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Installing SilverStripe /

Getting SilverStripe up and running on your computer and on your web server.

Moderators: martimiz, Sean, Ed, biapar, Willr, Ingo, swaiba

New to SS | Mentor needed | Will pay


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11 Posts   3977 Views

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wilsonStaff

Community Member, 143 Posts

9 May 2010 at 5:34am

Hi, i need a SS mentor that will help me learn the basics to get me started. I can pay on a fee base, i mean i sent Paypal a amount of money that would cover the tiem the mentor answers my questions via emails.

That mentor WONT have to do work for me, otherwise than heklp me get started and understand the basics.

Thanks!

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wilsonStaff

Community Member, 143 Posts

10 May 2010 at 12:18pm

Asking once again. I need help decifer the basics and SS...

... and to solve those damn server problems.....

Thanks!

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youngmug

Community Member, 19 Posts

11 May 2010 at 2:57pm

What kind of basics are you thinking of? Most of the important stuff is covered in the tutorials, especially the first one.

If you ask a few questions, I might even be able to help a bit for free on this forum.

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wilsonStaff

Community Member, 143 Posts

11 May 2010 at 3:23pm

Well.... a lot of question and no, what i am looking for is not in the tutorials.... id be more than happy if you could prove me im wrong. Let me ask you a few questions.... and point me to the place where its explained.

Let me say i bought the SS book from Ingo Schommer and have been stuck at least 10 times in the first 100s pages.... so i stopped reading till at least i understand those pages!

Here we go:

HOW DO YOU START A SITE FRMOM SCRATCH?
I mean, how do you construct the HTML structure that you will feed the template with, assign CSS files to templates?

HOW TO YOU ACCESS HTML HEADERS OF THE HOME PAGE or ANY PAGE?
I want to add JS scripts and TinyCME wont let me do that.

HOW DO YOU TRANSFER FILES FROM LOCAL SERVER TO WEB SERVER?
Via FTP or is SS has a feature for that, à la Dreamweaver?

HOW DO YOU OPEN AN .SS FILE?
I know its supposed to be opened with any text editor, but i get garbage when i open any .ss files. Like this:


$Layout

© 2009. Tous droits réservés.    

• class="first"class="right"> $MenuTitle
entrée employés entrée clients témoignages
$Encart

envoyer envoyer Europe / Canada

Ive read that ive should see the HTML structure (div, p, h1, etc)......

I have more in store if you need more.

Many thanks.

PS Sorry if i feel fed up, i am....

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youngmug

Community Member, 19 Posts

11 May 2010 at 3:39pm

I really wish the forum had a quote function....

Anyway,

As I understand it, the book is best for those experienced with PHP and object-oriented coding in that language. You might get some stuff from it, but it will probably be over your head if you aren't PHP-savvy. I haven't purchsed the book yet, so I'm just going off what I've read on the book.

Templates are described in Tutorial 1 in the Templates section. When you install the site, you can choose to use the basic template to start with, which gives a good foundation for you. You can also choose to use the Black Candy theme, which is built out in a nice CSS-focused way and will help with designing.

You can access the headers through the templates. Note that you can also insert script tags inside the editor if you have something you need only in the one page.

You can use FTP to upload files. For web-accessible files, you can upload them in the Files area of the CMS.

.ss files should be able to work in any text editor. Since they will contain some HTML mixed with the Sapphire templating language, don't open them in Dreamweaver or it'll break them.

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wilsonStaff

Community Member, 143 Posts

12 May 2010 at 12:08am

HI Youngmug, here are some answers to your comments, for which i thanks you.

Templates are described in Tutorial 1 in the Templates section. When you install the site, you can choose to use the basic template to start with, which gives a good foundation for you. You can also choose to use the Black Candy theme, which is built out in a nice CSS-focused way and will help with designing.

OK, but what if i want to start from scratch????

You can access the headers through the templates. Note that you can also insert script tags inside the editor if you have something you need only in the one page.

Ive tried to insert the script into the editor, it wont accept it, it deletes it. Now, how to OPEN the template?

.ss files should be able to work in any text editor. Since they will contain some HTML mixed with the Sapphire templating language, don't open them in Dreamweaver or it'll break them.

Ive opened .ss files with a text editor, and it shows garbage, nothing near of HTML files.... More, how to open a SPECIFIC (homepage for example) .ss file????

Thanks, really, for helping.

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youngmug

Community Member, 19 Posts

12 May 2010 at 7:03am

You can start from scratch if you wish. Use the BlackCandy or "tutorial" themes as a guide for the template language expressions you'll need, such as <% base_tag %> and $MetaTags() constructs. In a default install, there is only a "Page" type, so you'll just have the Page.ss template.

As for seeing garbage, maybe it extracted poorly? I grabbed the 2.4.0 tar archive and checked blackcandy/templates/Page.ss and saw this:

As for opening a specific page template, well, I highly suggest doing a test install of SilverStripe and running through tutorial #1. If you can't I'll give a quick explanation of why you can't open a template for a specific page.

The first thing to understand is that each "page" in SilverStripe doesn't have a backing file. Rather, it's all about the type of page each item is.

Templates in SilverStripe are based on the type of each item. The default built-in type for free-form content pages is, simply, "Page". There are also redirector types, virtual types, and so on but that's not important for this. When you make a new page, it will have the type of "Page". This page type corresponds to the themes/*/templates/Page.ss and mysite/code/Page.php pages.

As such, even the homepage will just be another item of type Page unless you make a specific HomePage (or whatever you want to call it) type with associated template. Tutorial #1 explains how to split out things like the header and footer of a site so you don't end up repeating code. By creating different page types, you can make different template layouts for different types of pages on your website.

As an example, imagine I am building a website for a design studio. They want to have sections for the different work they do (branding, web design, typography, packaging design) and a page for each example. I can have a generic Page type that will hold common things like contact pages, legal notices. I can also have more specific types like a home page type with a design of a nice rotation of their work, a product showcase page type that will provide a layout for each example, and a category type designed to hold a grid with each item that is linked to the example page. I only have to create four templates in this case and only have four template files to manage for the whole site.

Yes, it's a bit overkill for simple sites, but for websites with multiple areas with different layout needs, it's a great system. It also is a good balance of flexibility and structure.

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wilsonStaff

Community Member, 143 Posts

12 May 2010 at 1:15pm

Edited: 12/05/2010 1:18pm

OK, here an update. I checked the preferences of my text editor, and it turns out that it was (re)coding as soon as it opens the .ss file. Now i can see the data as it should. Now..

1) Can you explain differences/usage between .ss files from/for:
themes/templates/Page.ss
themes/templates/Layout/Page.ss
themes/templates/Includes/Page.ss

2) If i want to add <script..... /> into the <head> tags of every page, i will open Page.ss file and add the script between <head> </head>, like any other HTML file? Its HTML type not Photoshop.

3) Look at the pic below. Which type of file (.ss or .php) do i have to open to change the words/letters into the menu bar and how possibly shold be the file?

As i said, i HAVE to do these simple changes and when done, ill dig into the tutorials. I know its the wrong way of doing things, but i HAVE (client's requirements) to do it NOW!

Thanks!

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