20 Replies Latest reply: Aug 1, 2013 9:41 AM by Dave Blubaugh

#1 Complaint(s) about Business Catalyst missing features

jefferis Jul 25, 2013 7:39 AM

I am posting this as a relative newbie to BC but as a long time ( since1994) web designer and programmer. I encourage others to respond with their own suggestions for improvement.

1. The lack of responsive templates AND responsive menus ( I find this so far behind the development curve for current design as to be almost unbelievable. I normally learn new systems by taking templates and coding apart and putting them back together, but for non-coders esp., the system for creating flexible designs and menus is opaque to say the least. Adobe has a habit of developing products targeted towards designers as end users, but fit only for coders who ALREADY understand and know how to use the proprietary code. I suffered through 3 iterations of Action Script only to finally give up trying to keep up with all the "improvements" which made it less possible for someone who was not a full time programmer coder to use. There are no "plugins" or "extensions" to BC that allow the non-dedicated coder to easily implement basic features already readily available with other programs like Word Press, Bootstrap, Drupal, or third party DW makers like Project Seven or DMXzone. Plus the available documentation with some such like BCGurus is not simple enough to add complex features like responsive menus or designs).

2. Related to #1, I have not found out a simple example tutorial as to how one might create a DW set of templates that use responsive design and responsive menus, and make them work on BC. For example, the dynamic menu system in BC will not use PVII JavaScript, and its inbred detection methods invalidate PVII responsive scripts, so that is a no go. I went through an entire tutorial on BCGurus on creating responsive menus, but found them unhelpful because there was a complete gap on showing how to apply such menu systems to the BC CSS HTML menus. Yes there was a tutorial sort of, but it did not deal with multilevel responsive menus, only top level, which was useless. What would be nice was a start to finish (FREE ON ADOBE) of taking or creating a Bootstrap or DW template responsive design with responsive menus and implementing it on BC.

If #1 were available, it might be simple enough to use it as a base and then edit the CSS of it to one's liking and create basically new sites with the template code, but even the BCGuru templates with responsive menus have so many levels of web apps embedded inside of modules inside of content holders inside of web apps, that trying to use those templates with custom designs (or client specific content!) becomes equivalent to a month long African Safari tracking down the fabled wildebeest of Gnome.

I will not even get into, except mention, the lack of custom coding functionality of BC as compared to PHP/MySql, or some of the basic features missing on the shopping carts available to most eo-commerce sites.

Anyway, that is my rant for the day.

1. Re: #1 Complaint(s) about Business Catalyst missing features

thetrickster888 Jul 25, 2013 8:13 AM (in response to jefferis)

While there's no stock responsive tempates there certainly are 3rd party BC templates that are responsive like a few on BCGurus: http://bcgurus.com/Template/saltbox-bootstrap is just one of them.

It's pretty easy to build your own responsive template on BC if you know HTML/CSS and media queries in CSS. If you are going to start with a responsive template and want to customize it more and/or run into problems with the design it's recommended that you understand how to implement responsive design so that you can customize and fix any problems you come across.

If you want a good responsive template based on Zurb's Foundation (which I think has a better menu solution for multiple levels of navigation) you can try this one from BC Gurus as well:http://bcgurus.com/blog/new-business-catalyst-template-accounting

If you are complaining about the lack of server-side programming as compared to PHP/MySQL then you probably know how to build responsive websites and you can just create your own from your favorite responsive framework.

Even though BC lacks responsive templates out of the box they offer a very flexible engine to let you deliver alternate content and templates to mobile or tablet users and most platforms don't have that built-in. Here's more info on creating mobile and tablet friendly templates or page content: http://helpx.adobe.com/business-catalyst/partner/creating-mobile-tablet-friendly-templates .html
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2. Re: #1 Complaint(s) about Business Catalyst missing features

Liam Dilley Jul 25, 2013 2:53 PM (in response to jefferis)

Hi Jeff,
Sorry to hear you are not happy.
I am a bit sad your number one complaint is not having BC make stock templates. I would consider this myself as far at the bottom of my list as possible. I like to consider myself a web profresional and hand code sites to a high standard, so I am not a template fan like many.

Like Trickster said - there are plenty of 3rd party templates if you feel you need to use those to produce BC sites.

I also feel your not going to like releases that will be coming in BC after the migration, if your not a fan of coding. For BC to frow more it needs to cater for us who want to make high end websites and get the bigger clients. So it will have more complex features over time. IT will have more for the designer and Muse I am sure will improve but for BC to hit the top end, it needs those features.

In terms of menus - A menu with no fixed width in your css will always be adaptive to its environment and other elements for design on mobile is really simple CSS using media queries. Even a junior designer at a web agency needs to have good CSS knowledge. Not saying that you dont or are not but just saying it as it is.
People need to stop comparing BC to wordpress really, CMS in name only and quite different systems, freelances and template users may need to consider sticking with wordpress if that is wha they feel is more suiting to their needs.

My question to you is..
Do you want to produce a portfolio of work based of a responsive template or handful of templates?
People say they can make them very different, but I always look at their work and see the same site with slight variations and to a point where you even know what template they used
That is one of the web business discussions about wordpress that has some good articles on across the web.

Personally BC needs to focus on a lot more then spending time making more templates for people.
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3. Re: #1 Complaint(s) about Business Catalyst missing features

jefferis Jul 25, 2013 3:54 PM (in response to Liam Dilley)

In the past, I've used media queries and javascript for responsive menus and detection. I think I am mostly confused about the default menu vs css vs css html only menu systems and how they integrate with custom designed menu systems. (aside from that, applying separate CSS and id's to menus in the BC interface is way too tedious!) The scripts are usually incompatible with BC.
Like I said, I usually learn new systems by tearing apart examples or templates. IOW, menu systems that work fine on other servers break when uploaded to BC. I am not a full time coder, but a jack-of-all trades and have been trying to provide my non-technical clients a method of working with many of the features provided by BC (blogs, CRM, etc). I've steered smaller clients towards WordPress, larger ones towards Drupal, but thought that BC might be an easy solution for them.
Coming from the Dreamweaver environment, the benefit of something like DW has always been the ability to save time by not having to write out all the code by hand (which I used to do back in 1994). I guess I just don't quite get the interface for menu systems and how they are applied with the dynamic interface in BC. This is so totally different (really hidden I guess for security's sake) than MySQL and PHP, that the hooks for developing features I normally use, just aren't there, but have to be provided for us...
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4. Re: #1 Complaint(s) about Business Catalyst missing features

Cedric Canete Jul 26, 2013 6:47 AM (in response to jefferis)

BC is a whole different system and should not be compared with open source CMS like Magento, Drupal, WP, Joomla, etc. Study and research first when trying BC and not code with how you worked from the list I mentioned.

There are lots of helpful documentations on this forum, even on the BC kb (discontinued)

You can always ask questions here and we are more than glad to help you with any obstacle you might bump in.
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5. Re: #1 Complaint(s) about Business Catalyst missing features

Liam Dilley Jul 26, 2013 7:51 AM (in response to jefferis)

Jeff,
CSS HTML Only - renders a ul li menu format - semantically correct html structure for a menu.
Default - tables.

You do not need to add ID's anc css items to menus as you mentioned. Why do you feel you need to do this? I think you probably just need to be shown some more things to help you avoid the issues you seem to be having. I certanly not the only one not to, so we can remove those headaches quite easily.No hacks etc either, just css and knowing how to use menus in BC.

Coding properly is the only way to get the best and highest quality, semantically correct and well formed and more advanced code.
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6. Re: #1 Complaint(s) about Business Catalyst missing features

jefferis Jul 26, 2013 11:33 AM (in response to Liam Dilley)

I think I was confused rather than helped by some of the BCGuru tutorials... It made it seem more complicated than it is.
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7. Re: #1 Complaint(s) about Business Catalyst missing features

jefferis Jul 26, 2013 11:35 AM (in response to Cedric Canete)

Cedric, I was comparing features available other CMS products but missing in BC at this time. I've run into quite a few roadblocks, for example, not being able to modify some of the tags (because they don't have ,,,variables, etc... ) ... When a feature is governed by a tag that is unmodifiable, you are stuck.
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8. Re: #1 Complaint(s) about Business Catalyst missing features

Liam Dilley Jul 26, 2013 8:03 PM (in response to jefferis)

IF you feel that Jeff, contact them and let them know that.
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9. Re: #1 Complaint(s) about Business Catalyst missing features

Liam Dilley Jul 26, 2013 8:04 PM (in response to jefferis)

Can you give examples Jeff?
I have helped guide you to features several times on the forums you were not aware of, so it is likely just more thing you not aware of I feel. Will improve as you learn more about BC.
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10. Re: #1 Complaint(s) about Business Catalyst missing features

jefferis Jul 26, 2013 8:57 PM (in response to Liam Dilley)

Thanks Liam, I appreciate the help. Do you want examples of limited tags or of bad tutorials? :-) I did post and speak at length with the guys at BCGurus, explaining exactly where I saw missing steps and why I was having trouble following... I also was searching for a responsive menu that handled submenus, and they pointed me to another site, but it didn't tell me how to apply the CSS menu to the existing menus. I am assuming from what you are saying that it is as simple as choosing to use the custom CSS as a linked file? Just like you would for a standard website? The problems I ran into were that every responsive menu I was trying to use was not just CSS but also used jquery or javascripts of some sort and BC was choking on them ...

For example, even a supposed CSS menu is making a javascript call in this download:
http://webdesign.tutsplus.com/tutorials/site-elements/big-menus-small-screens-responsive-m ulti-level-navigation/?search_index=17 The question is for me, will something with scripts like this work, and if they do, are all the submenus of a BC created menu system automatically assigned the values of the ul ul li CSS?? Or to do I have to manually assign an id tag to thes submenu items?
IF the call to the script will mess up BC, I have a stylesheet sample of a pure css responsive menu.
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11. Re: #1 Complaint(s) about Business Catalyst missing features

thetrickster888 Jul 26, 2013 10:06 PM (in response to jefferis)

The menu you linked to should work fine on BC-- there are different types of menus in BC: "Default" uses it's own CSS and javsacript inline and also uses tables-- it's a remnant from the first menu implementaiton on BC. Don't use that one. "CSS" uses it's own HTML and CSS... if you use that type of menu and set it up yourself and adjust the menu look, etc. it should work fine without having to add css or javsacript. "CSS (HTML Only)" is the most bare menu and it really just outputs the HTML of the menu for you and you are required to write the CSS and javascript yourself. "CSS (HTML Only)" would be the type you use if you want to use the menu like you linked to.

You can adjust the layout of the menu container and menu items by going into your "Develop" tab up top on BC and navigating to /ModuleTemplates/Default/ and editing the .html files in that folder. If you need to attach custom classes or id's for the script you are trying to implement to control the navigation-- that's where you edit the resulting HTML markup. This only works for the "CSS (HTML Only)" menu type.
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12. Re: #1 Complaint(s) about Business Catalyst missing features

jefferis Jul 27, 2013 7:33 AM (in response to thetrickster888)

thetrickster888 wrote:

"CSS" uses it's own HTML and CSS... if you use that type of menu and set it up yourself and adjust the menu look, etc. it should work fine without having to add css or javsacript.
I think when I tried to use this included version, it wasn't natively responsive... I know the default menu is not...

So if I choose the last one (HTML only), let me restate for my benefit... when I link to a standard html page that has a menu, CSS (and perhaps jQuery or scripts.js) I normally only have to use the links to the files and set the div IDs for the menu to match. Are you saying that the raw html layout of the menus would be governed by my files simply by either clicking the Custom CSS button in the menu manager (say it is a pure CSS menu and no js) , or could I manually add the links to the Site Template pages, or do I need to add the links to and change the basic stucture of the files in this area:

BCGurus talked about this in one of their tutorials, but to understand this way of doing things requires a new understanding of the structure... This approach seems strange to me. I am so used to working with DW preview and editing code or CSS that the pure code approach without immediate visible feedback makes it hard to know for me if what I'm doing is working or messing things up. Please excuse me if I seem so dense, but in some ways BC is very familiar, but its other methods of doing things requires unlearning and re-education...
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13. Re: #1 Complaint(s) about Business Catalyst missing features

thetrickster888 Jul 27, 2013 7:38 AM (in response to jefferis)

If you want to include a custom navigation menu that isn't "Default" or "CSS" because those should work out of the box with their own styles and javascript automatically included and they may not be flexible enough for your liking, then yes, you need to use "CSS (HTML Only)".

The best way to do it would be to reference your CSS files or javascript that works with your menu via the page template in the HEAD element. Then, update the HTML of the menu in the files in /ModuleTemplates/Menu/Default/ to adjust the markup to add any classes or IDs to your nav container or LI, UL items to hook your javascript or CSS to.
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14. Re: #1 Complaint(s) about Business Catalyst missing features

jefferis Jul 27, 2013 8:00 AM (in response to thetrickster888)

Thanks! It is starting to make sense now :-)
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15. Re: #1 Complaint(s) about Business Catalyst missing features

Liam Dilley Jul 27, 2013 7:49 PM (in response to jefferis)

Jeff, I swear you have asked similar before and I linked you this?
http://forums.adobe.com/docs/DOC-1903
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16. Re: #1 Complaint(s) about Business Catalyst missing features

jefferis Jul 28, 2013 5:40 AM (in response to Liam Dilley)

Liam, no, I know I asked questions about tags before. My complaint was not related to menu tags, but other things that they can't do if they don't have the capacity to be modified by built in options...
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17. Re: #1 Complaint(s) about Business Catalyst missing features

Liam Dilley Jul 28, 2013 8:05 AM (in response to jefferis)

With V2 I have no issue creating any menu I wish. The guide is only partly showing you the tags, the whole thing and the demo files shows pure CSS example and script enhancements to that.
CSS to change a menu from horizontal to vertical with one class is only the tip of the iceberg.
I can see from what you have said in this thread Jeff you should do some reasearch I think on CSS further and inheritance etc.

Sub elements do not need extra classes to the degree your looking at.

li > a vs li a
:first-child, :last-child li:hover vs a:hover ul:hover, ul li > li , ...... All these sorts of things and a number of these actually CSS2 so older browers can understand them lead to any combination of targeting. Scripts come to only enhance it.
Mega menu's and use of web apps, content holders within the menu layouts allow for much more expandability.

Its just learning these elements etc.
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18. Re: #1 Complaint(s) about Business Catalyst missing features

jefferis Jul 30, 2013 8:10 PM (in response to thetrickster888)

Hi 888 , when I look at the default templates there is nothing it seems to modify:
<ul>{tag_menuchilditem}</ul> Plus, since it is default, I don't want it to affect all menus, just the one custom one.

I tried using the CSS version (not html) and even though I selected vertical, it went horizontal... weird.
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19. Re: #1 Complaint(s) about Business Catalyst missing features

Liam Dilley Jul 30, 2013 9:03 PM (in response to jefferis)

With the module v2 layout you can create a folder and specify that to have a custom layout per menu.
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20. Re: #1 Complaint(s) about Business Catalyst missing features

Dave Blubaugh Aug 1, 2013 9:41 AM (in response to jefferis)

@jefferis

Hi Jeff,

I am not completely sure if this part of your issue with the top level menus in responsive layouts.

I found that if you make the menu responsive (using @media) that you can't get to the dropdown menus on your phone. "Touching" the top menu links to a page instead of opening the submenu. The work around that I found was giving the top level menus an <a href="#"> link in the site manager->menus. That allows you to click on the top level menu and have a dropdown for the submenus on a "touch" device, e.g. phone. With the @media you could change the href attribute when the screen gets to a certain size. It is similar to changing the phone number to a tel: link if using a phone.

As I said, I am not sure if this was part of your question, but I found it useful. Hopefully someone else might also.

@Liam - If I am incorrect or this is a horrible way to handle the mobile menu, please let me know how you would do it.

Cheers,

Dave
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