How to put different content on each page, outside the [*content*] area?

Hi all,

coming from the Mambo/Joomla universe, I am thrilled by MODx. As a test, I am rebuilding a Mambo site I made (http://www.pleiadischlichtwerk.nl) into MODx.

Each page is made up of three columns: navigation, main content, sidebar. The sidebar with picture and/or text is different on each page. That is, each page has it’s own unique sidebar.

The sidebar seems to be a problem in MODx. Well, at least to me...

In Mambo I use a so called "module" which contains the text or picture, and then I tell Mambo on which page the module should be visible.

I tried chunks in MODx, but then the chunk is visible on every page.

On another Joomla site (www.mvklichaamsgerichtetherapie.nl) I did the same sidebar thing, however now the pictures are integrated in the main content (yuck!).

Any help is much appreciated!


TIA,

Bee

That’s the best thing about MODx, we have a resource called TV (Template Variables), which allow us to assign TV on specific template, and that template will have that same TV placement on every pages. After having this TV, you can assign default content on it, so that it will have the same content all over the page with the same template, and later when you want to have different content for this, you can just change it on each pages and assign an undefault value, and that changes will only affect the specific pages.

If you want images and etc, you can see it on TV, they have a a lot of variety in input type for TV, and they even have a binding option to allow you to fetch data from database and etc, and if it’s not enough for you, they have a display system called widget, which allow you to have a special formating output for your TV.

For more information, you can check out the documentation.
http://www.modxcms.com/documentation

Welcome to MODx community.

Sincerely,

Template Variables are very powerful indeed. More specifically, you can find the information more directly at http://modxcms.com/template-variables.html

There is a thread on this with explicit instructions here.

I have done something similar but using a Check Box instead of a List.

It works just fine.

Thank you everyone!

@djamoer
The TV thing is not really an option, since that would mean that every page would have to have a different template.
I want imageA on the sidebar of page 1, imageB on the sidebar of page 2, textA on page 3, imageC + a little text on page 4, etc.

@zenmaster
I will work with the info on the thread you refer to.
I have to admit, it’s a bit mind boggling: a chunk calling a chunk which has a snippet to control the output of a chunk in which you can manage the sidebar chunk...
Anyway, I expect that by experimenting with it, it will "soon" become clear.


Bee

Quote from: BeeStar at Jan 25, 2006, 10:49 AM

Thank you everyone!

@djamoer
The TV thing is not really an option, since that would mean that every page would have to have a different template.
I want imageA on the sidebar of page 1, imageB on the sidebar of page 2, textA on page 3, imageC + a little text on page 4, etc.

That’s exactly what a TV is for! Your "base" TV could even be blank. Specify what kind of input you want, RichText or just a plain textarea, then you edit the TV field (under the maind document content field) for each page.

One cool tip that might help you though.

Read documentation about @INHERIT

What I did, when I setup a TV, I usually set the default value to @INHERIT. Than in my document, whenever I fill in this TV in doc id 1, then all the sub-doc or sub-folder under the current doc/folder with id 1 will inherit the same value from the parent doc/folder.

With this you can have one are for you to change the content of one of your side bar, and it will be inherited or applied through out the subfolder or subdoc.

Hope that helps.

Quote from: BeeStar at Jan 25, 2006, 10:49 AM

I have to admit, it’s a bit mind boggling:

You are not wrong there!

When you have done it a few times though, it becomes clearer.