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General Questions /

General questions about getting started with SilverStripe that don't fit in any of the categories above.

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

want to learn ss


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6 Posts   1050 Views

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vict0r

Community Member, 3 Posts

25 June 2010 at 6:05pm

Hi Everyone,

I have been doing silverstripe tutorials for the past two weeks, but find it difficult to grasp the overall concepts. My background is in design, and I'm a self-taught front-end developer, however the whole MVC and the way CMS operates seem difficult to understand. I would like to extend silverstripe and contribute some quality themes, but I want the end result to be elaborate enough that anyone can use it, so not just the css looks, but the functionality of a full website. I was hoping there might be someone here who would be willing to help me take the html/css/javascript template and prepare it for silverstripe. Seeing how a static page is made dynamic will help me understand ss better, and hopefully will allow me not only to create a few themes for ss, but also create some documentation for desing-oriented people.

So if you feel generous enough to donate some time and help me, I would love to hear from you.

On the other hand, if you're a developer and in need of a designer we can do a trade, you can help me learn ss, and in turn, I will be happy to assist you in your design projects.

Thanks in advance,

Victor

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biapar

Forum Moderator, 435 Posts

25 June 2010 at 7:21pm

Hi,

learn ss is not difficult respect to design.
You can create html/css design without any ss layout code. After you had designed template then you can write SS code <% ... %> to present data.
If you want some help, contact me.

Bye

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TotalNet

Community Member, 181 Posts

25 June 2010 at 7:41pm

Hi Victor,
There are a lot of helpful and patient folk around this forum and it's not hard to learn.

Anyway, I'd be happy to help you out with the basics and I'm looking for a designer who understands SilverStripe to work on future projects so it could be win-win :)

Feel free to contact me directly at the email in my profile.

Cheers,

Rich

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Willr

Forum Moderator, 5523 Posts

26 June 2010 at 3:23pm

so not just the css looks, but the functionality of a full website. I was hoping there might be someone here who would be willing to help me take the html/css/javascript template and prepare it for silverstripe

One of the limitations of a 'theme' is that you cannot include PHP or any functionality. All a 'theme' is in SS is html, css and javascript. This is one area that I want to look into. The idea of a theme being much more than templates some how. Things like defining a theme has extra CMS fields or widgets.

Also see this page http://doc.silverstripe.org/themes:developing for a guide on how to develop themes.

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vict0r

Community Member, 3 Posts

29 June 2010 at 1:26am

first of all, thanks to everyone who replied, its very encouraging to see people willing to help out.
Willr, ok I see now, that's what was meant by separating the look from function. I guess that does present certain limitations, so i suppose a good way to achieve what I want is to create a blueprint of functionality that my theme users will be interested in and provide either a screen-cast or a thorough pdf documentation on how to implement that.
For the functionality, I'm thinking the most common user requirements, a couple of static-content pages (about us) , a gallery/showcase/portfolio section with different categories (this one is my primary concern as I have quite a few ideas of different ways I want to implement this for various user-needs) a blog and perhaps a simple submit form.
From what I've read so far, for blog section I can use the blog module. The forms have some documentation in the tutorial 3, so should be ok. The various static pages with editable content I already have a general idea how to create.
So I guess the biggest interest is the gallery/portfolio section.

So I've been asking question on the IRC channel, and from what I've learned, the DataObjectManager module is the way to go for galleries. So I've successfully installed the DataObjectManager and swfupload. Where's a good place to start reading about creating a gallery page?
I've been told that there's a gallery module, however from reading about it, I understand there's a specific way in which it works and I think it may limit my design choices (eg. I don't necessarily want to use lightbox to display my images).
I guess what I'd really like to learn is how to take a created front-end page, and make it dynamic with ss.

Any good reading links on the subject will be very appreciated!

I'm hoping that once I understand silverstripe well enough, I will be able to address all of the aforementioned questions in a detailed tutorial :).

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vict0r

Community Member, 3 Posts

29 June 2010 at 2:41am

so i've been directed to a tutorial on using DataObjectManager by one of IRC members, so I'm going to go through that, and let you know how I went, and if I have further questions i'll post them here. ( i hope it's ok for me to just post all of my questions / comments in here rather than creating seperate topics )