested template, the highlighting color of the editable region changes to orange. Content you add outside the editable region, such as the [blah], is no longer editable in documents based on the nested template
source
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/dreamweaver/cs/using/WScbb6b82af5544594822510a94ae8d65-7aa1a.html

Related

Kentico - Editable WebPartZones on children pages?

I added a WebPartZone in the master page at the top pf the master page, this web part zone is a message bar that will display on all the pages but could be different on each page. Is it possible to have a web part zone in the template that is editable on each page? Or is a different way to do it?
Thanks
The short answer no. From the template engine prospective whatever editable in the master - is not editable in its children. All editable web parts/widgets editable on the master, are not editable in its children.
If you really want to have an editable text in the master and all its children, you probably need to clone and customize web part and form control it is based on. Or create you own web part.
P.S. You can have editable text in your page template so all page that use this template will have this editable text working.
If you can give more details on what kind thing you want to edit would be easier to provide an answer
P.P.S. You can have a work around but it will not be with editable text. You will have to edit message text at the form tab. Would that suits you?
You can add the webpart on your master, and use a macro to get the content, like {%CurrentDocument.GetValue("Message")%}, but you have to add a field to each page to store the message in.
Just throwing out one more option, if what you want to display changes from page type to page type, you can put a repeater on the master page, put a path of a period (current document), then use macros to set the page type to the current document class name and the transformation to currentdocument.classname+".mastermessage"
Using a macro, then add a transformation "mastermessage" to each page type it will encounter, then you can change the fields and format for each page type.

List of News Articles In Sitecore (Best Approach?)

I am creating a Sitecore MVC site for a client and I need to create page that will list news articles for the company.
So far, I have created items that use a shared data template called “Article,” and I also have a sublayout (a view rendering) called “Article” that will display these items.
For the list itself, my plan was to create another component (a sublayout) call “News_List”, and to put a placeholder in it called “List”.
My question is this: can I allow the author to insert articles (e.g., N items of type “Article”) into this placeholder via the page editor?
Will SC allow you to insert multiple instances of the same component into a placeholder? Will this break anything?
I believe this is a pretty common question but I have not found a definitive answer. Thanks in advance…!
You can insert as many components (of the same type) in your placeholder as you want.. Just make sure to put the placeholder settings correctly and give it a decent name (not just "list" ;))
But are you sure you want to do this? Your editors will manually need to create a list of components for each article they want to add on the page. Doesn't sound to be very user (editor) friendly.. Maybe you should consider creating a list component that can get a list of articles as a datasource and show those. Or even select them automatically (but that might be not according to your business case)..
Yes, authors can add multiple instances of the same component into a single placeholder.
Assuming that the code of the component doesn't do any stupid things it's absolutely ok to do this.

Sitecore 8: Hiding a section or a field in an item

I have a certain item which uses a sublayout sub1. The item created with this sublayout has a field "Switch Columns" which i want to remove or hide (or hide/remove the section "Columned Grid" if possible) . Note that i do not want every item of that template to hide the field; just the items using sub1 (since the template is being used by different sublayouts).
Is there a way to do this via code in the ascx file of the sublayout ?
You can solve by using an extra layer inherit.
Create 2 set of template fields:
Template field minimal set
Template fields with addition fields.
sub1 Inheritance from the Template field minimal set
other layouts use a template with Inheritance from the minimal set and the addition field.
maybe this is also usable:
For Hide in the Content editor.
You can deny "Field Read" for a role/user on your Template Field or Section item.
See https://community.sitecore.net/developers/f/8/t/2113
You can hide fields in the Content Editor with a custom processor in the getContentEditorFields, see this post:
http://ctor.io/hide-fields-in-the-sitecore-content-editor/
But as other answers suggested, I would overthink your approach. Personally I would either use two separate Sublayouts (with different number of columns where you can easily swap them later without loosing it's datsource) or use this as a rendering parameter.
No, that is not possible. When viewing an item in content editor, your sublayout is not loaded. I would recommend that you rethink your architecture. This sort of field should probably be a rendering parameter. Alternatively, you could create a separate template to act as the data source for those sublayouts.
Maybe a custom pipeline for the content editor? If you tap into the <renderContentEditor> pipeline, you may be able to inspect the item's presentation, sniff out the sublayout, and inject some JavaScript to hide the panel.

Sitecore Conditional Showing of Fields

So I am rather new to sitecore, and it's a topic that wasn't covered during my training. My questions is just to help point me to the correct term, or documentation on a method to do the following.
I have a definition item, with a ton of field groups, what I want to do is something like:
if Value of Field X is "yes" then collapse/hide Field X or Field Group X.
Does that make sense? Is it a validation rule? or some other kind of rules, is it a workflow I need to attach? Do you place it on just the field I want to hide, or the field that triggers the action?
I appreciate any guidance.
There is nothing out-of-the-box in Sitecore to achieve what you want but there is no reason you cannot create a composite custom field type to do this. The following articles will help you achieve this:
Creating a custom Sitecore Field
Getting to Know Sitecore: Custom Fields, Part 1
Create a new control, inheriting either from Droplist (if the comparison of the value is to be text based) or Droplink (for comparison of ID). You could add a parameter in the Source field of the control to specify what the values that trigger the hide should be.
The underlying control in the Content Editor is just a standard HTML select element. Add onchange events to the control and add your Javascript handler to hide the other controls. Since I could not find a way of adding additional custom css classes to the Sitecore controls, it would be best/easiest to hide all other controls in the same collapsible group after you control. This would mean you would need to group your controls better (or logically at least).
The Javascript will be something like this (the Content Editor uses the Prototype JS framework):
if ($(this).getValue() == 'no') {
// find the parent container of this control and then hide all the next siblings in the same group
$(this).up('.scEditorFieldMarker').nextSiblings('.scEditorFieldMarker').invoke('hide');
}
You can test this by running the above in the console, change out the keyword this with the id of your field, e.g. $('FIELD2292054').
What I am not sure about is how to trigger the hide on initial load, i.e. when someone returns to an existing item, it may be possible by adding to one of the pipelines, but would be better using a JS solution if possible. I'll have a think about this and get a proper code sample up over the next few days.
EDIT: You can add an event handler to sc:contenteditorupdated to handle the content editor being rel-oaded.
document.observe("sc:contenteditorupdated", myFunction);
I wrote up a blog post and put the code on GitHub if you are interested.
Not sure if you have come across Andy Uzick's this blog post.
He wisely talks about hiding fields in the Content Editor and has also created a Sitecore Module called Hide Field Template Extension which is hosted on the Sitecore Marketplace with the full source code to extend.
After reading through and trying the extension, I do feel that it will not completely resolve your issue (how you have described it in the question).
But it will give you:
A mid-term solution to hide a few unnecessary field that some content editors would not like to view.
Fields that are only required by administrators for admin purpose - to de-clutter these fields could be hidden.
Just one thing to bear in mind that it mentions in the requirements Sitecore 6.5 & 6.6. I have not tested it in Sitecore 7. If you are using Sitecore 7, which I think you are, one could modify the source code and make it work for Sitecore 7.
Have a look and share your findings.
Happy Sitecoring!

Selecting a datasource item for preset components

Before digging into my explanation i will summarize my question:
How do I provide the user (editor) with a user-friendly possibility to select a datasource item for sublayouts that are preset on the standard values?
My situation is as follows:
I have a page template, with pre-defined layout on the standard values.
Let's say the layout consists of:
one placeholder "wrapper"
one sublayout "content"
This sublayout is pre-defined on my page template, but can also be placed in the placeholder using the Page Editor.
It needs to have a datasource item that defines a Title and Body value.
Now, if a user adds this sublayout to the placeholder using the Page Editor, he will get a nice interface to select or create the datasource item (see screenshot).
However, if the sublayout was pre-defined on the standard values, it will be added without datasource (I can't pre-set the data source in the standard values because it's still unknown by then).
At that point there seems to be no way to get to that nice interface for selecting or creating a datasource item.
Ideally I want to be able to add a field to my template that can hold a datasource item which the user can select/create using the nice interface. I looked at the datasource field type, which could be an alternative, but it's still not exactly what I want.
Bare in mind that the content sublayout is just an example.
I understand that in that specific case I could solve it by always adding a title/body field to the template which hold the values if there is no datasource, but for my real world problem that won't suffice.
I don't have a whole lot of experience with the Page Editor (with the new way of working with it) so I would like to get some advice on this subject.
According to what you said here:
Ideally I want to be able to add a field to my template that can hold a datasource item which the user can select/create using the nice interface. I looked at the datasource field type, which could be an alternative, but it's still not exactly what I want.
It seems you want an intuitive data source selector interface in the CMS shell similar to the Page Editor-based UI.
Quick answer: Simply put, there's nothing that does this for you in Sitecore.
Longer answer: There are still some options for you, e.g.
Define a global "dummy" data source and set that to be the data source set in in Presentation > Layout Details of the template's standard values. So every time you create a new page, it will always point to that dummy value to show something.
From here you can do a few things:
If the user must use the shell UI and not Page Editor, they can simply create another data source item for the specific page and update that page to point to it using the existing native interface in Layout Details.
Another option is to write an event handler, say for item:created or similar that when you create an item, auto-create a corresponding data source item for this specific page (whether this auto-created item be a sub-items or global item...) then programmatically set this to be the data source. A similar concept is shown in this video by Nick Wesselman: http://www.techphoria414.com/Blog/2012/May/Sitecore_Page_Editor_Unleashed