Hi, I'm currently an unhappy Joomla/K2 user. I already managed to design and produce my own website (I'm not a webdesigner) but, after some years working with such tools, I'm very unsatisfied in regard the lack of flexibility and relative heavy weight. My currently website is http://www.andreaspada.com

I'm considering switching to CouchCMS (after an exhaustive research) and it seems very well taylored to my needs, but I have to entirely re-learn how to layout the content. Something I like In Joomla/K2 is that I can re-layout the categories and the items even after templating the whole website.

As I need some simple "almost" statis webpage - landing, about, contact - and some very complex portfolio pages, organized in folders and subfolders (basses, cellos, violas, etc...) with a template for each item and as well a template for a "category" page, which display generic information for every instrument family (whats my basses have in common, for example) I'd like to understand how to correctly layout my content and my template.

where can I found very detailed information in regard this?

Many thanks!!!

Hi Andrea Spada!

I have check your website, and your work really amazing!

I can suggest you to read this. I was start from there.

Im now use couch for all my client's websites, also my own company website. They like couch, cos, what they want, couch serve it. Not like other cms, that you need to fit the template into it, with couch, you fit it to the template

Welcome to the community Sir!

Thansk, dear! I'm glad you like my work!

So, I have already study the tutorials - and prepared the Aurelius testing website. Although, as there are many ways to laid out the content - and as I have very specific needs (nested categories with specific tag, multilanguage...) I really want to understand how to better laid ouy and structure my content to let my website go further and improve.

I still do not understand how can I have a website structured, for example, this way:

index.php
about.php
contat.php
instruments/my_instruments.php (onepage template)
basses/my_basses.php (another different onepage template)
sofia.php (same single_item template for each model...)
safirah.php (""")
epheso.php (""")
...
- the same for cellos,violas, etc...
portfolio/filterable (by kind) view with all items
item1.php
item2.php
...
faq/
faq_bows.php
faq_technicals.php
faq_generic.php
...

I really want to switch from joomla to a lighter CMS, and it seems that CouchCMS could fit my needs.
In K2, its very easy to structure the content this way, but I'm confident that it will be possible to do that with Couch...

Cheers,
Andrea

So, do you need a multi page website or onepage website? if you need a multipage, you can use aurelius docs for your structure for reference.

In aurelius docs, the website structure like this :

Code: Select all

- index.php - http://www.sitename.com/ (pretty url)
- about.php - about.html (pretty url)
- portfolio.php / portfolio.php?f=n (with category) - portfolio/category-name/portfolio-item.html (with pretty url)
- blog.php / blog.php?f=n (with category) - blog/category-name/blog-item.html (with pretty url)
- contact.php - contact.html (with pretty url)

So, looking at your structure, i can suggest you use folder for each your clonable page :

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- instrument.php (with folder that list all the instrument below, like bass, contra bass, cello, violin etc). So in pretty url, it will output like this : www.site-name.com/instrument/contrabass/damasco.html

- portfolio.php (with folder that list all the category below, like cat1, cat2, cat3 etc). So in pretty url, it will output like this : www.site-name.com/portfolio/cat1/portfolio-item.html

But if you need a onepaga website, you can see my working in progress website (ill pm you the creds), its a onepage website, with not onepage structure.

Really sorry about my english problem, im not good in english.

Hope this help.

[KK]

Hi Andreas,

I studied your site.

As is pretty obvious, the most complex section of the site is that for the 'instruments'.
To duplicate the way the section is currently structured, in Couch we can use the standard home-view, folder-view and page-view strategy.

So suppose we use a clonable template named 'instruments.php', we can create 'DOUBLE BASSES', 'BAROQUES', 'CELLOS' etc. as 'folders'.
The 'SAFIRAH', 'AMALFI' etc. will be the individual cloned pages each belonging to one of the folders.

You are not using the home-view - it is redirecting to the first folder-view.
So we'll just concentrate on the folder-view and page-view.

Almost all your folder-views (except 'contrabassettos') and all the page-views (except 'amalfi' and a few more) have the same layouts.
The exceptions noted above are showing more data than the others.

Couch, as it stands, right now can have different layouts for different folders/pages but it cannot have different data (i.e. defined editable regions) for different folders and pages - that is to say when we define editable regions for a template, *all* the pages show the same regions while editing them.

So with this limitation in mind, we'll have to define all editable regions that can appear in any of the pages. For example, 'amalfi' uses a small gallery of pictures that we can implement using repeatable-region. Although this type of gallery will be used only in 'amalfi' (and probably a handful of other pages), we'll nevertheless have to define it in the template and these regions will then appear while editing all pages. We can choose to leave them empty, though, for pages that won't use them - on the front-end we can check if these regions are filled and display them only if they are.

So, if you are ok with this limitation, rest becomes easy and will be the same as explained in the tutorial e.g.

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<cms:if k_is_folder>
    <cms:embed 'my_folder_markup.html' />
</cms:if>

<cms:if k_is_page>
    <cms:embed 'my_page_markup.html' />
</cms:if>

The embedded snippets will carry the HTML for the folders and the pages.

As for the multi-lingual approach, you can see the discussion at viewtopic.php?f=8&t=74

In closing, allow me to admit that implementing your site (some sections) won't be the most straightforward thing to do.
But once done, it should be very easy to administer and maintain.

Please feel free to let us know if you have any specific questions.

Thanks.

Thanks you so much, KK! I'll carefully study your advices and try to get some trial working version. I have to check if I can understand how to correctly layout all the things.

KUDOS!!!

Cheers,
Andrea