Chops, I'm curious as to what the best method would be for starting a new site from scratch? I like playing around with layouts, but don't want to go editing my CSS and html for the site I have up at the moment as I play around with a new layout.

Is my only option to just backup what I have now and start playing? How much overhead would it be for you to allow us a secondary site to play with? I imagine too much, but I thought I would ask.

And for a final crazy idea, would it be possible to allow multiple layouts per site? Each tied to a different menu and CSS file? And then add a feature which lets the users toggle between layouts? I know that's a bit much, but just thought i might be a cool feature!

Thanks,
Dj

Actually I have seen quite a bit of people use the Demo site for this. I think Chops has a default layout he restores to it from to time but if you messing with a layout and want to see it for real I'd say upload it on the demo site. If you don't want anyone to yank your ideas you can always overwrite it with a generic layout later.

Another thing to consider is the fact that you can work on the new layout without toasting the current one. That's what the "Test It" button is for. And because every change to the layout file is stored in the history, rolling back from a mistake isn't that hard.

Only thing you can't do here very well (at least as far as I have seen) is testing CSS changes.

Also doest Test It give full access to the site with the test files? I thought it was only the page it loaded.

It is only the test page, which admittedly is lacking. That makes an interesting argument for being able to test on any page of the site.
And you are right about the CSS changes, that is something that must be remedied.

Just curious, as it occured to me, html and css files are pretty small ... couldn't it just be as easy as setting up fields in the database that pull the layout and css files from out regular file system (where we store pictures and art and such) ...

Allowing us to upload a series of html and css files, and then on a page in the admin page, just telling the system which files to use?

From there, if we could put in something like www.horizon.test.dkpsystem.com to goto the layout we want to test (I have no idea how addresses like that work, but basically just some way for us to browse to whichever html file we have saved as our test html file (and css file)).

And then again, possibly further down the road allowing us to create sets of css/html files that the users can then choose from depending on which of our layouts they like best?

I'm not convinced that last part is a good idea ... as it means managing multiple sites for us in a way ... but it's just a thought. I have seen it done before ... and phpbb (/me ducks) sorta does this, though you don't really change it on the fly, you just goto your profile and pick which one you want to use.

I hope that's not all too confusing with my hacked up version of techspeak ^_^

I could probably get away with doing that as a session variable, rather than another address. That would actually probably work pretty well.

I'll experiment.

That could then be linked into the Test It button and allow someone to deploy a completely rewritten site and see every aspect of it before choosing to go live.

Exactly my thoughts

I dunno if this makes sense, but thinking about the css, would it be possible to allow us to upload a test.css file that would over-ride the default.css file when we use Test It?

Or alternately, if we could just upload test.css, and test.html to our files, and you added a test link in the default admin, then we could just upload those files, and test?

The thing to do for this, would be to upload a seperate css file to the admin file uploader, and then point your test layout file to that one instead of the default.

Cool, that makes sense.

I just thought though, as I have had more time to think about it, it would be interesting if we had multiple layouts. As I said, I am not sure if allowing users to select them is necessarily the best idea, but what if it worked something like this :

First you would add a field to the database that stored names of templated : Blue, SpaceGreen, October, etc. When a webmaster first went to his admin page it would only show default, based on the one he picked. This would require a link on the admin page to a templateadmin.html file. At the template admin page he would be able to A. Select any of the templates he has already created (like a christmas template or halloween or SpaceBlue, or whatever) and make it the one that everyone sees (Users could potentially select from the same list and over-ride the webmasters default) B. Hit a link that allows him to create a new template. C. Delete Templates ... D. Edit templates (prolly more options, not sure).

When he creates a template, he is allowed to select from the default templates you have available, and name it whatever he wants. This then creates a <template name>.html file, and a <template name>.css file. It also adds <template name> to the database field.

Something to consider if you allow user-overrides would also be allowing the webmaster to specify whether each template he has created is "useable" or not.

And this can all tie into the testing of new templates by allowing us to set a separate tempalte as the template which will show up when we goto http://www.<sitename>.dkpsystem.com/test.php

As always ... these are just generally my ramblings, and I doubt I have much of an idea of exactly how this would effect everything else, so I understand if this kinda stuff won't work, or isn't feasible ... I just like to type sometimes ^_^