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Please Make Gantry 5 Awesome (because it's not, yet)

  • Please Make Gantry 5 Awesome (because it's not, yet)

    Posted 6 years 9 months ago
    • Hi RocketTheme,

      As a developer, I'd like to offer some feedback about Gantry 5 themes. They look spectacular but they're nearly impossible to develop on. I've been RocketTheme customer for most of your history, and there are three reasons:
      1. Your innovation (makes developing fresh and interesting sites easy)
      2. Your consistency across templates (makes developing multiple sites easy)
      3. Your excellent support (makes fixing problems easy)

      When another RT customer asked for better documentation for Gantry 5 particles, Mark's answer was very disappointing and indicative of the problem: Gantry 5 abandons these three best reasons to use RocketTheme templates.


      With Gantry 4 and RokSprocket, there was a great deal of well-documented consistency from template to template. This made it easy to work on the dozen+ sites I actively maintain for customers. Since RokSprocket is already pretty fantastic, the only recommendations I have are to add RSS as a provider make it able to sort by publication date.

      Why doesn't RocketTheme build upon Gantry 4's documentation, consistency, and ease-of-use in Gantry 5? To use Mark's example, why would you create functionally different Owl Carosels for different templates? Why not just call it something different, then? His answer implies that the Copyright particle might show a copyright statement on one template but show a recipie for muffins on another, and therefore it cannot be documented. (Or trusted!)


      I'm now developing my fourth site on Gantry 5 and like each of the others it has been extremely frustrating. The particles are inconsistent from theme to theme and documentation is non-existent. It's impossible to know what anything is until you try EVERYTHING and write it all down. Developing is now a chore and makes me look at other template vendors who's product might be easier to use.

      Additionally, why don't any of the particles (except "Joomla Articles") offer the ability to draw from Joomla content items? What's the point of having a template system that can't display the CMS' content? It's CONTENT management system! My clients' writers aren't given access to the template system or modules (because that'd be insane), so they can't update anything that's buried in a Gantry 5 particle. That drastically cuts the usefulness of nearly all your Gantry 5 themes.


      Thank goodness RokSprocket still works in Gantry 5, although I've had to reskin it extensively with CSS for each new theme you release just so that I can drive sites using my clients' content. Using RocketTheme's slick Gantry 5 themes shouldn't be this much of a pain.


      So, wishlist:
      1. Design a set of "basic particles" that are consistent for all Gantry 5 templates, and document what those particles do and how they work.
      2. Make all "basic particles" able to draw from Joomla content items and RSS, not just from their own internally-stored fields.
      3. Continue supporting RokSprocket and add RSS as a provider, until such time as all Gantry 4 themes are sunsetted and all RokSprocket functions are replicated in "basic particles" for Gantry 5.


      If you can do these three really simple things you'll have me signed on for another decade. Please don't forget your roots: RocketTheme started developing on Joomla and you've been really good at it. Please don't abandon us.


      Best,
      Daniel
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    Re: Please Make Gantry 5 Awesome (because it's not, yet)

    Posted 6 years 9 months ago
    • Well I am sorry you feel my other answer was disappointing but it is factually accurate and I stand by what I said. But I also think you've misunderstood somethings too which I would like to address below:

      1. There are some "common" particles across all templates and these are included in Gantry 5 itself and are known as "core" particles. Examples I would site are "menu", "totop", "logo", "joomla articles (content array)". Then there are particles that are provided with a template, these are known as "template specific" particles. We provided these to enrich the functionality of the template. This is part of the reason that you pay for our commercial templates - we have to do development and we need to recoup that investment as we are a commercial company. Note that both Gantry 5 (and it's core particles) are free - we derive no income from Gantry 5 itself.

      Some members choose to have "club" subscriptions which gives them access to all the templates. But other members choose to buy only a single template. So, if you have a club membership then you can copy particles from one template to another, if you have a template subscription then you're choosing to by that because of both the design and particle functionality that it offers.

      For the benefit of anyone else reading this I would point out that particles can be copied from one template to another (subject to your subscription permitting this). If you want to know how to copy a Gantry 5 particle from one template to another please read my tutorial here in Gantry 5 Official Documentation here .

      We do also intend to make the packaging of particles a much easier process and hopefully also be able to create a "marketplace" of downloadable particles but to do that there are substantial changes that need to be made (not least of which is version numbers in particles). Rest assured that it is on our list and we hope to develop this in the future.


      2. What you said here is wrong: "why don't any of the particles (except "Joomla Articles") offer the ability to draw from Joomla content items" - there are other particles that draw on Joomla content. Gantry 5 and GRAV are in constant development and we release new templates every 4-6 weeks. This occupies nearly all of our development resources. We simply do not have the resources to go back and retrofit new functionality into older templates. So, as we release new templates, those templates may include enhancements to particle names that we have used before (because they basically do the same thing as originally built). So that's have we are doing the innovation that you like and recognise us for. If we created a new particle name every time we added functionality we would end up with hundreds of particles that do similar things. Whilst particles with the same name might have different functionality they will do roughly the same thing "copyright" vs "muffins recipes" is an unrealistic comparison to make for the step in functionality.

      The ability to take data from Joomla was not introduced until well into the Gantry 5 release cycle (about 18 months in to my recollection) so that functionality was simply not around in the time that many of the first Gantry 5 templates were developed. If you want to see other particle examples that take data from Joomla then look at bookblock in Topaz, accordion in Acronym. owlshowcase in Acronym, owlcarousel newslider in Citadel, testimonial owlcarousel in Citadel, accordionslider in Gemini, owlpreview in Versla, etc, etc.

      Please bear in mind also that we're not just developing for the Joomla CMS. Gantry 5 works across Joomla, Wordpress and GRAV - so we don't want to get too CMS specific when creating functionality either.

      The functionality offered by particles is documented in the templates documentation - each template has it's own documentation and within that a section for each particle in the template stating the settings.


      3. Roksprocket is still available to use in a Gantry 5 template too. So if you like the functionality of roksprocket then there is no reason why you should not use it. There are no plans to develop roksprocket functionality further, so we won't be adding RSS functionality to it. All development resource are focussed on Gantry 5, GRAV and our templates (including particles). Don't forget also that all the RT extensions are free too - again we derive no income from those.


      4. We accept that particles cannot be edited from the frontend and we absolutely do intend to do something about this in the future, it is on our development list and is a much requested feature. I should point out though that you can't edit a roksprocket or a rokgallery from the frontend either - so it's a similar situation to the Gantry 4 platform in that regard.

      Hopefully from my explanations above you will see that these things are not "really simple" to address, there are many complications and commmercial consideration that we have to make as well as prioritisation of our limited resources.

      All that said, we do thank you very much for your comments and I will pass these on to the development team and our documentation specialist to see if there are further improvements we can make to address the points you have raised.


      Regards, Mark.
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  • Re: Please Make Gantry 5 Awesome (because it's not, yet)

    Posted 6 years 6 months ago
    • hi Mark,
      im serching for answers and hope this is a relevant thread.

      i am doing a site for a fashion show that will reguire 50 designers to be featured in 3 diff categories.

      i have the notio theme because the site will become quite a fashion hub as time goes one.

      i am wanting to have each designer in a card or block with a link. so in essense a page of blcoks. the link on each block/card needs to go to a joomla article that keeps the image but adds the information and possibly some addditional photographs plus logos of where that designers items are available.

      the demo shows great front end design but no click through functionality so i cant see how to make the links integrate with the joomla system.

      i would then also want the designers in that category listed on the side (since there are so many) and i am considering adding them to a menu as with mobile the scrolling will be endless.

      please can you give me some insight on how to achieve this in the easiest way possible.

      i also need to know the difference between creating a gantry module vs adding a particle into an outline. i tried both.

      unfortunately i am also finding the documentation quite difficult to find. i am wondering if it wont be better to just use gantry rather than joomla/gantry setup. since i am just starting this project, please advise. i cant afford to swap to the notio grav template to test it.

      further, will gantry take over from joomla? im struggling to progress with all the dev updates - css, twig, angular, typescript, i dont know where to focus.

      looking forward to your response. i have 2 weeks to build this site

      regards michelle
    • Michelle
      http://www.artifectcreative.co
  • Re: Please Make Gantry 5 Awesome (because it's not, yet)

    Posted 6 years 6 months ago
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    Re: Please Make Gantry 5 Awesome (because it's not, yet)

    Posted 6 years 6 months ago
    • It's not really an appropriate topic, no. It's always better to create your own topic that post in someone else's (especially one that's nearly three month old and dormant).


      I will answer your question a little out of order...

      Michelle Diamond wrote:
      will gantry take over from joomla?

      No. Gantry is a framework that needs to sit on top of a Content Management System (CMS). In your case you are using Joomla as the CMS, but your could equally use Wordpress or GRAV - Gantry 5 works on all three.

      Michelle Diamond wrote:
      i also need to know the difference between creating a gantry module vs adding a particle into an outline. i tried both
      .

      Modules can be assigned to "module positions" on the layout of your outlines. So this means that your outline can be used by many pages with just different modules being added to the page. So using module positions your outline is, in general, page agnostic (i.e. there's nothing page specific on the outline). The other advantage of using a module is that you can use Joomla's ACL to specify which modules are permitted to be seen by which users (i.e. you are using the power of the CMS to control who sees what). So to all intents and purposes you can think of this as analogous to what you had in Gantry 4. The only difference really is that with Gantry 5 you can add your own "module positions" anywhere on the layout that you like and call them whatever you like.

      Particles can also be put in modules too by create a "Gantry 5 particle" module you can then use a particle just like it's a module.

      If you choose to add particles directly on the layout of your outline then you need to be aware that you are in effect making that outline "page specific"... this would therefore likely increase the number of outlines that you require. Some members actually prefer this and do create one outline for every page on their site as it makes it a little easier to understand. Remember though that you can't choose who sees a particular particle on the layout this way - everyone will see the content. Now at first you might think that putting particle directly on the layout of your outline might mean that you have to duplicate lots of content (e.g. logo, menu, copyright, etc) - this is not the case because this is where another feature of Gantry 5 is useful called "inheritance".

      With "inheritance" it's possible to have other outline layouts inherit their content from another outline. This can apply at section level, or particle level, or both. So, as a practical example, in the "base outline" you would set up the layout of your "navigation" section once containing your logo and menu and then have all your other outlines inherit the "navigation" section and it's content to save having to repeat the set-up on every outline layout.

      Michelle Diamond wrote:
      im struggling to progress with all the dev updates - css, twig, angular, typescript, i dont know where to focus.


      You will need some basic CSS skills because you are bound to need to restyle certain elements on your page, but it is these type of questions that are most common in the forum and we can always help with this if you get stuck. Just raise a new topic for EACH question (or very closely related questions).

      You do not need to learn TWIG or YAML unless you want to develop your own particles or modify the fuctionality of our existing particles.

      Not sure what you mean by Angular and typescript - but I don't see any need to learn either in the context of using Gantry 5 or our templates. Similarly you do not need to learn any javascript of jQuery unless you want to develop your own particles or modify the fuctionality of our existing particles.



      Now as to your site specific questions....


      You're over thinking this I think... Ask yourself "what would I have done in Gantry 4?" - because if you can answer that then you can do EXACTLY the same in Gantry 5. You "designer" page can just be a single article or a "category blog" of articles for a designer. Once you have that you can link to those pages from anywhere on your site (including any particles that you choose to use).

      There are some nice particles in our Gantry 5 template that can give you the "block" or "card" layouts that you are looking for - which one though depends on the exact functionality that you seek. Don't forget also that if you are familiar with roksprocket then there's no reason why you can't use that in a Gantry 5 template either - it certainly still provide some very rich and useful functionality that even some particles struggle to match (especially if you wish to explit content from your CMS e.g. "articles" and "categories").


      I hope that helps.

      Regards, Mark.
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  • Re: Please Make Gantry 5 Awesome (because it's not, yet)

    Posted 6 years 2 months ago
    • Hi Mark,

      Please forgive my extremely tardy reply. Thank you for your extremely detailed message. I'm back in the forum now as I continue to look for solutions to Gantry 5 particles that look great but do not integrate with Joomla's content.

      Right now, I'm launching a new site with Isotope. It's a beautiful template that RocketTheme really should be proud of aesthetically. Unfortunately, only one particle can actually leverage Joomla's content, which makes it basically useless for a multi-user site where end-users have access to generate Joomla content but (most definitely) are not given developer access to change the template. This definitely contradicts the "Develop CMS themes quickly and efficiently while providing flexibility and ease-of-use for end-users" statement at gantry.org.

      What is most frustrating is that the Joomla Articles particle already contains the code RocketTheme needs to leverage Joomla's content. Why not just use this in the other particles?

      Here are the Isotope particles, also often found in other RocketTheme templates, which would most obviously benefit from dynamically leveraging Joomla content:
      • Block Content
      • Content List
      • FlexSlider
      • Flipping Content
      • Grid Content
      • Image Grid
      • Info List
      • Popup Grid
      • Promo Content
      • Promo Image
      • Testimonial

      For now, I've been able to cobble together content-driven modules which mimic the slick design of these particles by using RokSprocket (which isn't natively responsive) and third party extensions, at the cost of a bunch of time. Eventually, though, it will be more efficient to drop my 11-year RocketTheme subscription and move to a theme provider whose product leverages Joomla's most core feature: content management.

      The biggest problem with Gantry 5 is that it is so independent of the content management system it runs on that Gantry 5 is basically independent of the content in the CMS. (Maybe Gantry 5's sibling relationship to Grav has clouded the role of template vs. content.)

      As a paying customer, all I'm asking for is that themes RocketTheme markets "for Joomla" actually be themes for Joomla. If they're also marketed for other content management systems, that's great, but they still need to work with the content.


      Your loyally suffering subscriber,
      Daniel
    • Last Edit: 6 years 2 months ago by Daniel 6848.
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    Re: Please Make Gantry 5 Awesome (because it's not, yet)

    Posted 6 years 2 months ago
    • Thank you for your feedback, I will try to answer some of the points raised.

      We continue to develop Gantry 5 and improve it's functionality. At the time that the Isotope template was released there was no mechanism within Gantry 5 to extract Joomla content into particles, this was added later (to Gantry 5 core). We do not go back and re-engineer any previously released templates to add new functionality. We simply do not have the time or resources to keep going back over every previously released template to add in new functionality. Also, we have to consider the members that are already using the template for their sites - we don't want to make changes/additions that could potentially destabilise their sites. That is why, in general, we only bug fix template releases. As you are aware, Rockettheme has by far the biggest portfolio of templates of any provider and that consumes a lot of time bug fixing, testing, and releasing each template (often for three CMS platforms too). To illustrate the point we have released 24 template updates so far this month http://www.rockettheme.com/product-updates .

      We regularly release new templates, each of these is a massive undertaking for our small team, at that time we take on board feedback that we have received from our membership and introduce new particles and enhance existing particles to address those comments. So the more recent templates should offer the most current functionality that we have. You can also copy particles from one template to another should you wish to do so too:

      If you want to know how to copy a Gantry 5 particle from one template to another please read my tutorial here in Gantry 5 Official Documentation here .

      Whether any of us like it or not, Joomla usage is in massive decline, so we certainly can't keep all of our "eggs in the Joomla basket". This is why we developed Gantry 5 to be largely CMS agnostic. Gantry 5 now works on three CMS platforms, Joomla, Wordpress and our on our own GRAV CMS. The interface and workflow on all three platforms is extremely similar and the codebase is much the same allowing us to concentrate on providing functionality through Gantry5 and the template rather than relying too much on the CMS (and having to write lots of interfaces for each CMS). That said, we have provided all the mechanics to extract content from your chosen CMS and to utilise the functionality of the CMS. For example, you can still use modules and module positions in Joomla with Gantry5, and you can still use widgets in Wordpress with Gantry 5. We introduced our GRAV CMS because we could see the decline in Joomla usage and we (quite frankly) thought we could do a better job. GRAV is a flat-file CMS which is extremely fast. GRAV is now the fastest growing CMS available and this is where we see our future. GRAV recently won CMS Critics "Best Flat File CMS 2017" too.

      I want to be clear, I do not want to imply that we're not going to support Joomla or Wordpress anytime soon, this is absolutely not the case. I am just trying to provide a context for you to understand our decision making process.

      Regarding your specific points about some particles not reading content from Joomla... Perhaps you are not aware but there are third-party developers that now provide many more particles that just the ones that we provide? Many of these third-party developers have leveraged the functionality that we have built into Gantry 5 core (multi-CMS) and the GRAV CMS to provide their own particle that can read content from the CMS. So it might be worth you looking into some of those, some are provided free, and some are paid services. All of these can be used with the G5 template that we provide.



      I hope that is a little clearer for you. Thank you again for your feedback.

      Regards, Mark.
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  • Re: Please Make Gantry 5 Awesome (because it's not, yet)

    Posted 6 years 2 months ago
    • Hi Mark,

      For a Sports Club.. would Grav manage huge amounts of photos and news? I take it it is necessary to move from Joomla in the long term.
    • Michelle
      http://www.artifectcreative.co
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    Re: Please Make Gantry 5 Awesome (because it's not, yet)

    Posted 6 years 2 months ago
    • Your choice of CMS is a decision for you to make. There's no need to rush to change. I don't see Joomla dying off anytime soon, but is in decline so you do need to be aware of that.

      Yes, GRAV can handle huge amounts of photos and news. GRAV already has a large portfolio of plugins available too - check out the GRAV site https://getgrav.org/ . Do remember though that GRAV isn't Joomla... you will need to go through the learning curve. Fortunately though as Gantry 5 works on both Joomla and GRAV this should make any transition you choose to make easier than it would otherwise be.

      Regards, Mark.
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  • Re: Please Make Gantry 5 Awesome (because it's not, yet)

    Posted 6 years 2 months ago
    • Thank you Mark,

      I have looked at grav and the learning curve is quite steep. Gantry I have my head around.

      I recently bought a new joomla subscription for a potential client so I wanted to use joomla for this purpose. $$$ :(

      Thank you for your feedback. Sad to think Joomla may disappear one day.

      M
    • Michelle
      http://www.artifectcreative.co

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