Automatic Page Builder

[Dan Vis]

Hi Martin!

I read the document you sent me and tried to send a direct response, but your email rejected it twice. So thought I would post here. Maybe a good idea as others may have input on this.

First I now see now what you meant by a page builder, and I think that is quite doable in BoltWire. If you look at my main site (www.fast.st) when you are logged out, you will see there are multiple blocks, and each of them comes from a different page in BoltWire, with fully configurable styling. This is possible here only because there is no side menu. I actually use a different skin for this than what I use elsewhere on my site, and I can create the same effect on other pages by simply using that same alternate skin on the page. I currently have an entire splash folder with pages that automatically use this skin, which I use for special landing pages. I also use it on a full-page video conferencing screen (using jitsi) for my classes and webinars.

And actually the new BoltWire site uses the same technique, with a separate skin for the welcome page. The key again, is not having a side menu which then allows you to build the page block by block. Once you create a framework that plugs the main contents of the page into a defined space, you become more limited. Remove that framework, and BoltWire can easily create the kind of blocks you want. 

I will be sure to include this full-screen skin as well as the default one and use it for the welcome page in version 7.xx, with an easy way to change the background image. But I should note, this is a much harder way to build the site in one sense as each block has to be carefully styled within the page, whereas the default skin sets the borders for the main zone in a single css file, and you just enter page content. So you need some css skill to fashion each block. IE, it's not super user friendly. It would be cool to pre-build a bunch of templates for different kinds of blocks that you could copy and paste into your page and then edit them. 

Here's my quick idea for creating a more automatic page builder: Let's say you create a page called splash.product, that runs on our landing page skin. And that page simply does a search for child pages (splash.product.1, splash.product.2, etc), and displays them using the search function. Then for your page builder you create an action you can run on the page you are building (splash.product), with a list of blocks you click to select a basic format. That pulls a template in to an edit box. You customize the content and tweak and save to the subpage name you want (using the thread function to generate the page name). The action closes and brings you back to the parent page and voila the new block is added. Or to make it easier, save the list of subpages as a data field and just use the list function to display them. That way, to change up the order, you just reorder the data field.

I don't see any problems with this approach. In fact, if we had someone who wanted to take a stab at building 6-8 common blocks, I could probably hack together the builder in a matter of minutes. It would be worth giving it a try...

So in sum, yes, I'll include both skins in the default engine. I envision a "splash" directory that uses this full page skin, and likely, if we can get someone to draft up some basic building blocks, I could include a simple page builder as well. What do you think? Alternately, I could write up a tutorial in the growth guides...

Cheers,

Dan

PS. Also appreciate your comments about the welcome tour and will give them some jmore thought.

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[mz]

Thank you for your comprehensive answer.

I will ponder the idea further ...

Greetings, Martin