I was thinking of a couple of things regarding the ongoing documentation
effort and the recent request for converting a static website to a
Radiant based site and this got me wondering.
One of the questions that has been asked in the past is why Radiant
doesn’t have any templates/ designs. Of course, I know the answer to
that - Radiant doesn’t really care what you manage with it and every
site is unique and so, it doesn’t offer anything.
On the other hand, the ‘Blog’ is offered as an example that people could
use.
If you think about it, Radiant is an absolutely fantastic replacement
for someone who wants to replace a static website such as a small
company website. In that case, would it make sense to add a couple of
other options to the db bootstrap - like ‘small company website’. If we
do that, we could end up creating:
A header and footer snippet
A menu bar (standard top horizontal menu)
Two layouts - one for the home page and one for a site page
A stylesheet
A few sections - Home, About Us, Press, Products, etc.
This has a few advantages:
[1] This could be a very simple site and we can align to use some
standard accepted names for the CSS classes. That way, it gives others
a set of sections that they could design ‘templates’ for. A ‘template’
might comprise a stylesheet and some graphics.
[2] It creates a more ‘live’ site that can simply be adopted and adapted
even by people who are less tech-savvy. Someone could install it for
them, and they can use it from there. The sample sections would use
just enough tags to help them get started.
What do you think? Does someone have something that they can contribute
towards this?
A long time ago, John solicited contributions of “templates” with the
opportunity for people to get them included in the main Radiant
distribution. I think this is a fabulous idea and I’d like to
reinitiate it. I’m going to up the ante some and say that the top
submissions will get a Radiant T-shirt and/or other swag in addition to
inclusion of their template in the core. I’ve been itching to get some
tangible Radiant goods out anyway. I’ll put this up on the Radiant site
later and announce the link via the blog.
A long time ago, John solicited contributions of “templates” with the
opportunity for people to get them included in the main Radiant
distribution. I think this is a fabulous idea and I’d like to
reinitiate it. I’m going to up the ante some and say that the top
submissions will get a Radiant T-shirt and/or other swag in addition to
inclusion of their template in the core. I’ve been itching to get some
tangible Radiant goods out anyway. I’ll put this up on the Radiant site
later and announce the link via the blog.
There are Radiant T-shirts?! Well then, I guess I’ll have to enter the
competition. I needs me some more t-shirts.
A long time ago, John solicited contributions of “templates” with the
opportunity for people to get them included in the main Radiant
distribution. I think this is a fabulous idea and I’d like to
reinitiate it. I’m going to up the ante some and say that the top
submissions will get a Radiant T-shirt and/or other swag in addition to
inclusion of their template in the core. I’ve been itching to get some
tangible Radiant goods out anyway. I’ll put this up on the Radiant site
later and announce the link via the blog.
Before this gets under way, would it make sense for someone to define
some standards/ conventions for building the templates?
It would be great if the templates that come out of this are somewhat
interchangeable, or tending in that direction.
e.g:
Assuming primary navigation will typically / always live in a snippet.
Can we agree to generally always call it by a certain name, e.g. ‘nav’
or ‘navigation’ or ‘nav_bar’ ?
Radiant is beautiful in the way it allows so much freedom in the
layout and design of a site. On the other hand, if a series of
templates was created, it would be nice if they aren’t all approached
in radically different ways… A little bit of convention could go a
long ways toward building momentum.
Proposed action point:
Would it make sense for someone to create a sqlite database or
packaged Radiant instance as a basis for all submitted templates?
In which case, I must stress right now that if its templates of the
second definition (site templates), then we really really need a
volunteer to document how to add a site template to a Radiant install.
Perhaps, we just need to extract carefully from the rake db:bootstrap
but we’ll need to do it.
Before this gets under way, would it make sense for someone to define
some standards/ conventions for building the templates?
It would be great if the templates that come out of this are somewhat
interchangeable, or tending in that direction.
I absolutely agree with you! We need to define 2 things:
Templates: Are they ‘style templates’ that apply to a standard site
type, e.g. to a blog, a company site, etc. - or are templates ‘site
templates’ - including standard pages, etc. (e.g. Styled Blog and Simple
Blog in the current Radiant). We should define this so that it’s a
little clearer what people will design. I think ‘site templates’ are a
bit of a pre-requisite for ‘style templates’.
Standard sections: We should minimize duplication. Therefore, we
should try to reuse standard names as far as possible, exactly as what
you have suggested. Technically, for each site template, there would be
a set of standard snippets, parts, etc. These would include site_menu,
nav_bar, tags_area (for blog), tag_cloud (too specific?), headings,
header, footer, etc. This is what a style sheet would aim to supply.
e.g:
Assuming primary navigation will typically / always live in a snippet.
Can we agree to generally always call it by a certain name, e.g. ‘nav’
or ‘navigation’ or ‘nav_bar’ ?
I hope John & Sean can guide a bit in this area?
Radiant is beautiful in the way it allows so much freedom in the
layout and design of a site. On the other hand, if a series of
templates was created, it would be nice if they aren’t all approached
in radically different ways… A little bit of convention could go a
long ways toward building momentum.
Convention over configuration of course
Proposed action point:
Would it make sense for someone to create a sqlite database or
packaged Radiant instance as a basis for all submitted templates?
I’m not very good at themes, but again, like Summer Reboot, I’m willing
to coordinate this!
Cheers,
Mohit.
9/9/2008 | 1:49 PM.
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