Repeatable data content in umbraco - plugins

I am just wondering is there any plugin to create dynamic content for a page i.e something similar to a data repeaters in .net. To make it simple it should be a section that should contains 5 to 6 fields/property like
heading
heading 2
image
content - rich text editor
info
This must be in repeatable control so that the editor can add any number of these section a page and all these should be displayed in a single page.
Is there a plugin for the above functionality or what is the best way to achieve this.Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Aneesh

You can achieve this without any plugins.
Create your repeatable section (containing the relevant fields) as a document type, and then use the multi-node picker in another document type to select one or many of the sections.
So for example, I could have a FAQs page (which uses a document type called "FAQs Page"), and I want to be able to add multiple question and answers to this page. I could set up a document type called "Question". This will contain two fields: Question and Answer.
On the "FAQs Page" document type, I would add a multi-node picker field called "Questions". This way, an author could select multiple "Question" nodes to appear on the FAQs page.
You would obviously need the code to output this, and also you would create a data type that inherited from multi-node picker, so that you could limit the selection to only Question nodes.

There is also the Repeatable Custom Content datatype which works well but does not support all data types. But it does support all the ones you need for your stated purpose (textstring, media picker, richtext area, etc).
You can find it here: http://our.umbraco.org/projects/backoffice-extensions/repeatable-custom-content I've used it a few times and it works really well in certain situations (e.g. where the items will not be shared across different pages of your site).
If you are sharing content components across multiple pages then #Digbyswift's solution is perfect.

I've always Digbyswifts method, but whilst looking for an alternate solution tonight I found this plugin, which is excellent for those situations where creating lots of widget nodes feels like overkill. It's licensed but the free older version is also available.
http://inaboxdesign.dk/blog/widget-builder-for-umbraco/

Related

What is the relation between extensions and the backend of TYPO3?

I am new to TYPO3 and have trouble understanding the general relation between extensions and the backend of TYPO3.
For example, is it true that the goal of making an extension is to be able add edited/new content elements to your page that cannot be found in TYPO3 out of the box?
For example if I wanted to add a carousel to my page, would I make an extension and design it in such a way that I can add it from my backend to the desired page? Or would it make more sense to, for example, put it as a partial and import it to the desired page using fluid (all of this without using the backend and just using code).
Or are both approaches possible and when would you go for the first or the second (or seek out a third approach)?
Sorry if this question is too general/vague. I feel like I do not understand how the backend and the files in my TYPO3 folder communicate to generate the website and that I am using content elements in the backend one time and typing out the elements in HTML the next time without a good reason for it.
I try to bring some light into the dark areas.
Backend This is the admin area of the CMS where in most cases the content is created by editors.
Frontend: How the website looks to a regular visitor
Extension: An extension is custom code, either your own code or by others which extend TYPO3 in one or more ways. The benefit is that you don't change the code of TYPO3 core itself and therefore it can be always updated.
An extension can be used for a lot of things:
- Shipping a site template with all the assets like CSS, JavaScript, HTML template, ..
- Providing custom content elements
- Providing new record types like news or forms
- Improve user experience
So yes, if you want to have a new kind of content elements you need to use an extension:
Search on https://extensions.typo3.org to check if there is already something which fits your needs
Use https://extensions.typo3.org/extension/mask/ (best in combination with https://extensions.typo3.org/extension/mask_export/) or https://extensions.typo3.org/extension/dce/ to make it a lot faster to create content elements
If experienced you can also create a custom content elements without any additional extension but for start I don't recommend that.
One approach to look at this question in a different way might be to differentiate between content created and maintained by editors (the backend users which typically add and maintain content) and parts of the visible webpages created in other ways. For example, the header, footer, menu of a site may be created by a sitepackage extension - this is something the editor (backend user without admin access) typically has no permission to access and that is one of the points of a CMS - the content is editable by someone without technical background. Of course this improves the stability as well because you don't have people fiddling around with things they should not be able to have access to and thus cannot break.
If you want your editors to be able to add (remove, change) content - do it in a way they have access to (typically using content elements).
You are right, the core provides content elements (such as "textmedia"), extensions can extend this by adding other content elements.
For your example with "carousel" you might want to look at the (official) Introduction Package which uses the bootstrap_package which offers a carousel content element. The Installation Guide explains how to setup a TYPO3 installation with "Introduction Package" so you may already be using that.
For example, is it true that the goal of making an extension is to be able to add edited/new content elements to your page that cannot be found in TYPO3 out of the box?
That is one of many, many other possible purposes of an extension. For example, look at the extension "min". It does not provide any content element and there is no visible change for the editor. An extension is just a way to extend the TYPO3 core (while the core itself also consists of extensions).
Introduction of Extensions in TYPO3 Explained
Sitepackage Tutorial

Looking for an Extension of an extensive link list

For the construction of an extensive list of links, since the source page is a thematic portal, I am looking for a suitable EXT., Which also runs under TYPO3 7.6 LTS.
it if the list of links to a permits the use of categories and multiple categorization of links is possible would be nice. should Weiterrhin the links are described not only the destination address and an alias but here should still an outline of the target page (possibly with photo) be possible.
Additional functions such as proposing links by users, reporting broken links or even a User Voting would nice additional features.
There were times the Modern Linklist, but they were no longer being developed for TYPO3 <6.x.
Is there perhaps somewhere an alternative or as one might like to vorhnandenen solutions might realize? It would be nice of course, without any programming knowledge, since I'm not a programmer.
P.S .: It is not about building a spam list but high quality links with topics relating to the original page.
As this seems to be a straight forward usage you could try to build that extension by yourself with the ExtensionBuilder.
just build up the records neccessary for your data. and let the EB generate all usefull actions: list & show, even create, edit, delete in FE would be possible.
Afterwards you just need to edit the generated fluid templates.
these links may help:
Overview
EB manual
small remark: if you want the newest code state, use the EB from git instead of TER
I`m not aware of an existing extension for it but it could be a good project to learn extbase / fluid.
You should also take a look at
typo3/sysext/fluid_styled_content/Resources/Private/Partials/Menu
and
typo3/sysext/fluid_styled_content/Classes/ViewHelpers/Menu
Fluid Content contains everything you need to create a list like that, you "just" have to combine the necessary bits and pieces.
You can do a lot with TYPO3 core functionality: there is a page type "external URL", pages can have categories by default, there are plenty of menu options (TypoScript HMENU, menu content elements, Fluid menu Viewhelpers). The Linkvalidator can periodically check all links and report broken links.
For suggestions you could add a form. Powermail for example can also store submitted info in database records, so your visitors could prepare page records (they are hidden until you make them visible).

Best Product Listing Option for Concrete5

I'm going to be creating a Concrete5 website that will feature product listings. The listing system must offer all your typical ecommerce features, minus the ability to purchase items. It's strictly for browsing purposes only.
For example:
- Browse by category
- Search products
- Listings/results page with thumbnails and brief information (title, description, price in US/CAD, manufacturer, maker, etc.)
- Products single page (with detailed information, attributes and gallery/images)
All the things you'd expect to find in a listing system.
My issue is I can't find a specific add-on for something like product listings. This leaves me thinking that it may be best to use the e-commerce add on and do my best to hide anything related to the cart/payment process. That way it could just be used for everything else it offers.
What are your thoughts on this? Is there a better option?
Thanks for the advice!
Use the page list block. It has everything you need except for searching. But, in essence, that's what your requirements call for -- listing of pages.
Create a page type for your "product". The "brief information" can be in the Content block, or you can set as attributes. You'll probably want to make some minor changes to the block's view (by creating a new template) that displays the image as you want, the proper attributes, etc. Something similar to http://www.concrete5.org/documentation/how-tos/designers/styling-the-page-list-block/
There are several adanced page list blocks in the marketplace. You might want to start with those.
Right creat Page type.
After creat Page attributes.
Add a block page_list create a template for it and filter by attributes.
You can even use ajax to filter.
http://www.weblicating.com/doku/doku.php?id=cheatsheet/#.UbR7P0BmiSp
U can find here about page_list or read documentation Concrete5.

How can I use the Inversion of Control concept in Sitecore to get non-page items to display themselves?

I have a number of non-page content items that are used as "callouts" on the side of pages throughout my website that I am building in Sitecore. Ideally I would like to be able to define the presentation information for these callouts independently. Then when a CMS author selects callouts for a particular page in the site, they know how to display themselves. I read an excellent blog post about how to do this here: http://www.awareweb.com/AwareBlog/InversionControl2.aspx. I used the first method that he describes in the post.
However my implementation of that code doesn't completely work. It seems to get the correct rendering and it iterates properly through the selected non-page callout items. But when it displays them on the page it seems like the callout items are still using Sitecore.Context.Item as their source item and not the source item that was passed in to them via the strDataSource variable as seen in the example code.
Do I have to do anything special in the code behind for the sublayouts for the callouts to tell them not to use Sitecore.Context.Item and instead to use the source item that was passed in? Otherwise I can't figure out why it's not working. Any ideas?
Thanks,
Corey
Setting the DataSource in a sublayout doesn't explicitly set the Context.Item to a different value, it just sets a property in a sublayout that it can use itself.
Rather than write up the solution again, John West's blog already covers this subject here, so I'd recommend you read that - http://www.sitecore.net/Community/Technical-Blogs/John-West-Sitecore-Blog/Posts/2010/11/How-to-Apply-Data-Sources-to-Sitecore-ASPNET-Presentation-Components.aspx
I would recommend using the SublayoutParameterHelper Shared Source library which provides a Helper and a base class to use with your sublayouts for accessing the Item represented by an ID set in the DataSource; John also cites this library in his blog post.

joomla multiple site content distribution

I'm just starting to evaluate joomla CMS as a tool to build out my personal site. I'd like to manage multiple sites/domains with one copy of joomla on one host. so I'll own mysite.com and myothersite.com, which will both point to the same host/joomla code. If I do this I need to be able to set which domain/site the content I add shows up on. For some sites the content will be on both for others it will be on only one. What would be ideal it to have some kind of filtering mechanism so I don't have to manually set where the content goes.
What would be ideal is for me to set tags on the content and each site can specify which taged content to show.
My last requirement is that I be able to have different pages on each site.
Is this possible or am I asking too much from a "free" CMS?
Thanks all
I don't know if there's a component that achieves what you're describing here. I use a multi-language component in some of my sites that shows translations, but it doesn't "suppress" articles that doesn't have references to a translation: it just says "No translations to this article". I know you're not asking for translations methods, but I think the Joomfish way of selecting content based in a chosen language would be what you wanted, but not based in languages, just domains.
The only component I know it would be able to suppress articles based in pre defined parameters (in its case the language), is the Joomfish's "Table Localization Plugin", but you need to be a Joomfish silver member paying $60 to Joomfish's developers.
You could write a component(see here for plugin documentation), that analyzing the domain, would suppress articles that shouldn't appear in that specific domain. But I think it's going yo be a lot of work. You would learn a lot of Joomla's architecture, though.
How Joomla displays its content (output) is controlled entirely by parameters. So if you can control what parameters are loading, you can create multiple displays per host
However, that may be overkill in this case. You can just easily hack your template. Just make it load a different menu for siteA and siteB. (The host is set in $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'])
The menu on siteA could have a tagging component item, set to display articles tagged siteA.com. The siteB will have the same for its domain.
While there are extensions that will do what you describe (http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/core-enhancements/multiple-sites), Joomla is really designed for one site at a time. I've done setups where I use the same codebase for Joomla and manage it with version control, but I always end up launching multiple sites with individual databases.
However, I don't know of any CMS that inherently allows you to share articles across instances while keeping the data centralized. You may be looking at an extension (or your own customization) regardless of which platform you pick.
We had a similar problem with needing to share content across multiple Joomla! sites so we developed this extension: http://extensions.joomla.org/extension/simple-sharing
It is not very robust in terms of what it can share but it does let you share Articles across multiple sites and choose which sites and categories those articles get published into. I hope it works for you.
Thanks!