# Re-Introducing: Page Attributes, Templates, ContentFromTempl **URL:** \ **Category:** Radiant CMS\ **Created:** [June 6, 2007, 9:40pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-introducing-page-attributes-templates-contentfromtempl/106149 "2007-06-06T21:40:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![igotimac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/i/85f322/32.png) [@igotimac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/igotimac)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2007, 9:40pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-introducing-page-attributes-templates-contentfromtempl/106149/1 "2007-06-06T21:40:36Z")
Greetings, I am please to announced that I recenly came into possession of some extra free time. And would like to tell you all about what I’ve been up to with Radiant. The Short Story: demo: [http://demo.kupenda.org/admin](http://demo.kupenda.org/admin) (user/pw = demo/radiant) svn: [http://208.78.96.155/svn/radiant\_kupenda/trunk/radiant/](http://208.78.96.155/svn/radiant_kupenda/trunk/radiant/) I need your help to make this into an extension! [http://dev.radiantcms.org/radiant/ticket/508](http://dev.radiantcms.org/radiant/ticket/508) The Long Story: I recently left my job as a software engineer at a “Professional Services” organization. One of the main things we did there was customize and deploy an in-house Java CMS for our clients. It wasn’t very good, but the one thing it did have going for it were Content Item types. For example: If you had a Jobs section on you website, you would be able to create new Job-typed content. Instead of getting just a title and single WYSIWYG content area, you would also get some relevant fields to fill out like “date posted”, “manager’s name” etc… Or maybe you would even be able to upload a PDF and attach it to this Job Posting. The important thing was that the screen you saw for creating a job looked different than the one you used for a creating a normal page, it was customized specifically for Job editing/creation. The problem with creating this customization, was that it required the developers to manually edit XML configuration files, create additional database tables, write Servlets and Table-wrapping classes, etc, etc… i.e. it wasn’t easy enough. So I saw radiant and thought: Structuring a piece of content in Page Parts is sorta-like structuring your own content item type for each page. Although, you can only structure html content, you can’t structure things like uploads, links, dates, strings, etc… So I create Page Attributes. I added a tab to the Page editing interface, and made it possible to create new attributes on a particular page. (And then you can of course reference these attributes with appropriate tags) So this gave me the flexibility to create well-structured content, but it exposed too much of that structure and gave too much power to Content Editors who shouldn’t be allowed to change the structure. The solution to this problem, was to create a second Tab in the admin JUST for content. Content Authors wouldn’t be able to add or remove parts or attributes they would just be able to change the values of existing ones. And they wouldn’t be able to add or delete pages either. Also, Content authors could only change the contents of page parts that were specifically marked as editable by them (“[X] template”). Of course, this is too far, Content authors SHOULD be able to create content, they just need some restrictions. They should only be able to create content of specific pre-defined types. (like the Jobs-typed content item) Thus, 2 new pages types: TemplatePage – a page that can be used for the basis of creating new pages ContentFromTemplatePage – a page created by a Content Author based on a TemplatePage, pre-populated with all the needed parts and attributes. To further facilitate this process I gave all pages an attribute of “inherits from page”. When a new ContentFromTemplatePage is created it’s set to “inherit from” the Template it was created from. This allows layout-oriented non-editable page parts to remain in the TemplatePage, and when edited to affect all relevant ContentFromTemplatePages. So now the Content Admin was setup so that you can create new pages anywhere there’s a TemplatePage to create on from. And you can delete pages only if they are ContentFromTemplate pages. This sort of setup allows the technical developer and the non-technical content author to find a balance between who has control over what. If a content author wants to edit or change something that is beyond their control, the developer can enable or create a page part just for that particular piece of content. It’s all about finding a balance for this user in terms of giving them just enough control to do what they want to do, without adding anything extra that would confused or frustrate them. So anyway, I’ve released a public demo of what I’m describing (see above), which is basically a dump from the live site [www.kupenda.org](http://www.kupenda.org) in which I as the developer am actively working with the content author (Kupenda’s founder) to provide the best possible most-customized content editing interface. Absolutely no ruby code was written to customize this structure specifically for Kupenda. It’s all possible through the admin with attributes, page types, and the additional tags. So now I need your help, and your voice, to make the Core Radiant extensions system capable to handling the modifications I’ve made. I don’t think they had what I’m doing here in mind when they created the extensions system. Please take a look at what I’m trying to accomplish in: [http://dev.radiantcms.org/radiant/ticket/508](http://dev.radiantcms.org/radiant/ticket/508) This is only going to become a real extension if people are willing to help make it happen. thanks, Jacob ---
**Author:** ![igotimac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/i/85f322/32.png) [@igotimac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/igotimac)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2007, 1:18am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-introducing-page-attributes-templates-contentfromtempl/106149/2 "2007-06-07T01:18:11Z")
On 06/06/07 04:39 PM, Jacob B. was heard to say: > Thus, 2 new pages types: > TemplatePage – a page that can be used for the basis of creating new pages > ContentFromTemplatePage – a page created by a Content Author > based on a TemplatePage, pre-populated with all the needed parts and > attributes. Hi Jacob: This looks interesting, good job. I am wondering how many changes/mixins are necessary to the Radiant base system to make it work or is most of it encapsulated in separate classes? A diff of your SVN against Radiant trunk looks like you had to change a lot to make it work. I am interested as I would like to adapt your page types as generic content classes for my abstract content model branch of Radiant. I am certainly looking forward to the extension. Cheers, Oliver