Getting sidebar/footer content from a document using Ditto - bottleneck?

Hi There,

For site-wide sidebar and footer content, I’ve been creating dedicated footer and sidebar pages that are hidden, then using ditto calls inside footer and sidebar chunks to display that content across the site. Lately I’ve expanded this way of working to include sidebar drop-down lists which run ditto calls and things have become quite involved (for a designer). See here for exactly how I’m using Ditto: http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,44411.msg264724.html#msg264724

With a larger site in development (about 500 pages when launched) it’s suddenly occurred to me that using Ditto in this way might be creating a lot extra extra work for the server, slowing the site down as we add more pages.

Some pages could end up with as many as 7 or 8 ditto calls (header, footer, 4 sidebar blocks, a jquery slider plus an aggregated content area) - is this going to be OK? To add to the processing, all our css and script includes (even the Google analytics code) are all inside chunks which are then nested inside a footer chunk that is placed into the templates - this allows us to edit them in one place (the chunk) and have them updated site-wide.

If this sounds like it will cause major performance issues, what would be the best way to set this up?

As an example, I’ve just discovered @BINDINGS - can you use the @DOCUMENT binding in a TV on one page to grab content from another and would that be faster that Ditto? The nice thing about Ditto is that if I need to change the HTML for the footer (or other elements), I can do that once in the footer chunk.

Any suggestions would be welcome - starting to feel a bit nervous...

Cheers

Not sure about the benefits/pitfalls of using Ditto for this. For that kind of thing I generally use chunks and find them more efficient.

I use Ditto mostly to aggregate content into one page.

Thanks for the reply.

So do people get their clients to edit chunks using HTML? I just can’t imagine most of my clients doing this - especially as website sidebars (footers especially) have become such an important part of the content mix.

What about @Bindings? Can they be used to grab TV data from a page, then format the data with less overhead?

So do people get their clients edit chunks using HTML? I just can’t imagine most of my clients doing this - especially as website sidebars (footers especially) have become such an important part of the content mix.

you could also use a TV with @Document Binding http://www.sottwell.com/tv-bindings.html

or the getField Snippet: http://modxcms.com/extras/package/?package=173

Thanks for the reply,

Would the getField snippet be faster than Ditto as isn’t Ditto also a snippet? Forgive my ignorance as I don’t know any PHP - must learn one of these days...

Yes, I’ve been wondering about the @Document binding but as I don’t understand PHP I kind of need some examples - Sue’s page doesn’t go into the @Document binding and I think Google strips the ’@’ when you search for @Document. Plus this Modx documentation page here doesn’t include anything: http://svn.modxcms.com/docs/display/MODx096/%28at%29DOCUMENT

"It’s a mystery wrapped up in an enigma" - seriously, will search the forums etc...

If I did use the @Document binding, do you know if I can use a chunk to format the output?

This page has an example here: http://wiki.modxcms.com/index.php/%40DOCUMENT_Binding

But it also states:

In MODx, use the @Document Binding in a custom template variable field where you want to include a rendered page; it can be similar to using a Chunk

The "include a rendered page" bit is making me think it will display the entire page - will have to test things out.

But overall, does anyone know if these suggestions will be faster than Ditto?

Quote from: cms at Feb 17, 2010, 11:06 AM

Thanks for the reply.

So do people get their clients to edit chunks using HTML? I just can’t imagine most of my clients doing this - especially as website sidebars (footers especially) have become such an important part of the content mix.

What about @Bindings? Can they be used to grab TV data from a page, then format the data with less overhead?

I was talking mostly about the sitewide stuff that doesn’t get edited on a regular basis, like header and footer.

For the other stuff that clients will edit I use TVs.

Yes, I guess footers are becoming less and less static these days. Will dig around the @Binding stuff and see what I come up with.

BTW Mary, I wish I’d discovered The Coding Pad 6 months ago - nice work...

Cheers

Ben

After digging around on Google, the Modx Wiki and the Modx Forums, I’m still having a hard time piecing this all together.

This all assumes that @Bindings will result in less server load than Ditto on a page that could end up with 7 or 8 Ditto calls (if the client selects every sidebar option) - if it won’t be faster then please sing out so I can put this to rest!

@Document
The thing I don’t understand with this binding is how you specify both the document to get the content from, as well as the actual content. If I have a Footer page setup with 4 Footer TVs in it, presumable if the "Input Option Values" or "Default Value" fields are set to:


When I go to document 20 to enter the content I won’t be able to - or will the Rich Text editor on document 20 override the binding?

Not sure if I’m even on the right track, so please sing out if this is a waste of time...

Cheers

I’m clearly missing something basic here...

I have a test chunk placed in the home page called {{footerTest}} and it looks like this:



The [*footer1*] TV has the following in the "Input Option Values" (have also tried "Default Value"):

And the Footer template is ticked so it is available on the Footer page.


Page 25 is my Footer page and I have entered some dummy content like this:


When I render the page, all the HTML is there but there is a gap instead of content like this:



So maybe the @Select binding is the way to go as the example here http://svn.modxcms.com/docs/display/MODx096/%28at%29SELECT shows:


This statement seems to show you can choose the TV from somewhere- although I know zero about SQL queries so could be wrong. Also, accessing the Database directly seems scary...

I’ve obviously misunderstood what these @Bindings are, or how to use them - if anyone with a shred of Modx talent could help explain things, that would be radical.