# Is Radiant right for me?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/is-radiant-right-for-me/114733>\
**Category:** Radiant CMS\
**Created:** [September 17, 2007, 1:24pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/is-radiant-right-for-me/114733 "2007-09-17T13:24:54Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 13\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![richardchaven](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/e480ec/32.png) [@richardchaven](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/richardchaven)\
**Post date:** [September 17, 2007, 1:24pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/is-radiant-right-for-me/114733/1 "2007-09-17T13:24:54Z")

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Hello all,

After lurking on the list for a while and checking out the Radiant home  
page  
I have a question. I am looking for a lightweight CMS framework for my  
business ([KangarooBox.com](http://KangarooBox.com)) to serve up mostly static pages. I was  
initially  
going to just use RoR but there are quite a few holes that I might need  
filled in the future (authentication, shopping carts, etc.) so I went in  
search of a framework. Radiant looks to be what I need but from what I  
can  
see it really wants to be a blogging engine. While I will need a blog  
(doesn’t everyone 🙂 I don’t want to try and force Radiant to do  
something  
it’s not designed for. So my question is this, is Radiant the thing to  
use  
on a small commercial website or should it just stick to blogs?

The one major thing I’m looking for right now is some sort of survey  
extension. I am an old programmer so I could write something but I’m  
also  
lazy and would rather use someone else’s work. 🙂 Is there anything  
like  
that for Radiant? If not, do you know how hard it would be to create it  
or  
what other RoR solutions I might try?

Thanx!  
Richard

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**Author:** ![richardchaven](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/e480ec/32.png) [@richardchaven](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/richardchaven)\
**Post date:** [September 25, 2007, 11:04pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/is-radiant-right-for-me/114733/2 "2007-09-25T23:04:30Z")

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Sean,

Excellent information! I didn’t find that user list before I posted the  
question but I see now that there are quite a few commercial sites on  
Radiant. And I get a built-in blogging engine as well.

Now for my other question, is there any code for conducting on-line  
surveys  
available for Radiant? Would this be an extension or an add-on of some  
type? I’m still getting familiar with the Radiant terms and don’t quite  
know where everything goes.

Thanx!  
Richard

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![richardchaven](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/e480ec/32.png) [@richardchaven](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/richardchaven)\
**Post date:** [September 25, 2007, 11:04pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/is-radiant-right-for-me/114733/3 "2007-09-25T23:04:49Z")

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An extension should be able to do this fine. Looking around, I haven’t  
seen one yet, but it would probably be a good excercise in learning  
both extensions and how Radiant works.

Here’s what you probably need at a minimum:

1. A SurveyPage (descended from the standard Page class)
2. Some Radius tags to help you build the survey forms in a standard  
way, declared inside the SurveyPage class (so to create a new survey  
you’d just create a new SurveyPage in the standard Page interface and  
use these tags)
3. A SurveyController that all of the survey forms point to and  
handles saving the survey data
4. An Admin::SurveyController that allows you as the admin to  
interface with the results (unless you’re fine with the results being  
public)
5. Some standard ActiveRecord descended class to handle saving the  
results

Like I said before, this will definitely be a good learning experience  
since that list covers a good deal of the things you need to know for  
extensions (except maybe virtual pages, but I don’t think they’d be  
any use in this case).

One recommendation I’d give would be to freeze radiant into the vendor  
directory so you can easily look through what’s already there. I’ve  
found that page.rb (especially find\_by\_url and everything dealing with  
rendering), site\_controller.rb, and standard\_tags.rb are the most  
important ones for getting a good picture of how Radiant works.

Hope this helps and if anyone more seasoned has a better idea, let me  
know.

-Andrew

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![richardchaven](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/e480ec/32.png) [@richardchaven](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/richardchaven)\
**Post date:** [September 25, 2007, 11:04pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/is-radiant-right-for-me/114733/4 "2007-09-25T23:04:51Z")

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Richard,

Radiant does sound like a good fit. Simply because a lot of people use  
it for blog software doesn’t mean it has to be that. Take a look at the  
various sites linked from the wiki page called RadiantUsers. There’s a  
lot of sites that use the built-in templates (or modified versions) but  
there are also sites built from scratch. Radiant does especially well  
with “brochure-ware” sites because of the flexibility given to the  
content designer and its orientation toward mostly-static content. For  
reference, here are a few sites built by core-team members:

Me: [http://kckcc.edu](http://kckcc.edu) (ignore the design, they screwed it up after I  
left)  
Daniel: [http://www.thegroggysquirrel.com/](http://www.thegroggysquirrel.com/)  
Loren: [http://diopa.org](http://diopa.org)

Cheers,

Sean

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![richardchaven](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/e480ec/32.png) [@richardchaven](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/richardchaven)\
**Post date:** [September 25, 2007, 11:10pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/is-radiant-right-for-me/114733/5 "2007-09-25T23:10:54Z")

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Richard,

Yes, an online survey would be best implemented in an extension. I  
don’t know of any currently available. I’m interested to see what you  
come up with!

Sean

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![richardchaven](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/e480ec/32.png) [@richardchaven](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/richardchaven)\
**Post date:** [September 25, 2007, 11:05pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/is-radiant-right-for-me/114733/6 "2007-09-25T23:05:29Z")

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The following project [http://informl.folklogic.net/doc](http://informl.folklogic.net/doc) (also a RoR  
application)  
may have some basic capacity for surveys and gathering/organising the  
responses.

Since it is built on RoR it may be relatively easy to adapt the  
basic mechanisms into a Radiant extension.

saji

- Andrew O’Brien [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) [2007-09-14 10:51:26 -0400]:

> 1. A SurveyController that all of the survey forms point to and
> 
> On 9/14/07, Richard H. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:
> 
> > > lot of sites that use the built-in templates (or modified versions) but
> > > 
> > > > going to just use RoR but there are quite a few holes that I might need  
> > > > The one major thing I’m looking for right now is some sort of survey
> > > > 
> > > > * * *
> > > 
> > > Search: [http://radiantcms.org/mailing-list/search/](http://radiantcms.org/mailing-list/search/)  
> > > Post: removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid  
> > > Search: [http://radiantcms.org/mailing-list/search/](http://radiantcms.org/mailing-list/search/)  
> > > Site: [http://lists.radiantcms.org/mailman/listinfo/radiant](http://lists.radiantcms.org/mailman/listinfo/radiant)

–  
Saji N. Hameed

APEC Climate Center +82 51 668 7470  
National Pension Corporation Busan Building 12F  
Yeonsan 2-dong, Yeonje-gu, BUSAN 611705 removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid  
KOREA

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**Author:** ![richardchaven](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/e480ec/32.png) [@richardchaven](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/richardchaven)\
**Post date:** [October 3, 2007, 6:44pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/is-radiant-right-for-me/114733/7 "2007-10-03T18:44:27Z")

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> But how do I make it so I can have a dynamic directory under the ‘jobs’  
> page

```
 Touching the Radiant routes, defined in the routes.rb file.

 In your case maybe what you need is a mixed Radiant<->Rails site 

```

(with  
the RadiantOnRails extension).

```
 /AITOR
```

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![richardchaven](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/e480ec/32.png) [@richardchaven](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/richardchaven)\
**Post date:** [October 3, 2007, 5:37pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/is-radiant-right-for-me/114733/8 "2007-10-03T17:37:11Z")

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Hi everyone!

I am asking the same question - is Radiant right for me? Obviously the  
CMS capabilities are great, but I need to be able to serve some dynamic  
content too - for instance - I have a load of jobs I need to list and  
they need to be shown on a page as required:

[http://www.mydomain.com/jobs](http://www.mydomain.com/jobs) - all jobs

[http://www.mydomain.com/jobs/my-job-category](http://www.mydomain.com/jobs/my-job-category) - all jobs for the chosen  
category

[http://www.mydomain.com/job/my-job](http://www.mydomain.com/job/my-job) - the job matching the selected id

Obviously I can add an extension for storing the jobs info and I can  
create a jobs page to show ALL jobs. But how do I make it so I can have  
a dynamic directory under the ‘jobs’ page. I note this has been done on  
two of the links Sean provides ([http://www.thegroggysquirrel.com](http://www.thegroggysquirrel.com) and  
[http://diopa.org](http://diopa.org)). Well, I assume it has, either that or someone is  
doing a lot of admin work keeping everything up-to-date.

Any help would be appreciated…

Thanks  
Jay

Sean C. wrote:

> Richard,
> 
> Radiant does sound like a good fit. Simply because a lot of people use  
> it for blog software doesn’t mean it has to be that. Take a look at the  
> various sites linked from the wiki page called RadiantUsers. There’s a  
> lot of sites that use the built-in templates (or modified versions) but  
> there are also sites built from scratch. Radiant does especially well  
> with “brochure-ware” sites because of the flexibility given to the  
> content designer and its orientation toward mostly-static content. For  
> reference, here are a few sites built by core-team members:
> 
> Me: [http://kckcc.edu](http://kckcc.edu) (ignore the design, they screwed it up after I  
> left)  
> Daniel: [http://www.thegroggysquirrel.com/](http://www.thegroggysquirrel.com/)  
> Loren: [http://diopa.org](http://diopa.org)
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Sean

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**Author:** ![richardchaven](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/e480ec/32.png) [@richardchaven](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/richardchaven)\
**Post date:** [October 3, 2007, 7:37pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/is-radiant-right-for-me/114733/9 "2007-10-03T19:37:17Z")

</div>

I’d recommend a virtual page. Check out how the archive pages work in  
Radiant.

Basically, you would create a JobPage page type that overrides, at the  
very least:

1. Page#virtual? to return true

2. Page#find\_by\_url to retrieve the Job for the requested id and store  
it in an instance variable for the page (let’s say @job)

3. probably title, breadcrumb, and slug

4. some Radius tags to use in the body of the page that allow you to  
access the data in the @job instance variable

You may also need to define a JobListingPage to be the parent to the  
JobPage and allow you to list links to the job pages.

-Andrew

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**Author:** ![richardchaven](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/e480ec/32.png) [@richardchaven](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/richardchaven)\
**Post date:** [October 3, 2007, 10:55pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/is-radiant-right-for-me/114733/10 "2007-10-03T22:55:29Z")

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You also now have the option of using a regular Rails controller to  
handle dynamic content and still share the visual design with your  
Radiant installation, via the share\_layouts extension. On the other  
hand, I have had great success with virtual pages. The syllabi/course  
descriptions on KCKCC.edu used this method  
([http://kckcc.edu/academics/course-descriptions](http://kckcc.edu/academics/course-descriptions)). All child pages of  
the linked page are a single virtual page that changes its contents  
based on the URL.

Sean

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![richardchaven](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/e480ec/32.png) [@richardchaven](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/richardchaven)\
**Post date:** [October 3, 2007, 11:18pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/is-radiant-right-for-me/114733/11 "2007-10-03T23:18:06Z")

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Great! Thanks guys, I’ll look into each of the above and post back when  
I decide what is the best solution in my case…

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![richardchaven](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/e480ec/32.png) [@richardchaven](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/richardchaven)\
**Post date:** [October 4, 2007, 6:05pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/is-radiant-right-for-me/114733/12 "2007-10-04T18:05:29Z")

</div>

Is there an info page for the share\_layouts extension? I can’t find much  
information about it ☹

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**Author:** ![richardchaven](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/e480ec/32.png) [@richardchaven](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/richardchaven)\
**Post date:** [October 4, 2007, 6:09pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/is-radiant-right-for-me/114733/13 "2007-10-04T18:09:42Z")

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Ah okay, got it:

[http://dev.radiantcms.org/svn/radiant/trunk/extensions/share\_layouts/](http://dev.radiantcms.org/svn/radiant/trunk/extensions/share_layouts/)