Typo3 Newbie

Back after a hiatus … to Templavoila 1.2.0 & T3 4.0.4, and errors!

I can’t remember what I was up to when I last posted (funny that … I mean, it’s only 10 months ago!! :S) But I think what happened was that I thought I would try to create an offline installation to play with, and then discovered that I was operating in different versions of both TV and T3, then got very busy with life, and Christmas, and then my two new daughters … and so just didn’t come up with a solution.

So .. now I am back and the first thing that happens is I lose my front end content … grrr. While searching for a solution, I found my own site :), and the language localisation solution that I found last year. So I went into the Data Structure XML to have a look and
check the XML was in the right format for language localisation.

I saved the XML, and then came up with this error.

(Then I found the solution to my first problem on Dmitry’s blog … only I had
already made this error happen )

My DS is there in list view and in TV view. I don’t get options to edit
header info or mapping with the tabs… I just get…

TemplaVoilà
Template Mapping

Template Object Information:
Template Object Details:
Template Object:     templatename[Template]
Template File:     fileadmin/templates/foldername/filename.htm
Data Structure Record:     DSrecordname

Error: No Data Structure Record could be found with UID “14″

And yet … I could find it in list

Oh well … just wouldn’t be Typo3 without *something* to confuse me

I just didn’t bother - mixing them, that is.

I just used CSS to modify the display of ”latest” to give me a few different layouts, then used templavoila to map a couple of different content elements, and mixed those instead.

Seems “latest” and “list” when you are trying to limit to a category just won’t mix.

Having worked out that the mapping had fallen off the content template that defined my 2 columns in the main content area (!), now the following error shows…

 WARNING: This container element has localization without inheritance enabled ( = 0). This is most likely a misconfiguration since the localization features of TemplaVoila does not support localized container fields in the native interface! Please inform the system administrator!

The email lists didnt provide the answer, but pointed me in the direction of Kasper’s Frontend Localization Guide.

After much scanning (after all, I haven’t gone into this at all yet) I came across this…

“Notice that container elements usually must have the “[All]” language set so they are rendered for all languages:…”

 So, Im looking in the right place … now if only I understood what it all meant

(Two days later…)

Ah .. the Data Structure needs to be edited to include the following <meta> information…

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”iso-8859-1″ standalone=”yes” ?>
<T3DataStructure>

<meta type=”array”>

<langDisable type=”integer”>1</langDisable>

</meta>

<ROOT type=”array”>

…

BUT!
Best to leave it until you are finished playing with the DS/TO, because (as it is a manual adjustment) for every Typo3 version to date, it will be lost next time you alter the DS/TO in Templavoila!

I had difficulty adjusting my html templates for use with markers - it took some tweaking to get my horizontal TMENU layout rendering correctly, but in the end I got it by removing the unordered list and list tags.

Then when I changed to TV, the navigation kept rendering in a vertical list, rather than horizontal.

Today it occurred to me to change my html back to the original coding … and guess what? It worked!

Yay for using my brain!

I found a solution for TIMTAW & TV. In the TV mapping, a field needs to be mapped as a typoscript object path. Then in the typoscript template that lib.myObject needs to be called, similar to Sebastian’s

10.EDIT>marker.editpanel

instead, with a TV mapped lib.myObject,

10.EDIT>lib.myObject

Also, the admin panel (see TSRef document) needs to be activated with

page.AdminPanel = 1

You can set a variety of configurations using the information in TSRef.

Now my only problem is that it doesn’t look terribly nice. It looks like I have to go and configure the whole thing for the front end appearance. I’m not sure if it should be set as a normal text field, or what, and the normal wiki markup doesn’t work, which could cause user confusion.

On the other hand, dr_wiki has all of that built in. If only I could get it to work. Currently I am getting mySql errors. I have found other people with the same error, but they haven’t worked out the problem. Rather they did a fresh install, which fixed it.

I might try the author again.

My last post about wikis said I was trying DR Wiki. Well, I did… and couldn’t get it working. I posted twice to the Typo3 User Group list, and even directly to the author and two other users, but got nowhere.

One user did answer, but said he had not managed to get a positive result, and had neded up using a third party product.

I also tried TIMTAW, and managed to get a login page and initial data entry page to show, but after saving the information, it disappeared from the front end. The record was visible in the back end, but no reference was created, and so it wasnt rendered on the wiki page.

How does one do this? DOES one do this? Or do I give up and just edit the Typoscript manually?

I suppose that is an option - insert the code in the Typoscript template setup field… but since I changed version, the snippet i was using doesn’t seem to work anymore.

I want it to show the complete file path…

home>level1>level2>thisPage

Is it a lib.myObject typoscript object path? Hmmmm … thinking deeply…

Having created a Typo3 template, html template and css file that successfully displayed a header banner, top and left dynamic navigation, content area, right hand advertising space and footer, it was time to try something more.

I wanted the page title (defined in the Typo3 page header) to also be the title of the content area, displayed in header tags.

However, before working that out, I found a code snippet on Typo3Wizard for creating breadcrumb navigation, something that was in my list of “things to do” … so, being an opportunist, I dropped working out the page title bit, and played with the breadcrumb nav

I even applied a bit of guesswork to get it working - wow! I celebrated when I guessed right (I have since altered that snippet to work with templavoila across my whole site! Have a look at the code snippets posts to find the snippet…)

So, anyway, after I got that working, I remembered that some of the extensions might fix my page title problem, so I went back to search through the T3 Extension Repository (TER) … and found some wonderful goodies there! All excited I downloaded several extensions (because I still can’t connect directly to the online TER to upload and install directly), and uploaded them all, installing along the way.

Suddenly I lost everything in the main working frame of the backend - it went completely blank! I tried going back a page, but nothing showed. Now I lost the backend navigation tree too. I tried to login again through /typo3 - nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Somehow the database seemed to have been corrupted or something.

Madly write to User Group - no one answers quickly, they must all be offline. Bugger, bugger. And of course, I didnt backup first, did I? Oh no!

After a couple of hours with no email from the user group, I decided drastic action was required. I would create a fresh installation and start from scratch! Even though there was about 100 hours work to this stage, most was exploratory - it was only 3 or 4 hours of actual redoing.

So I began to ftp a new 3.6 installation up to the server (which takes hours), and then found my host now had version 3.8.1 as an installable application sitting on the server. Bingo! I set up that & started on the install tool.

Then I couldn’t connect to the database. I had this problem back in 2004, but I couldn’t remember how I fixed it. Mmmmmm. Somehow I managed to fix it again, but I have forgotten how :S. Next time I will have to write it down!

This time I installed hte extensions first, just in case it clashed again - and it did, so one by one I uninstalled and finally found out which extension was clashing. Yay! Uninstalled that, and everything worked again

Reinstalled all the other extensions and all was fine.

Redid the work that I had done on version 3.6.4 and found now the breadcrumbs wouldn’t work - bummer, but not critical - I will fix that later.

In the time it had taken to install and setup 3.8.1, my partner and I decided that a wiki would be the best way to deal with some of the portal - it would build the site much faster and hopefully generate a loyal community too.

So I downloaded and installed DR_Wiki extension. The functionality looked great - now I just had to figure out how to integrate it inot my TS template and HTML template.

I searched and found a pdf file written by the extension developer. It was quite helpful, but didn’t address how to insert it into a template.

With all the difficulties I was having in finding information, I decided to start this blog. I bought a domain name, and tried to set up a blog with TIMTAB. But I had so much trouble with that too, so I thought ‘Fine. I will set up with a simple CMS (such as Wordpress), document my struggles, and maybe someone will show me how to set up the TIMTAB blog eventually’

So that’s why a blog about Typo3 is currently not using T3

I am a newbie …

I wondered if Templavoila! might help now, and tried to upload it - but nothing happened. No folder was created, nothing was uploaded.

I searched to find out why, and discovered tha the current version of Templavoila! 1.0.1 needs T3 v 4.x.x to work! :O

Well, I decided it was probably a good idea to have the most current version, as there seemed to be some changes in how things were handled, so last night I upgraded to version 4. Ftp took an hour or so … I went to bed.

So that is the saga of the last three months - I have just 5 weeks to try to get the site live if we are to meet our first deadline. Not sure that we will. Hopefully by blogging my journey, anyone who has had similar issues will comment and suggest solutions, and in doing so can help others new to T3.

Things that are yet to do in this stage:

Vital:

• wiki template x 3
• news
• home portal page

 Hope to work out:

• breadcrumb navigation like home>level1>level2>…>levelx>thisPage
• main nav displaying coloured tabs
• ad server working