SOLVED Rookie Questions
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- Saul H
- Sr. Rocketeer
- Posts: 123
- Thanks: 1
- Still Learning ; )
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So, I've been away from website building for a while but now I have a couple of clients that want websites. So, I come back to RT and, lo and behold, gantry 4 has been sent to the pasture
and gantry 5 is the new king in town.
So, I'm reading as much as I can on the gantry site, watched several videos, and downloaded citadel to tinker with it.
5 hours later...
I have a few questions:
1 - In gantry 4, I used to create a copy of the default template before doing any tinkering so that I could go back to it should i mess something up. But now, I'm trying to figure out the best way to do the same thing with OUTLINES.
The way I understand it (and correct me if I'm wrong) is as follows:
A - Base Outline = the main outline by default for all other outlines - best place to put MENU, FOOTER, HEADER, and similar items
B - Default- Home - Particles = where all the particles live (this came with sample data from the template)
C - Default = ?, I'm not really sure what's in this outline that's not in the other 2 outlines, can someone clarify?
2 - So, I created duplicates of the DEFAULT and HOME-PARTICLES Outlines so that I can tinker with those while still having the originals as backup.
Question is, I chose to "inherit" when I duplicated them, should I have cloned these instead?
3 - My ultimate goal is to simply have minimal outlines for the VERY basic sites I create. My websites are 4-20 pages typically and I just want to keep it as simple as possible.
As it is now, I have 5 outlines (base, the 2 original defaults as backups, 2 copies of defaults for my tinkering and actual site); is that the best way to set it up?
I hope I explained myself well. As I said, learning Gantry 5 and I must say it is VERY confusing, at first, coming from gantry 4 (I miss my modules)
Perhaps someone can let me know how they setup their gantry 5 templates and explain the beneift to that setup.
Thank you for your time.
Saul -
Saul
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- MrT
- Preeminent Rocketeer
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- Web Designer/Developer
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1.
A. nearly - the styles, page settings, and particle defaults will be inherited by other outlines (unless they specifically have overrides to prevent this). The "layout" is a different matter that is not inherited by any other outline automatically - the other outline has to be told to specifically inherit from the base outline if this is what you want to happen. But the general statement that you made is broadly correct.
B. No. Any outline can have particles on the layout. The "home - particles" layout is the one used by the standalone template that only has particles on the layout (no module positions and no modules). This is one way of building a whole page by just putting content directly onto the layout. But, if you want to use modules and modules positions as you did in Gantry 4 then you could used the "home - positions" layout which generally just has module position particles on the layout (plugs logo and menu and footer) then you can use that one outline for several pages and just assign different modules to those positions. "home - particles" should not be the "default" template since it has page specific content on the outline layout. It is the "default" outline that should be marked as the "default".
C. The "default" outline should be the default template in template manager and this will be the outline that all your pages use unless another outline is specifically assigned.
2. You should have cloned because otherwise any changes made in the originals will be reflected in your copy because they are "inheriting" from the originals.
3. No. If you start putting particles directly on the layout of the outlines then you are making them page specific - which in turn will mean you need more outlines (one per page taking it to it's logical conclusion). The other extreme would be to have a single outline that only contained "module position" particles on the layout and then you could just assign modules to those positions (just like you always did with Gantry 4). In reality, you will end up with a few outlines as some page will have a different structure (the same as you had OVERRIDE template in Gantry 4).
To reiterate, if you just want to use modules and module positions then you can, but you'll be missing out on a lot of great Gantry 5 features and functionality if you take that approach (but you can if you want to). Also, I should add that you can put particles into a "Gantry 5 particle" module (think of it as a wrapper) which means that you can treat particles just like modules too and assign them to module positions on your layout.
This has been a very long answer to a very long question. It would be better if you could raise one topic for each distinct question going forward please.
Regards, Mark. -
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- Saul H
- Sr. Rocketeer
- Posts: 123
- Thanks: 1
- Still Learning ; )
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Thanks Mark.
I appreciate the long answer to the long question.
In the future, I'll try to break it up into shorter questions, I just figured they were all sort of related and it was a logical progression.
Regarding # 3, I think I will try the safe approach (to me anyway) you mentioned and create a module positions outline as my base and will try to sprinkle some regular gantry 5 outlines as I go along. In other words, I prefer to inch my way into the cold pool that is gantry 5.
Thanks again for the explanations, I am planning to re-read your answer periodically as I gain a better understanding of the gantry 5 system.
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Saul
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- MrT
- Preeminent Rocketeer
- Posts: 101084
- Thanks: 13484
- Web Designer/Developer
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There is no absolute "right" or "wrong" way. Some people like lots of outlines with all the particles directly on the layout so you can see at a glance the whole page content (but obviously this means lots of outlines) and some people prefer to have just one or two outlines with "module position" particles on the layout which means one outline can be shared amongst many pages (therefore less outlines). The latter approach being more familiar to those from a tranditional Joomla/Gantry 4 background.
Obviously the reality will be that you are somewhere between the two extremes in the real world.
I'll mark this topic as "Solved" now then, please raise new topics for new questions.
Regards, Mark. -
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