Typo3 Newbie

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…

First up, I’m creating a wiki. I have decided to use the dr_wiki extension because I want a lot of extensibility and it looks like this extension will suit my needs best.

How does templavoila! deal with an extension like dr_wiki? This is my latest dillemma.

I guess I create a content element and put the wiki in there - but I also want a page header, and I don’t like the wikiwords header that comes up.

Maybe I will revamp my template for this section so that the page header field is left out, leaving only the wikiword header.

But I want spaces in my page title!

And what is the wikiword appearing as? Can I apply typoscript to it to make it a header tag and then CSS to change the appearance?

Or is there a “hidden” tag in typoscript?

Questions, questions…

TV installed with no problems - thank goodness. It took a while to start getting the hang of what is where. Template objects and data structures are new concepts, and I sort of understand them. I think I will need to do a bit of picture drawing to understand the relationships between them. I like the ability to make multiple templates to display the same data in a multitude of layouts.

The flexible content elements look good too - sort of like “repeat region” in Dreamweaver/Cold Fusion.

Now to go away and design all the templates in HTML and CSS…

Well, I installed v 4.0 - and ‘yay!’ The database updated properly, it even found my old templates (which I am still confused about - I thought I had completely wiped my system and database, and done a full install, not simply an upgrade :S ).

This time I decided not to immediately install all the extensions I think I will need, but instead just install TV, then install the others as I need them.

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

 

So I went back to the Modern Template Building tutorial, working my way through from the start. Things began to come together… and then they stalled again. As I followed through the tutorial, I got to a point where the next step didn’t work for me. (If I can remember which one, I will put it in my hints page.)

Bugger. Can’t get Templavoila working, can’t get Modern Template Building working… what next?

I spend hours and hours searching (and found some pretty cool sites along the way), but the best I could find was the McUniverse sample template files. I printed them off and studied them… cut and pasted them into Dreamweaver… and slowly started to understand a bit more.

What is taking ages to understand is how the Typo3 template is essential to the rendering of the html.

Essentially, this is my understanding:

The typo3 template, editable in the backend (Templates>pagename>edit all) is like a black mask - if nothing is entered, no typoscript used to define the template, only static information can show from the html template or css files included.

Effectively, holes need to be cut out of the mask by defining Typoscript (TS) variables in the Typo3 template, and then those variables need to be called from the appropriate place in the html document to allow ‘holes’ to be cut in the mask so that dynamic information can be seen.

If you define a Typo3 template but don’t cut holes in the html, only static information will show.

If you cut holes in the html but don’t provide the elastic by defining dynamic content in the Typo3 template, no dynamic information will show.

So - for static pages you only need to create a Typo3 template, but not define any variables.

For dynamic content you need to also define variables to include in the html document.

(It is possible to define static content in the Typo3 template, but for simplicity I suggest you keep the Typo3 template record for defining dynamic variables, the html template for specifying the order of static and dynamic content, and css document for defining layout and appearance.)

As I mentioned before, I had already installed Typo3 with the dummy site, so it seemed a logical place to start. Only, I didn’t get very far. Maybe I was too impatient - my memory is already a little blurry, but maybe I wanted to skip too far ahead. The first part of the Quickstart Tutorial showed how the CMS worked, but I already understood that part. I wanted to learn about changing the templates.

I had heard about Templavoila, an extension that helped with template design - I thought “I will install Templavoila!” because everything I read about templates mentioned this extension.

And here was my first stall … I couldn’t upload the extension from the extension management page of the CMS backend directly from the extension repository.

What happened?

1. I pressed on “connect to extension repository” button - after thinking about it, the computer took me to a page where my only choice was to upload from my hard drive.
2. Checked my login details at typo3.org - correct
3. Pressed again on “connect to extension repository” - same result as before.
4. Logged out of CMS, logged back in and tried again … same result.
5. Turned off PC, restarted, tried again .. same result.
6. Cleared internet cache, tried again … same result.
7. Checked login again… still ok.
8. Had a look at the extension repository and saw I could download to my hard drive from the details tab of the extension. I did that, then instead of trying “connect to repository” I tried “upload from” - hey presto, it uploaded!

Then things stalled again - again the details are a little blurry, but I found Templavoila would only work with PHP4 or something - something I didn’t have, and because I host on a cheapy server, I couldn’t do anything about it.

Bummer. Back to working it out manually…

In mid-February, 2006, I had coffee with a friend who had just completed a Communications degree. We had previously discussed my dream site, and he had tried to write a little for me, but at the time he was abroad, and distance and lack of knowledge about the web made it too difficult. Now he was back, and was talking about his future and how to work his way into a good job.

I thought again of my portal dreams, and suggested that if he started writing for that, it might help him professionally. He agreed, and so we made a date for me to actually show him my concept.

Within a week he had not only decided to write with me, but actually became my partner. And so it was on again… and so was my hunt for Typo3 knowledge!

I had joined the Typo3 User Group and continued to get the emails even after I stopped playing with Typo3, but they sat unread in my inbox until in early February they numbered in the thousands. Then one day I thought to myself “I really should deletec those hundreds of emails… I’m never going to read them!”, and in one efficient second I deleted them.

Now I regret that day…!