Important announcements from CouchCMS team
40 posts Page 2 of 4
Just found this , wow thank you . I build with Mobirise and will be using your CMS to add custom blocks with editable cards and photos for clients .
@Networkspaares, welcome :)

I found a thread over at Mobirise forum discussing the use of Couch with it - https://forums.mobirise.com/discussion/29509/cms-mabey

I'd be interested in knowing how exactly Mobirise users would go about doing that.
I mean, Mobirise already works on the concept of blocks so, IMHO, it should be sufficient to integrate Couch with it only in the basic way i.e. without the blocks feature discussed in the current thread. But then, people can come up with different ideas, so I'd like to know them.

Please do care to share your methodology once your site is complete.
Thanks.
@KK, I'm glad you looked into Mobirise. I was going to let you know about it myself, but you've beat me to it! Yes, I've been tinkering with it myself the last couple days, and I do find it capable of building nice looking sites *very* quickly. A good tool for building a landing page in a limited time. And as you've noted, the most practical way I see is to export the Mobirise site as a static site and retrofit Couch as per usual.

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However, from what I've gathered, a lot of Mobirise users like to continuously manage their design in the Mobirise app and re-export any updates to their web servers, overwriting their earlier site, and thus overwriting any work one may have done when initially retrofitting Couch into it -- a one-way street. It's not a terrible hassle to re-do light and simple retrofitting before pushing the updates to a server, but a more ideal solution may be to have a custom Mobirise extension running inside the Mobirise app that "fetches" data from a Couch-powered JSON API - a simple one that serves JSON to GET requests would do and can be made possible with <cms:content_type 'application/json' />.

A lot of the Mobirise folks simply serve up static html sites, so theoretically a developer could code up a Couch-powered GET API on the side that delivers simple responses with text fields, image urls, etc. And perhaps those GET requests themselves could be written and managed from within a custom Mobirise extension, thus serving dynamic content from any public HTTP API inside the Mobirise app -- a two-way street that doesn't overwrite any Couch retrofitting. Essentially, this lets Couch sit on the side and serve as a lightweight headless CMS.

I did look into Mobirise extension development, but the documentation is *quite* sparse...

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While the Mobirisers may prefer a custom extension, so they can stay inside their app, I do still prefer the Couch PageBuilder without a visual builder app, as it essentially does the same thing that Mobirise does if you don't mind working from the admin panel instead. And you get to build your own blocks with native Couch code. Big plus!

I must say though, these visual builder apps are nice options for making quick brochure sites or landing pages in an afternoon. Another option I caught wind of is Blocs, a Mac based code builder. It's really flexible and reminds me more of Webflow, as it feels more like real coding and not just using someone else's theme or block.
Matt, if I got it right you are suggesting the use of JSON API from within Mobirise app. So once the data is fetched it then gets saved statically into the generated HTML (the live site does not use any API). Is that correct?
@KK, almost! But instead of Mobirise fetching the content and then exporting the resulting content statically, it would (1) fetch the content from Couch, (2) preview those results in the app, and then (3) export whatever frontend javascript is required to render what Mobirise was previewing in the app.

I've branched my full thoughts (and how they might apply more broadly beyond Mobirise) to another topic. I believe, while connecting with Mobirise is tangentially related to v2.3 and PageBuilder, it may deserve to live as its own topic. Here's the link: Using Couch as a headless CMS for Vue/React apps (and Mobirise, Blocs, etc if extensions are built by them)
@KK , Hi , having some luck , but my programming skills are limited, I've managed to get one block in a page by adding the Couch tags after and before the mobirise Content tags . then its just a case of dumping the text code in between the text tags the cards you want to edit . This can be altered in Mobirise ie. background font etc. without affecting the couch code and re exported. sad to say so far ive had little luck with photos.

Also to note this will only work with one block on a page , I've tried a second with no luck it just doesn't show in the couch admin. my next step is to edit the file outside Mobirise with the couch tags , as the published php is a lot different t o the HTML editor that we use within Mobirise.

Stay safe

S
@Networkspaares,

Also to note this will only work with one block on a page

There is no reason why Couch wouldn't work with any number of blocks.

Thing is, I actually have no idea in what way you are trying to incorporate Couch into your design so, could you please PM me a copy of the .php file that you are placing on the site?
I'll be in a position to help you in a more meaningful manner once I see that.

Thanks.
Hi, I'm an old Couch user; new to using the forum. I just want to say I'm excited to see conversations both on the Couch and Mobirise forums regarding integration and/or collaboration with site building software.

About 3 years ago, I was invited to have a similar conversation on the Slack forums for CoffeeCup, another visual site building application. There I was trying to encourage CoffeeCup developers to consider Couch. More specifically, I was interesting in their adding in additional functionality to CoffeeCup that would allow me to put that opening head and closing PHP tag Couch requires at the beginning and end of a page so that I wouldn't have to add it manually after export. It's funny that I'm seeing that same darn problem being realized on the Mobirise forum today. MWLarkin1, I see you ran into that issue.

I'm new to Mobirise, but I've already downloaded and tried it on the Mac and it's very interesting. Certainly a lot more template-based than CoffeeCup. Some may like that, some may not. The fact that Mobirise, like CoffeeCup, is not cloud based is also a plus for me.

As a right-brain creative, my ultimate wish would be for software developers like CoffeeCup and Mobirise to integrate Couch into their respective site builders much in the same way they all integrate foundational frameworks like Foundation and Bootstrap. Mobirise and Coffeecup users really don't need to know how either of these frameworks function. They simply drag and drop components using the site builder of choice. That's how I envision these builders working with Couch. Just drag the couch element you want into your design, and the software sets up all of the code. I'm hoping these conversation, like that of MWLarkin1, as well as the new features like KK has spoken about here, will lead to this potential ultimate integration. High hopes perhaps, but maybe something we can aim for.

All the best,
Cliff Muncy
Tobaccoville, NC
Hey Cliff! Good to see you on the forum :)

I agree with you. MWLarkin also spoke about having at least some kind of an addon (if not full-fledged integration) that would automatically convert Mobirise design into a format that Couch understands.

Unfortunately, details about Mobirise internals are almost non-existent so for now it appears that manually tweaking the output is the only solution.
Hello KK,

Have you tried GrapesJS?

GrapesJS
https://grapesjs.com/
40 posts Page 2 of 4