UBB.Developers Forums General Discussion Suggestions and Feedback 5.1 templates

Everybody is being very quiet about this! I've been messing with it all morning and I think I HATE it. It's just too alien...

[]http://www.amdragon.com/images/eileensig.gif[/]

hehe... I just downloaded it... will be installing very soon... I'll let you know what I think then...

matt

Just waiting for more guinea pigs.

In general, if it means the editing of the look and feel of the board is mainly done in only a handful of files set up for that purpose then I can see that will make things easier in the long run.

I do prefer the alternating 'light' and 'dark' colour scheme better horizontal rather than vertical, not sure w3t needs to clone UBB to that degree. But that's a pretty small thing, the only critical point I can make about appearance.

Darren.
http://www.bullpen.com.au

Actually it's the ease of editing that is causing me problems. I've never had any trouble editing the old format - everything is logical and easy to find. Now nothing is where it's supposed to be and I have to go searching through a whole heap of other files to do something I can do with one click with Araxis in the old version.

[]http://www.amdragon.com/images/eileensig.gif[/]

The difference is, Eileen, that once you do it, you won't have to do it again for each version upgrade.

It seems using templates is either perfectly clear, or clear as mud. I'm one of the people for whom templates make perfect sense, and I've been converting more and more of my programs to them. I was jumping for joy when w3t finally did it!

Once you get used to templates, you'll never want to go back.

You can reinstall the entire program code and probably never have to touch your templates!

It separates the output/look&feel from the program, and allows changes to one, without affecting the other.

The real power of templates can be seen on a links type site, where you can change the color scheme seasonally, for special events, or even by topic without ever touching the source code.

For a really good example, you should take a look at the goassamer-threads demo site:

http://gossamer-threads.com/scripts/links-sql/demo/

At the bottom you can change the look by clicking different template sets. When links SQL came out, it was pretty amazing to have dynamic generation of pages -- since the 2.0 version was all pre-generated, but w3t is all dynamic generated, so the effect should be very similar.

Once you go to templates, you'll never want to write or use another program without them :)

I agree, it might make it a little harder to find the exact place where you want to make a hack, but once it is done, it will save us from those headaches of updating each version and destroying some change you did in the layout, even if using Araxis Merge... at least saving update time...

I just only wish it would go one step further, that you could have a different template directory for each category, or even for each forum, and if no specified template, default to the default one. Too much?

Mateo Byler
CruceDeCaminos.com - http://crucedecaminos.com

Hey pugdog interesting thoughts on templates. Do you have 5.1 up and running at the moment so I can have a gander?

Darren.
http://www.bullpen.com.au

I might install it on a test site soon... but I haven't even downloaded it yet.

Muhammad Chishti
Creative dIRECTOR
[:white]http://www.imcuniverse.com

I've got it up now on a test db... I'm trying to see how easy it is to get Eileen's langswitch hack put back in... []/w3timages/icons/crazy.gif[/]

It's actually not too bad, once you get the hang of it...

Matt

I'm going to have to bow to the accepted wisdom here, I see.
If I'm quiet for a bit, you'll all know where I've gone...

[]http://www.amdragon.com/images/eileensig.gif[/]

I was able to get 5.1 up and running, and it seems good enough that I might move the main forum (not much traffic there yet) over to it tonight. It was a 10 minute install, and the only change I had to make was to the bottom of the footer file (see previous thread).

I haven't done any customization, just trying out the features before making it live.

http://www.postcards.com/cgi-bin/w3t_devel/wwwthreads.pl

is the demo board, and the live board is:

http://www.postcards.com/forums/wwwthreads.pl

I had only a few code changes in the w3t 5.07, but they were no longer needed due to the templates allowing those changes much more easily.

It took me about 15 minutes to make the changes to the templates (using the README as a starting point).

The big difference seems to be in "tight" formatting. The templates have a lot of extra whitespace and that will have to be removed.

Perhaps an option to strip white space during the parse process. Or, more tightly working on the parse variable routines to insert them with no leading or trailing whitespaces of any kind. Needs more playing with to know for sure. But this is a browser thing. If all browsers handled the html _strictly_ by the book, it would be sooooo much easier!!

Eileen -- don't try to make it harder than it is! One comparason was to think of the tags as "SSI" calls. You write your HTML page, and the "tags" insert the missing data on processing, and then output the page.

It's a two step process.

You design the basic site using the w3tvars & w3t_themes files, and modifications to the templates where necessary.

The next step to increase the tweaking you can do, is to edit what is put in the SSI call (the tag value).

It's a cookie cutter or puzzle. You use the "template" to tell the program where to stick the values, and how you want them to look.

You still need the program to fill in the values.

The "values" in perl can be large chunks of code! They don't have to be small. Perl is a text processing language, and for example, on the links site, the entire page of links listings is stuffed into a tag called %Links% and you build the page (for example on my site) inside a table for formatting (graphically, since the forum doesn't like braces):

------------------------
|       %header%       |
------------------------
| %links%  | %sidebar% |
------------------------
|   %footer%           |
------------------------

.

The %links% tag contains nested tables, and on average 25 links. That is all inserted into the "layout" with a small tag! Makes page design and maintennance very, very simple, and allows HTML designers to leave the programmers alone :)

The %links% tag is built from a loop of calls to the individual link template for each link, and then they are all stuffed into an

$OUTPUT{links} .= result_of_each_link_template;

In this way, it's much, much easier to build complicated sites, by building different building blocks at different levels, but at the "page" level all you do is assemble them.

If the structure of a link, or number of links, or even what a link is, changes, it doesn't matter to the page template. It inserts those values. (It's up to you to determine whether each sub-template is a complete item ie: full table, or full table row, or if it is a part of a table or row, etc. I've tended to chose where possible to make sub-templates whole tables, except where they are OBVIOUSLY a table row --- such as a FORUM-LINE which is a line in the FORUM-TABLE which is the list of tables. But FORUM-TABLE would be a "whole" item, that is inserted into the MAIN-TABLE page of the site, inside a TD set of tags. In otherwords, the top template is a "complete" item, and each of the blocks that fit in are complete items, so there is no overlapping HTML. But, this is a design thing, and everyone has their own preferences.)

The real trick is not to make it too complicated. The first release of something like this is a learning effort for both the programmers and the users, and subsequent releases will streamline and fix logic problems (and this program gets lots of regular updates!)

Just remember, what you stuff into an $OUT{xxxx} variable becomes a %TAG% in the template, and the template parser inserts the contents of that tag/variable at that point in the file.

Each formattable item/object is worth having a template, even if it's only a few lines of code long, since it makes fixing, and assembling larger, more complext objects, such as a complete table, or a page containing several tables, much easier :)

I haven't looked at the "guts" of how this template parser works, but the effect is the same as the programs I've been using.

I hope to get w3t and Links SQL integrated (there is already a shared user database link being worked out), so that one site registration will let a user use the forum, mail, links, etc all through a site.

I've been supporting Links SQL for over a year now, and now that w3t is using templates, I'll be popping in more here I honestly couldn't afford the time to work with w3t until it used templates. This is why I chose w3t over UBB (it was much easier code to decipher) and now with templates, it will rock Less time will be spent by people trying to update/upgrade the program, and more time studying and enhancing it :)

I've been over to look at your Postcards site. You don't appear to have made any changes to the basic code so no wonder you don't appreciate my distress. I have every hack anybody ever dreamed up folded into my board and it involves a LOT of changes in every area. Whichever way you slice it, this change is going to a bit of a nightmare for me, initially for sure - and I'll have to suck it and see to find out if the advertized future ease of upgrade will really happen. It could be that I'll just have to make my changes in even more places than I already do...

I find abstract philosophical explanations largely unhelpful - I need to work with concrete examples to get the feel of the thing so I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and walk my way though the plain vanilla version until I get the hang of it.

[]http://www.amdragon.com/images/eileensig.gif[/]

I didn't put in all the changes, because I was waiting for the templates :)

How about starting with something you are trying to do, and we'll go modification by modification, since you probably won't be the only one in that boat.

BTW... I did add all the modifications in ... to the 5.6 or 5.5 version, whatever I had. Then, the next day, the 5.7 version came out, and I gave up. Too much effort, too much time.

Hopefully, this will simplify the process.

BTW.... your situtation is probably somewhat unique. You've extensively modified your board, and once you do that, you are sort of at the mercy of the winds of change.

You've developed a system for upgrading from one minor version to the next, and you'll do the same with this, once you get your first version worked out.

But, FWIW, the best modifications are the ones that can be just plugged into the next release (hence, templates) and code changes that are modular in nature so the I/0 remains the same from version to version.

"Hacks" should be avoided where possible, in favor of _real_ code modifications that are worked in to the main release.

Not all of that is possible, granted, but if you are doing something that seems other people would want to do, turning it into a modifiable parameter in the setup/config/theme files makes more sense in the long run.

I _know_ this is a change in the way of thinking, but I've recognized my own mortality in the past few years, and I've been trying to develop a software solution that can live on if I don't. I have several families depending on me (the sites) to generate income, support the business, etc, and I need code that I can bring programmers into and have them up to speed in short order.

The more modular a program becomes, so the "black box" stuff stays in module or .pl files, and the less program code that actually has to be modified to make changes, the better. That way, the program developers can tweak the black-box code anyway they want, the interface(program) layer is modified to reflect those changes (or the user changes) and the templates (output) doesn't change at all from the developer's point of view.

This creates the 3-level abstraction model that works so well for so many other things.

1) the black-box, developer level.
2) the interface level (local programmers, local developers, etc).
3) the designer level (html, users, etc).

This way, the major changes from version to version occur at level 1, minor changes occur at level 2, and no "program" changes occur at level 3 (unless new tags are added, say for user-authentication) so the end-user site remains the same -- or can be changed by the user/designer without affecting or being affected by level 1 or 2.

I _love_ this sort of development!! It's _much_ harder to design a program from the ground up like this, because you can work for months and not have a running application, where if you used the quick/dirty methoud you'd have something to show for all your work -- even though maintaining it becomes the problem.

AOL is a good example -- they went industry standard (modular, plug in, open source, etc) as soon as they saw a standard, while Compuserve, Prodigy, the Source, and most others kept proprietary systems in place. We know the outcomes of that.

So, feel free to start any threads on what mods you would like to work into the 5.1 version, and I'll be happy to help.

I just don't know where to begin, since I don't fully exploit all the features of the program yet, I've been waiting to integrate the user features between my Links and Forum before I do that. I want to integrate the rating systems, review system, and even targeted banners/information between the forum and links so that people can move between them, and comment/interact easily.

That creates both the information resource (the Links) and the Interactive resource (the ratings, reviews, forum, etc) so that users can visit the site to find things, and do things, but also feel they are contributing. That is very, very important in retaining customers and visitors.

Ok,Ok, please don't beat me any more, I'll be a good girl, I promise! []http://amdragon.com/images/icons/clown.gif[/]

Your arguements are incontrovertible - I have to comply. It'll hurt like h*ll at this stage but like you say, I (and anybody who uses any future hacks I do) will be glad in the long run.

Now I have to stop talking about it and go away and do something...

[]http://www.amdragon.com/images/eileensig.gif[/]

How are you doing ? :)

I'm up and running. I've got Matt's langswitch conversion going but I haven't attempted anything myself yet. Taking it slow and easy...

[]http://www.amdragon.com/images/eileensig.gif[/]