Creating a Text only version of my site

(Paul Wheatley) #1

Hello,


I have 2 urls set on my site (www.mydomainname.com & www.mydomainname.com/text).



I am wanting the second (www.mydomainname.com/text) to use a design that has all the images stripped out and all the text bigger, an accessible version.



And my first (www.mydomainname.com) to just be the regular site with the standard design.



I can't find a setting that applies different designs to differrent URLs, i know you can do this with paint layouts so i think you should be able to do it with Designs, no?



Please Help



Paul

(Nic Hubbard) #2

[quote]Hello,


I have 2 urls set on my site (www.mydomainname.com & www.mydomainname.com/text).



I am wanting the second (www.mydomainname.com/text) to use a design that has all the images stripped out and all the text bigger, an accessible version.



And my first (www.mydomainname.com) to just be the regular site with the standard design.



I can't find a setting that applies different designs to differrent URLs, i know you can do this with paint layouts so i think you should be able to do it with Designs, no?



Please Help



Paul[/quote]



Yes, you can do this with designs. Just create a new design that you have built for text only, and then apply it on the settings screen of your /text page. Was this something you already tried?

(Paul Wheatley) #3

Hi,


no that won't work cos i want the same pages to be accessible by both designs, this is not a seperate page i am using, itsall the same pages, just a different design dependant on the url



Thanks though



Paul

(Nic Hubbard) #4

[quote]Hi,


no that won't work cos i want the same pages to be accessible by both designs, this is not a seperate page i am using, itsall the same pages, just a different design dependant on the url



Thanks though



Paul[/quote]



What you need to do then is use design customizations. That way, you can use the same design and just customize it for parts of your site. If you customize your body mysource tag there is even an option for text only design.



Check out the designs manual for more info on design customizations.

(Shane Weddell) #5

It is also a really good idea to create a css file for media="print" to catch "right click - print".


I once had an issue on a very large intranet where the menu was printed fully expanded. Was mayhem in the first two hours of going live as the 15 printers all groaned with people printing the new stuff. 5000 people in the organisation and every print was 150 pages of menu and 1 page of text. The sub sections had very large7 level menus that needed very aggressive caching, a lot of $ervers and insane load balancing to keep the site going.

(system) #6

[quote]Hello,


I have 2 urls set on my site (www.mydomainname.com & www.mydomainname.com/text).



I am wanting the second (www.mydomainname.com/text) to use a design that has all the images stripped out and all the text bigger, an accessible version.



And my first (www.mydomainname.com) to just be the regular site with the standard design.



I can’t find a setting that applies different designs to differrent URLs, i know you can do this with paint layouts so i think you should be able to do it with Designs, no?



Please Help



Paul[/quote]





Hello !



What you can also do that we’ve recently done in Squiz uk for the Institute for learning website is print different stylesheets or sets of stylesheets based on the current url.



Here’s the detail steps that we’ve done to set it up on http://www.ifl.ac.uk :


  • apply two urls to your site like you have today, so your pages are accessible through one or the other
  • create a standard css file for the regular version and an other css file for the text only version (striped of images and with different font size)
  • in you parse file, create a nested content design area and customize it to point to a standard page. When doing that, apply a paint layout to that page (so from the design customization screen)
  • that standard page will be empty, the content will be generated by the paint layout you've applied to it
  • in the paint layout, use the conditional keyword screen to create conditions based on the url (using Condition Server Variable and a regular expression to check the current url) and print different style sheets



    Great thing about this solution is that you don't need to maintain more than one design, and the css is persistent when you navigate the site (and it doesn't rely on javascript !!)



    Gilles
(Neo) #7

if you want to customize your design,simply change css and it's content.but it can be done who knows css.

(Jlu) #8

If all you are trying to do is create a text only version, you are able to have a link which sets a user defined design.
I.E - http://www.mycompany.com.au/home?SQ_DESIGN_NAME=text_version&SQ_ACTION=set_design_name



refer to the design Manual for more information

(Duncan Robertson) #9

Just one quick thing to think about here which is not in the design manual. You may be penalised for duplicate content if you use the ?SQ_DESIGN method - I have been. Make sure you use rel="nofollow" or canonical tags to ensure you're not getting two identical pages in the index. You run a big risk of getting your entire side indexed twice.

(Mhenley) #10

[quote]- in you parse file, create a nested content design area and customize it to point to a standard page. When doing that, apply a paint layout to that page (so from the design customization screen)

  • that standard page will be empty, the content will be generated by the paint layout you've applied to it
  • in the paint layout, use the conditional keyword screen to create conditions based on the url (using Condition Server Variable and a regular expression to check the current url) and print different style sheets

    Gilles[/quote]



    Nice going UK guys!! We needed to use the /text url implementation for a project recently in the Brisbane Office due to Squid (otherwise Jason Lu’s plan is the out of the box easiest way). We used JS and works a treat (Bart Banda implemented the site)



    APNIC: http://www.apnic.net/

    Hit the “T”: http://www.apnic.net/



    I think the most important aspect is to maintain the usability of the site - the user should not get a degredated experience - achieved by maintaining the page layout :slight_smile: