Moving from Page Publisher to CMS Builder

Hi James,

Thanks for the post! [:)]

I'll give you a general overview of the way CMS Builder works (and how this differs from Page Publisher) and hopefully this should shed a bit of light on what you're hoping to set up.

As you mentioned, if you were looking to create an "About Us" page in Page Publisher you'd make your own file (about_us.html) and add the necessary PML tags to the page.

In CMS Builder, you'll just add a new "About Us" section (using the Section Editor) and that's where you'll create the different fields you'd like to be editable. From there you'll take the page you'd like to output this on (something like about_us.php) and add the "Page Viewer" code. When you add this code to your PHP page you can then just modify the code to have the fields display where you'd like.

The item I didn't reference in this case is the "List Viewer" and this is where CMS Builder can handle things that Page Publisher couldn't. The List Viewer is used when you create a new section in the program that you'll continually add new listings to such as News, a Blog, Product Listings, etc. The "List Viewer" is used to display the list of articles and this is what you'd add to your "news.php" index page, for example. This list will display the title, summary and link to a full article.

Because you're making PHP pages yourself and then adding the appropriate List Viewer or Page Viewer code (depending on whether it's an index page or static content page) there isn't any automatic navigation that CMS Builder creates for you. This allows you to design the site the way you'd like and then add in CMS Builder's code on the pages that you'd like to be dynamically updated through the admin program.

I hope this helps James, just let me know if you have any other questions about this! [:)]

HiYa Mike,

Thanks for the quick reply, as always top notch support at Interactive Tools.

If you would, have a look at http://www.crcongregation.org/aboutus.html. On this page for example would a List Viewer or a Page Viewer be more appropriate?

Would I have to rename this existing page to aboutus.php?

Would I have re-enter all the text into Sections or one of the two types of Viewers in order to give a user access?

I think if I can get a grip on this one page I'll be able to figure out all the rest. [:)]

Thanks for your time.
--
James

Hi James,

It's good to hear from you!

While you will want to use a PHP page, for right now I'd just suggest copying this existing HTML page and naming that copy "aboutus.php". This way you'll have a test file to work with until you're happy with how everything looks and works and then when you're ready you can remove the aboutus.html file and change your links to point to the PHP version.

Also, for users to be able to modify any of the content on this page, you would want to copy this text into CMS Builder though it shouldn't take too much time to copy and paste the content.

Looking at this page you've linked me to, there are a couple of ways you could set this up, though I'd probably recommend using the PageViewer. This way you could create just a couple of fields for the "About Us" section in CMS Builder. If you create the main content field as a WYSIWYG editor then you'll have full control over the content on this page without having to create a long list of fields.

If you don't think that just having a few fields for all of the content on this page is going to work for you, just let me know as there's another way you could set this up using the List Viewer. Basically each of the paragraphs on this page could be it's own article in the program and then you could just output the list of articles on the aboutus.php page. If you'd like more details about this method, just let me know.

I hope this helps James! [:)]

Hiya Mike,

I've got CMS Builder (CMSB) installed and running at www.crcongregation.org.

I have run across a couple snags. If you compare www.crcongregation.org/aboutus.php with www.crcongregation.org/aboutus_Orignal.html you will notice a couple bits of weirdness.

1. There are two server side includes (SSI) on both versions of the page (the copyright notice and a text menu at the bottom of the page. However, the SSI does not display on the php version as it does on the html version. Any ideas on this one?

2. Both versions of the page us style sheets (CSS) and for the most part the php version respects them, except for all the [Top of Page] (but only in IE, Firefox respects the [Top of Page] links) links. The php version ignores the CSS (IE only) for these links only. Ideas?

Hi James,

PHP uses a different kind of include tag than SSIs. Instead of this: <!--#include file="SSItextMenu.ssi"--> try this instead: <?php include "SSItextMenu.ssi"; ?>

See if that makes a difference to the CSS. If not post back and we'll compare both pages and see what the difference is.

HiYa Dave,

Changing the SSI call as you suggested above solved the problem of the SSIs not displaying. Now they do display as expected.

However, when the php page is viewed with IE7 the [Top of Page] links do not respect the style sheet. All the other styles are respected, just not the [Top of Page] links when viewed with IE7.

When viewing the same php page using Firefox 2 all styles are respected. Ideas??

So one problem fixed? That's good.

The PHP code is never seen by the browser, only the html that is generated. Comparing the two pages, the original has this:

<a href="#top_of_page"><small>[ Top of Page ]</small></a>

And the new php version has this:

<a class="null" href="#top_of_page"><span style="font-size: x-small;">[ Top of Page ]</span></a>

I imagine that happened when you copied and pasted the code into the WYSIWYG. That the WYSIWYG converted it. Not sure how the class="null" got in there. In any case, you might try removing that top of page link and then recreating it in the wysiwyg. You can also try clicking the "html" button in the wysiwyg to see what code it's generating.

Hopefully that will solve it. If it doesn't, let me know and we'll keep trying.

Dave,

I manually removed all the class="null" code and stillIE7 ignores the inline style statement where as Firefox see it and displays as it should? Ideas?

Hi James,

Sorry for the delay. Took a little while to track this one down.

The reason they're displaying differently in the wysiwyg and on your website is because CMS Builder and the wysiwyg display content with different doctypes. The doctype is the tag at the top of the page that tells the browser how to display the page.

Your website is using a HTML 4 doctype:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">

CMS Builder and the WYSIWYG are using XHTML 1.0:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

Switching to the XHTML 1.0 doctype made the "top of page" links display the correct size. My understanding is that IE is more "standards compliant" when you have a more recent doctype tag.

In any case, you could try changing the doctype to fix the size of those links. Note, that may change how IE renders other parts of your page. I didn't notice any other changes but it's something to be aware of. Also, moving forwards, I've personally found XHTML 1.0 doctype a little easier to design for as the browsers tend to behave in a more similar way with it. Although, it's completely up to you.

Hope that helps, any other questions let me know!