6 Replies Latest reply on Apr 5, 2004 8:55 AM by sgwood

    Nearly impossible to develop complex site [let's discuss]

    rebornspirit

      The more I work with Nukes, the more I found it hard to use, it's not easy to build a complex user interface (or perhaps I'm doing it wrong ...).

      I have the following situation:

      - The website uses 2 or more different templates, related with a specific url mapping, i.e. index, backoffice, customer, blablabla ... So the user can't have a personalized theme, instead their are more themes that should be used at runtime. Themes are thus not user coupled.

      - Some blocks are placed on different locations when using them on different templates.

      - I have more then 1 stylesheet, so placing them in the hardcoded position the core module dictates us is not possible, it uses only one stylesheet.

      - ...

      So, when implementing this, I already had to write a lot of java, not a problem of being a j2ee developer, but I found it to much code to do something, it seems sometimes that I spent more time working around the system then using it's power directly ...

      I think the design is great for the home, garden and kitchen use, like most of the people out there use phpNuke for, but to build complex enterprise sites ... it seems that some work needs to be done ...

      Can someone explain me a development strategy on how to implement the problems I pointed out above.

      I think I will not be the only one making complex design, so some deep discussion would be,efit every one.

        • 1. Re: Nearly impossible to develop complex site [let's discuss
          rebornspirit

          Some extra information about the post above,

          Let's initially talk about doing all the templating with plain HTML, not inline coding (please, we do not live in the prehistoric times), just plain html with those <!-- BEGIN ... tags, and placed in the database instead of putting them into a jar. Why have a versioning system if you don't use it eh ;).

          Grtz

          • 2. Re: Nearly impossible to develop complex site [let's discuss
            jae77

            work is being done to pull out the inline html, but it's a slow going process.

            there should also be a way to support templates in both the jar and the database, w/ the ability to drop in a completely new deployment package containing nothing but templates and a theme.

            i have some ideas for the latter, but since i'm still knee deep in ripping out inline html they will have to wait.

            i'm not sure what your current usage of nukes is (are you developing custom modules, or just using what exists), but why not take one of the existing modules and start refactoring out the html to lend a hand?

            • 3. Re: Nearly impossible to develop complex site [let's discuss
              rebornspirit

              I guess I'm the only one who thinks that nukes is a nice product, but in his current release isn't usable for enterprise development ....

              I would like to hear from you how you handled the use of multiple theme, dependent on what part or page of the site you are, i.e. .

              I'm going to test cocoon with lenya this couple of weeks, let's see where the differences are. Anyone out there that already used cocoon or lenya???

              Grtz

              • 4. Re: Nearly impossible to develop complex site [let's discuss

                 

                I guess I'm the only one who thinks that nukes is a nice product, but in his current release isn't usable for enterprise development ....


                Nukes is raw right now, but the basic concepts are there and right for what I want. It depends on what you mean by "enterprise development".

                "rebornspirit" wrote:
                I would like to hear from you how you handled the use of multiple theme, dependent on what part or page of the site you are


                If you are talking about role-based themes, ie. different themes for administrators versus normal users versus super users, I think that can be easily done by restricting the setting of the theme for each user to what you want it to be.

                Anything more complicated than that makes me think that you are trying to do something that themes are not designed to do. Themes focus on basic look and feel, and layout. Blocks and module content appear in specified areas in the layout. Blocks can appear or disappear based on criteria you specify. Changing the theme on a page by page basis makes no sense - changing the "theme" on part of a page should be done by applying stylesheet classes.


                Sherman


                • 5. Re: Nearly impossible to develop complex site [let's discuss
                  rebornspirit

                   

                  "sgwood" wrote:

                  Changing the theme on a page by page basis makes no sense - changing the "theme" on part of a page should be done by applying stylesheet classes.


                  And what about a site that has a lspecific layout for the index page (start page) and then a different page layout for all the other pages. Is this so strange to you? Sames something basic to me, but it there isn't an easy way to accomplish this with nukes. And I'm NOT talking about a user specific layout.

                  I needed to write my own modules for that, for something as basic as that! I'm getting all my stylesheets and templates and ... out of the database repository. And even a simple way to get the stylesheet out of the databse isn't included .....

                  I'm not doing some extreme in my eyes and certainly not misuing templates......

                  Grte


                  • 6. Re: Nearly impossible to develop complex site [let's discuss

                    You do not seem to be reading/understanding when I reply to you, in this thread or here http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=3828532#3828532.

                    As I have pointed out, Nukes can do everything you have described, but you have to grok how it does things. You are in open source hell, faced with a body of code that is hard to get your brain around, there is little documentation, and there is only the patchy support on the forums. Cocoon et al is going to be no different.


                    Sherman