Applying standard layouts to body content for non-technical authors

(Iestyn Polley) #1

We are developing a set of standard layouts for the body content part of our pages. The idea being that our less technically inclined (Edit+) users would be able to choose one of these standard layouts when they create the asset, and then have the containers automatically created with grid CSS selectors applied. Then all the user needs to do is enter their copy into the relevant containers.

 

The basic problem we are trying to solve is that we want our less technically minded authors to be able to produce one of the standard pages without having to use the admin interface, and without having to add container divs / apply CSS selectors themselves.

 

I can think of ways to do this using custom forms and the JS API, but is there any off the shelf Squiz Matrix solution that might address this?

 

Iestyn. 

(Nic Hubbard) #2

 

I can think of ways to do this using custom forms and the JS API, but is there any off the shelf Squiz Matrix solution that might address this?

 

Have you looked into using Triggers? You could create a few assets that are built how you want, then with a trigger, allow the user to clone that asset which would have the correct container divs.

 

Then only issue I see with that is that in some version of Matrix it was buggy when clone in a asset, the container divs would bet created in a different order than the asset that was cloned. So, you would have to do some testing with this.

 

Alternately, you could use Triggers to create the container divs for you.

(Anthony Barnes) #3

Another might be to create a single paint layout and use the conditional keywords functionality to output a different format based on a value stored against the asset, for example a metadata field. This way you only need apply the paint layout in the admin interface to the section of assets you want to have this kind of functionality applied to. Users would have to be taught on creation to select the 'page type' from the metadata screen which could be something like a metadata select field. It's a relatively easy task with no custom work required.

 

We've done this with clients successfully, but it can get confusing to manage if you have many (e.g. hundreds) of conditions, so it works best with just a handful in my opinion.

(Iestyn Polley) #4

Thanks for the responses guys, that's great info. 

 

I might be able to get what I'm after with a combination of the two, particularly if I hang the triggers off an asset builder form. (It needs to be *real* simple for the user)

 

I'm going to go away and check it out some more.

 

:-)

Iestyn.