Global Themes in Revolution 2.0.0 RC3

I think that this will probably be a show stopper for me utilising modx on this particular project. I’ll still use it for single site cms’s but it wont be capable for the site’s I was hoping to roll out to prospective groups.

Back to concrete5 I go - where they understand global visual themes and multiple page layouts

Thanks for the ideas though.

Quote from: mmuller at Jul 19, 2010, 03:35 PM

Back to concrete5 I go - where they understand global visual themes and multiple page layouts

Back to concrete5 you go - where their global visual themes and multiple page layouts approaches are more understandable and therefore more suitable for you

Only for that project mind you - I still prefer modxcms as a cms for my normal clients

The right tool for the right job. :p

Okay Guys,

;)

I’m getting the distinct impression from the posts and suggestions that no-one thinks that multiple ’visual styles’ that are global in scope for a modx install are a good idea.

I understand that the whole point of modxcms is as a single site, single style install for managing single style sites - I am just finishing another site in exactly that manner - http://77.235.57.19

But, I still feel that a global scope of a theme’s visual style - not its physical layout style would be a good thing to have. It would greatly enhance the theme building community and therefore modxcms’s appeal to a larger audience of developers/site owners.

Quote from: mmuller at Jul 19, 2010, 06:30 PM

Okay Guys,

;)

I’m getting the distinct impression from the posts and suggestions that no-one thinks that multiple ’visual styles’ that are global in scope for a modx install are a good idea.

I understand that the whole point of modxcms is as a single site, single style install for managing single style sites - I am just finishing another site in exactly that manner - http://77.235.57.19

But, I still feel that a global scope of a theme’s visual style - not its physical layout style would be a good thing to have. It would greatly enhance the theme building community and therefore modxcms’s appeal to a larger audience of developers/site owners.

I still don’t understand what you mean, so I don’t really have an opinion. Are you talking about the front end or the back end (or both). In your ideal scenario, when a user changes the "visual style," does that change the style for all users or just for that user? Do you need to "remember" each user’s style preference for when they return?

@mmuller,

I am with BobRay on this too. I don’t understand the use case here.

If I try to understand you want to make various front end templates available for each document or are you wanting to change particular settings of one. Will this change the physical layout of the page? The CSS files or what?

You can make CSS files a selectable TV dropdown and that could make it available sitewide but I don’t understand what it is you are hoping to be the result. If you can describe the actions your site editor will take and what the ideal result of those actions is that would be helpful.

E.g. User clicks on a theme selection dropdown on the document edit screen and the css file can be changed so this page has a different look than other pages.

BobRay/smashingred,

Okay, the idea is to have a module/plugin that would allow a global change of the front end visual style - not the actual page layout - so in modx’s case it would have to be a global TV that would set which of say 4-5 css files to use. The page layout would obviously have to follow the same naming convention but, in theory, it could still alter the positioning of blocks too etc etc.

For example a user has the system I am proposing to build installed on the server and chooses ’Style A’ which would be across all the site, they could then choose layout styles in each page.

But a year later, a fresher template is uploaded to the system, and they decide to use that - they would then view the ’Styles Installed’ module and click the image to set it - affecting all pages sitewide in one fell swoop. Without having to worry about which page template was used on which page... As the ’Style Template’ would use the same naming conventions used in the layout templates...

The batcher plugin is great but - I am factoring on the lowest common denominator being the user and therefore would only get the gist of clicking an image to change style.

What I am trying to explain (badly) and achieve is a system where the physical layout is used page by page, but the visual style is globally chosen in a plugin or module.

So each theme designer could in theory design a set of page layouts - then release various different flavours - ie a star wars theme, simpsons theme - but the user would only choose the visual style.

sorry for rambling...

I’m guessing that what you are looking for is (some of) the functionality outlined here:
http://www.concrete5.org/documentation/general-topics/how-a-page-looks/

Indeed, i think in this specific scenario you would be better off just using concrete5.

You could implement something like this with custom site settings.

Just have your templates use site settings and then have those settings point to the actual CSS files or CSS resources.

For example, instead of a line like this in your template headers:


You could have lines like this:


Then you can upload all sorts of different CSS files (or create new CSS resources) and simply change your custom site variables to change your style.

To simplify this for an end user, you could create chunks that have all of the necessary head information for each style, all of your CSS links. You could then have a single custom site setting that uses the name of the current style chunk. Your user would just change that site setting to "blue" or "green" or "metalic," etc. The head in your templates would have something like this:


There’re probably many other ways to do something like this with a site setting or two.