Re: [Phpwebsite-developers] Template system (Smarty)

[Karsten D. <k.d...@tu...>]

On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 08:25:31PM -0500, Todd Owen wrote:

> I didn't mean I wanted to have dynamic style sheets, although that would =
be
> an interesting concept.  I just wanted to make sure we used style sheets
> first, then templates (i.e. no font tags in the template).

That is an absolute need, given that we want to be XHTML compliant (there
aren't any font tags anymore, are there?).

To lay out what I imagine for the use of templates:

We would have one template for the general page layout, having placeholders
for:
 - menu
 - left blocks
 - right blocks
 - main content
 - login box (or is this a "normal" block?)
 - little things as title, etc.

Then we would have a template that just defines one standard block. This
would just have:
 - title
 - content

This way one could change the general appearance of pws (phpWebSite that is,
not Personal Web Server :-) by just changing two files, and probably the
stylesheet. Or you stick with the general layout and just change the block
template to make them have rounded edges or diferent borders.

We could further make it possible for every block/plugon to have it's own
template. This couild be done through an additional field in the database:
if empty, use the standard block template, if not use the one in the
database.

Speaking of database: I think we should not store the templates in the
database. First because of speed issues, second because it is sufficient to
store the template name in the database, and third because storing the
templates as files makes them easier to edit.

The idea with having dynamic stylesheets is in fact very good. I implemented
that once in a somewhat experimental project, and it makes it possible to
avoid that fu***ng font-size problem regarding Win/Mac/Linux. On top of
that, we could give the admin the possibility to change the colours and
fonts of pws through a simple interface.

This way we have the best from both approaches: You can stick with the basic
layout and change things through a web interface. Or you can lay your hands
on the templates, to change things more drastically.

Just my 2 cents.

BTW: What about having a template for config.php? Add some form elements to
the setup and/or admin pages, write back config.php and voila: Browser based
setup. No more editing of config.php. And wouldn't it be possible to have
pws actually create the database? It would have to ask for "root" access to
the database once, it could immediately unset the corresponding vars after
creating the db. Or would you consider this too much a security risk? We
could make it optional, for those who care.

Regards,
Karsten

PS: Sorry for my always-too-long posts :-)
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