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Kris Honeycutt Calculating status...

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Multipe editable regions?

May 23, 2012 5:32 PM

Categories: How to - HTML/CSS/JavaScript Tags: #templates #editable #regions

I'm feeling rather silly asking this, as it is something very straightforward to do on other CMS, but how can I setup multiple editable regions in a template?

Specifically, besides the main content area, I need to have a sidebar region that can have modules added to the editble region of the template on a per page basis. I've found some workarounds for adding multiple regions when using Incontext editing, however i need to be able to do so from the Site Manager and, from what I can tell, you can't add modules to a page from the Incontext editor.

Any direction is much appreciated, as I don't want to have to create a multitude of individual templates, as that seems counter productive.

556 Views 4 Replies Latest reply: Liam Dilley, May 23, 2012 8:42 PM

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3,994 posts
Feb 28, 2012

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1. Liam Dilley,

May 23, 2012 6:15 PM in reply to Kris Honeycutt

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Can not do a true one as your asking yet.
It is something I have been wanting for some time.
Had a few discussion with the engineers on this front and something with some new things and Liquid Markup for example will offer a rich ability to control things properly. No ETA on this stuff at all though and what form it will finally come out in.

For now you have to use javascript/ajax and templates for pages / clever use of web apps etc.

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2. Kris Honeycutt,

May 23, 2012 7:50 PM in reply to Liam Dilley

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Liam - Thanks for the quick response. Disappointed to hear it isn't possible right now, but glad I wasn't overlooking something obvious.
I'm thinking of trying to do some sort of conditional statement with js, in combination with module_pagename, to load an appropriate module into a template.
Not sure if that will work, but going to give it a shot. I love BC, but it seems to really falldown in the area of flexible templating.

Kris

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3. MaryBlight,

May 23, 2012 8:31 PM in reply to Kris Honeycutt

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Hi Kris, you should use Content Holders in your template to achieve this.

Set them up in the back end and then insert them in the template. That way the user can edit several areas on the page.

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4. Liam Dilley,

May 23, 2012 8:42 PM in reply to MaryBlight

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Hey Mary,
You need to read what Kris has asked, I can see what sort of things he was looking to do.
A content holder is a module placed in a template with no conditional value to it. Some of the things you will note Kris mentions are things like Per Page content areas etc.
With other systems you can have pages with regions with different editor areas so you can create rich websites designs but easy to manage content.
Things like expression engines can have elements on the pages in admin which if no banners chosen show no banner at the top of the page but if you choose x,z banners they will show up and start sliding for that page.

You do not have that kind of flexibility yet with BC, even with Liquid without some extra improvements you wont be able to totally achieve that goal.

Content holders also require the user to from their main content of the page to the content holder section and open multiple content holders etc.

The in editor and its region stuff is a bit pants when it comes to more complicated website designs as well and for people like myself is not viable for the sites I create.

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