[Zope-CMF] Building dynamic pages & the like

[Erik Lange]

At 06:31 PM 3/18/03, Chris Withers wrote:
>Hi,
>
>I'm curious as to how people are building semi-dynamic pages that content 
>authors want to configure the layout for.
>
>Take for example:
>http://www.ich.ucl.ac.uk/
>..compared with:
>http://www.gosh.nhs.uk/pressoffice
>
>Both pages have collections of content on them but the presentation and 
>layout are slightly different. In a 'normal' CMF-based site I'd do that in 
>a ZPT, but what about sites like the above where there are a _lot_ of 
>different ways that index pages are laid out.
>
>The only thing I could think to do was to scatter index_html's in 'content 
>space' but this means someone needs to be ZPT-aware (and worse still, go 
>through the ZMI) in order to layout the index page of their department.
>
>What other was have people found to tackle these kinds of problems?

Hi Chris:)

We're working on a product called CMF Portal Layout, to do what you describes.

It's kind of like CMF Portlets... The idea is, that you can define a portal 
layout by defining rows and collums, and filling these up with "Layout 
items" (like portlets).

Layout can be applied to folderish content, and defines the layout for the 
folder and subfolders. Layout on a folder can be overwritten and changed 
depending on permissions, on a subfolder.

At top level manager can "lock" certain rows or collums, or selected layout 
items in rows and collums. Manager also defines a "Main slot", where 
content is presented. Rows and collums definitions are then used to 
generate the ZPT templates for the site.

User can change the layout of their memberfolder, by adding rows and 
collums to their main slot, and add or remove layout items to the existing 
layout, if the inherited layout items aren't locked.

To control how layout items are rendered, we've got formating and styles 
objects.

A layout item could i.e. be a listing of Links. This is made by adding a 
"List menu" to a layout collum, and configuering this to show ojects of the 
type "Links", in a certain sort order on a defined criteria, and maybe 
filtered by a list of subjects. Each item in the list is presented using a 
Format_object, wich defines what entrys the list contains of, for each 
listed item - title, description, creator, date etc. - and what entrys in 
the list, that are linked to which objects, from the list (I.e. title -> 
object, Creator -> creator_home). Each entry in the format object is then 
finally rendered controlled by an assigned Styles_object, that defines used 
font, size, color etc. for each entry in the list.

Depending on permissions, users can redesign folders totally and individually.

We hope to release CMF Portal Layout soon :-)

But at the moment it's only available from our CVS.... and at own risk:-))


Regards,
Erik Lange