Best Practices// widgitizing keystone.js

[Donal Casey]

I am new-ish to keystone but not to CMS such as sitecore, kentico, and wordpress. What I am noticing, these other CMSs have a concept of sub-layouts, sub-modules, or in wordpress, widgits you can manipulate globally, but then add to templates dynamically.

I am looking to bring this functionality to keystonejs, but curious, and trying to figure the best way to go about this.

TinyMCE route:

This seems like a great idea, as each item would give you the ability to add pre-made snippets.

the ideal ask:

on a new page, a user would have the ability to add sublayouts (2 columns, CTA, or pre-formated listing...) This would add the sublayout to the WYSIWYG where you could then continue to add/edit the sublayout.

EX:

1) user creates about page 

2) user chooses from a dropdown of pre-created sublayouts CTA

3) CTA always contains <h2> + <p> + <a>

4) user then updates the h2, p, and a tag to that page

I think the best answer would be to have a dedicated module for "snippets" // the place you would create and register your CTA

from the "snippets" you would be able to edit the h2, p, and a and name it "about page CTA"

from the newly created about page, you would from a dropdown be able to add, or relate snippets // and chose the "about page CTA"

the tricky bit to this would be the number of relationships, from the business user's perspective, you would probably want the ability to add/remove a dynamic number of these snippets.

anyone try this? or try the TinyMCE route and discover any pitfalls?

would anyone have interest working with me on this functionality? seems like it would help the admin from a business user/organizational perspective