Page Types 5.7 Feedback
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I'm in the process of building a Theme for C5.7, while building out a page type for a blog I stumbled upon some things that make life harder for developers/editors and/or that didn't really make sense in my eyes. This is not meant to be a "rant", just some things that I noticed and that could/should be improved.
##Edit Form Page
1.When I create Sets, I can't drag & drop items from one set to another. I have to delete and recreate them.
2. I can't change the type of the form element after it is created (minor issue).
3. I can't mark "content" form elements as required.
##Output
1. The name "output" makes no sense at first sight. Why not change it to Page Defaults or Presets or something else more descriptive.
2. It's indiscernible which elements created on the forms page can be dragged as a "composer control". Content and Image Blocktypes work, Tags for example don't.
3. This is a big issue for me: when I have already created some pages with the custom page type and decide to change the defaults later on, they don't change on the earlier created pages. E.g: I create a blog page type and write some blog posts; later on i decide to display tags in the sidebar. The old blog posts don't get updated and no tags are shown. The new blog posts display tags. First I thought this might be a cache issue but it appears it isn't.
I hope my comments make some sense :)
Greetings
##Edit Form Page
1.When I create Sets, I can't drag & drop items from one set to another. I have to delete and recreate them.
2. I can't change the type of the form element after it is created (minor issue).
3. I can't mark "content" form elements as required.
##Output
1. The name "output" makes no sense at first sight. Why not change it to Page Defaults or Presets or something else more descriptive.
2. It's indiscernible which elements created on the forms page can be dragged as a "composer control". Content and Image Blocktypes work, Tags for example don't.
3. This is a big issue for me: when I have already created some pages with the custom page type and decide to change the defaults later on, they don't change on the earlier created pages. E.g: I create a blog page type and write some blog posts; later on i decide to display tags in the sidebar. The old blog posts don't get updated and no tags are shown. The new blog posts display tags. First I thought this might be a cache issue but it appears it isn't.
I hope my comments make some sense :)
Greetings
Thanks for the hint with "setup on child pages". Missed it since it was my first experience with custom page types. Does exactly what I need although this behavior should be the default imho.
You have a great youtube channel btw.
You have a great youtube channel btw.
Just some more things regarding Pages Types:
First some conceptual questions that I have.
1. Page Templates vs. Page Types
I think I got it right, that Page Templates are the actual files in my theme directory and Page Types are more of a "virtual" nature. One could say that Page Templates are the base for the Page Types and are therefore not directly used to create pages in Concrete5. I think that makes it somewhat confusing, especially for end users, since Page Types are effectively the templates to create pages from.
As I see it right now, there are no advantages in creating multiple Page Templates with different layouts (like right-sidebar.php, left-sidebar.php etc.) since I can use the grid to define those as Page Types. Unless there are some major changes like different headers or footers that need to be made in PHP. Is this correct so far?
2. Extending Page Types
There is no way right now to "extend" Page Types? Let's say I want my Blog Page Type based on the two column Page Type, I have to copy the two column Page Type, make the changes and rename it, so that there is no connection between the two?
Another thing that I miss, is that there is no obvious connection between the Page Type and the actual page created from that Page Type. In the Page Settings menu I can change the Page Template but not the Page Type. This is probably okay, since the current page content would be lost when changing the Page Type, but there should at least be a Link to edit the Page Type Defaults (Let's say I want to quickly edit the "share this" block on all of my blog posts).
This leads me to the next point that I already made in the previous post, that changes to the Page Type don't get instantly applied to the pages based on that Page Type. I suppose there are reasons for this, but in my mind, that's the great power of templating. You make a change in one place and it trickles down to the other pages that are based on this template (yes it's possible but you have to manually set it, and why would you make changes to the template and don't apply them to child pages?).
One last thing, when I create Form Controls for the Page Type there is an option to set custom templates, but there is nothing to select, although I have custom templates in my theme (for the content block for example). What are these custom templates refering to?
Again, I hope my comments make some sense and I am not completely missing the goals and use cases the developers had in mind when creating the Page Type system.
First some conceptual questions that I have.
1. Page Templates vs. Page Types
I think I got it right, that Page Templates are the actual files in my theme directory and Page Types are more of a "virtual" nature. One could say that Page Templates are the base for the Page Types and are therefore not directly used to create pages in Concrete5. I think that makes it somewhat confusing, especially for end users, since Page Types are effectively the templates to create pages from.
As I see it right now, there are no advantages in creating multiple Page Templates with different layouts (like right-sidebar.php, left-sidebar.php etc.) since I can use the grid to define those as Page Types. Unless there are some major changes like different headers or footers that need to be made in PHP. Is this correct so far?
2. Extending Page Types
There is no way right now to "extend" Page Types? Let's say I want my Blog Page Type based on the two column Page Type, I have to copy the two column Page Type, make the changes and rename it, so that there is no connection between the two?
Another thing that I miss, is that there is no obvious connection between the Page Type and the actual page created from that Page Type. In the Page Settings menu I can change the Page Template but not the Page Type. This is probably okay, since the current page content would be lost when changing the Page Type, but there should at least be a Link to edit the Page Type Defaults (Let's say I want to quickly edit the "share this" block on all of my blog posts).
This leads me to the next point that I already made in the previous post, that changes to the Page Type don't get instantly applied to the pages based on that Page Type. I suppose there are reasons for this, but in my mind, that's the great power of templating. You make a change in one place and it trickles down to the other pages that are based on this template (yes it's possible but you have to manually set it, and why would you make changes to the template and don't apply them to child pages?).
One last thing, when I create Form Controls for the Page Type there is an option to set custom templates, but there is nothing to select, although I have custom templates in my theme (for the content block for example). What are these custom templates refering to?
Again, I hope my comments make some sense and I am not completely missing the goals and use cases the developers had in mind when creating the Page Type system.
Okay, on further investigation I am missing the point of Page Types. I assumed they were more powerful than they are.
I reordered the content of my Blog Sidebar in the corresponding Page Type defaults page and clicked "setup on child pages" for every item which had no effect. Next I changed the Area Design of the Sidebar, this had no effect on the child pages and there wasn't even an option to set it up on child pages. New pages of this Page Type inherit the changes, though.
Sorry for the confusion.
I reordered the content of my Blog Sidebar in the corresponding Page Type defaults page and clicked "setup on child pages" for every item which had no effect. Next I changed the Area Design of the Sidebar, this had no effect on the child pages and there wasn't even an option to set it up on child pages. New pages of this Page Type inherit the changes, though.
Sorry for the confusion.
1. Good suggestion, I reckon this would be possible down the track.
2. I don't think this will ever happen because of what is happening behind the scenes
3. I think this is because it's a bit harder to determine if something has content when it's being entered via Redactor. (but I agree that this would be handy)
##Output
1. I agree, I think Page Defaults makes a bit more sense here as a label.
2. I think this comes down to whether a block itself is able to be added to composer. Yes, it would be nice to be able to tell this.
(this is a bit of a new feature, I reckon it might still be a work in progress)
3. This is something you should be able to manage with the 'Setup on Child Pages' option. When editing page defaults, click on a block and have a look at that option, that's designed to be able to respectively add default blocks to existing pages.