SOLVED A complaint clarification for G5
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- Simple CMS Design
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- President and designer for Simple CMS Design
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So I've been reading a ton of complaint threads and RT solution threads regarding on issue that I feel is causing disention with G5. It is the Outline/Particle/Module relationship. I will try to describe the problem/confusion clearly in both the old way (G4) and G5 way.
The scenario: A site with 100+ different pages/Joomla menu items with individual modules assigned to each page. Now RT with G5 has included a bevy of beautiful and desirable addons with G5 templates called Particles. These particles are styled for each template and look great in the demos. In the old way these items would have been standard Joomla modules built by RT such as Roksprocket or Rokfeaturetable etc...
If you have a large site as mentioned and putting it together the old way, you would build a module, say Rokfeaturetable, then assign that module to the menu items (say "Pricing") you would like the module to display on.
The new way - you still can do that (with modules), UNLESS you are using a particle. Such as in Galatea, the pricingtable or owlcarousel particles. In order to assign these particles to individual menu items, NOW you must create an outline (say Pricing Page), assign the outline to the page ("Pricing"), build the module position structure, create the particle (pricingtable), input data, then save the layout.
If you've got the particle assigned to a different layout there is little to no way to copy the particle to a new layout without copying the ENTIRE layout and then deleting the particles that are not needed for that one specific page.
I think the problem with this structuce/system is that we all want to use the particles built by RT. This works great if you are replicating the demo 100%, but does NOT work easily if you are trying to assign individual particles to individual menu items. You can't. You have to assign individual particles to individual outlines, then assign individual outlines to individual menu items.
Perhaps, I am wrong in the steps I've laid out. Perhaps there is an easier way to achieve this. Unfortunately, the system is so varied from every other form of Joomla module management (and frankly why I steer clear of template creators that have their own framework that skews from Joomla's native systems). The documentation is hard to follow (each template has its own documentation, then G5 has its own documentation and both are written to only cover themselves, not to work together on a particular lesson), the logic is hard to follow, and the support system is hard to follow (do we ask for support in Gantry 5 forum or in the individual template? Where do we search for answers first?)
My solution:
Provide the ability to assign particles DIRECTLY to menu items. So say we had an outline called "Default" and it was set as the global default. Then on it we would have all the particles we plan on using on ALL the pages for the site. Then when you edit a particle in the Layout Editor there would be a new tab (Next to Particle and Block) called Assign. There we would find the standard Menu Item Assignment checkbox system from Joomla.
OR
Keep the existing Outline system but allow the Particles to be modules that can be edited fully from within Joomla's module manager.
This would greatly draw G5 back closer to native Joomla, which I personally feel is the want of many RT users including myself. Gantry should be a supplement to Joomla to make it easier to design pages, not as a framework that requires varying processes from native Joomla.
Thanks for reading. I hope this helps both RT and its members. -
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- Simple CMS Design
Website Design in Boise
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- MrT
- Preeminent Rocketeer
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That's not correct. You can do this just the same ways as you did in Gantry 4 - i.e. to assign a module to module position on your layout (and also indicate to which menu it should be assigned to). Yes, this includes particles too because we provide a module called a "Gantry 5 module" inside which you can create your particle instance. So the "Gantry 5 module" is effectively a little wrapper that means you can use particles just like you would use modules.
So, if you stick to having layout that consist mainly of "module position" particles on the layout then you can use those layouts just like you did in Gantry 4. Avoid putting particles directly on the layout unless you truly want that content to be the same amongst your pages.
All that said, we are actively working on improving "inheritance" to make it much easier to have particular content replicated throughout your pages.
I hope i've addressed your concerns?
Regards, Mark. - Please search forums before posting. Please make sure your post includes the version of the CMS you are using and a link to the problem. Annotations on screenshots can also be helpful to explain problems/goals. Please use the "secure" tab for confidential information.
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- Simple CMS Design
- Rocketeer
- Posts: 84
- Thanks: 3
- President and designer for Simple CMS Design
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Indeed you have...ish. This new module is great and a very helpful addition. My one complaint is that you still have to clone the content from your Layout particle to use (say if you are using the Rocketlauncher version), but that's minor. I would also suggest (if you haven't already) adding this module to each of the G5 templates and documentation.
Hopefully people can now understand what this is for and that its even there. I have done a bunch of G5 designs lately and had no idea this module existed. - Simple CMS Design
Website Design in Boise
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- MrT
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The Gantry 5 module is part of CORE Gantry 5 (it's not template specific) and has been there since very early on in the Gantry 5 project.
The documentation can be found here http://docs.gantry.org/gantry5/particles/position#using-particles-in-module-positions-joomla .
If you start with a rocketlauncher copy of the template then the layouts so largely consist of module position particles and we do create modules assigned to those positions (including Gantry 5 modules that contain particles). We can only do this though in a rocketlauncher. If you just add the Gantry 5 template to an existing Joomla instance then we do it a different way (without modules)... i.e. particles are directly on the layout because we want to give you a working template that looks like the demo still.
Every template has documentation that explains how to recreate the demo too, and that is describing the "module" setup method.
I hope that helps too.
Regards, Mark. -
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- Please search forums before posting. Please make sure your post includes the version of the CMS you are using and a link to the problem. Annotations on screenshots can also be helpful to explain problems/goals. Please use the "secure" tab for confidential information.
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- Brian Shea
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thanks for bringing this up. I had no idea about this 'particle module'.
Maybe it's touched upon in the docs somewhere, but certainly not very clearly.
I'll have to play with this and see if G5 will make more sense to me if I can use modules (as intended by Joomla) -
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