The battle of Sitestructure & Articles

[Robert & Ingemann]

Hello there,

I´m not sure this is the right place to put this post, but anyways.

Im a partner of a small webagency based in Copenhagen. We´re using Contao as our primary platform for our webprojects. We´ve been using it for the last 3 years and have been more than pleased with how extremely flexible the system is. It´s a BIG pleasure for us as designers to work with such an intutive CMS that makes just about anything possible. But ... We have a few major concerns which have led us to explore other CMS such as Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, Squarespace etc. And here goes why:

The fact that Articles and the Sitestructure are separated is one extreme challenge to explain to our clients. Plus the way that Articles are organized is also very complicated to understand for CMS newbies (our clients). If the client has access to more than just the Main area, lets say that the client can edit Header, Main and Left area in the Articles, the structure becomes very confusing and easy get lost in. This means lots of hours with unhappy clients on the phone, even after 2-3 hours of Contao teaching. And the separation of Articles and Sitestructure also makes it much more complicated to add new pages. It´s a help with the article icon now added in the sitestructure and the creation of a default main article. But not enough to remove the big question mark from our client face though :-(

We are still using Contao because of the flexibility, well organised, well coded and many plug´n´play features. Even after lots of hours learning and exploring other CMS´s, we always return to Contao. So we´re wondering if anyone else have the same thoughts on this issue and we of course would love to come up with suggestions to how we could improve the systems ease of use regarding the battle of Articles & Sitestructure.

Hope this is not taking badly - everything is written with pure love for Contao.

Best regards,
Robert & Ingemann

[Ben_360fusion]

I have the same thoughts, I posted this in the Dev section a few days ago.

It would be nice to even have the option where you could set this functionality to only work for a user group if not just as the default way.

Would like to hear you ideas on how you would like the system to ideally work.

http://dev.contao.org/issues/2590

Ben

[Ben_360fusion]

I think Contao is a great way for web designers and developers to create great websites, but for clients to edit them without a lot or training it can be hard.

For Contao to become widely used throughout the world I think by creating this method of editing a lot more web design agencies would use Contao.

The less time agencies have to spend training clients the better. Contao really needs to be simple for inexperienced end users to update. It is a great system for people with web design experience and with a few tweaks here and there it would be great for end clients.

I like to limit end users with as little functionality as possible, I try to use the catalog module wherever possible as this lets them only edit content which when published can be styled and loaded in the right places across the website without clients getting in a mess.

[Medianomaly]

Leo's on record saying this is something he'd like to change in the next upcoming release (3).
http://www.cmscritic.com/interview-leo- ... light-cms/

It turned out that the distinction between users and members (back and front end users) has many advantages but is not an ideal solution in scenarios where the same users shall have access to both the back end and the front end. Also, quite a few users have trouble understanding why pages and articles are two separate modules instead of one tree. Both are likely to be changed in the next major release (TYPOlight 3).

In addition to combining site structure and articles, one thing I'd like to see is an option to simplify editing content. Many sites we develop only have 1 client-editable article and/or one content element per page. It would be great to simplify this down to one click in these cases.

I will say that in most cases I would think you wouldn't give clients access to edit the header, footer and side columns except in rare instances -- these should usually be locked down and only accessible by the developer. Additionally, we don't give clients access to the site structure at all unless they specifically request being able to add and remove pages -- which is only requested in maybe 10-20% of the sites we develop. It is possible to give a client too much control -- you only want them to access the things they specifically need to, or you risk them compromising the site in some way.

[Robert & Ingemann]

Sounds very interresting - looking forward for the Contao 3.0! Good to hear that we are not alone on this subject.

I hav´nt used the Catalog extension before, sounds like a very useful extension.

I have no experience with Typo3, but tryid out the demo of their new version 4.4 and must say that the interface is very compelling both design-vise as well as usability-vise. The way that sitestructure has its own column and you can access the content (articles) directly by clicking on the page and thereby eliminating the articles in the backend-navigation is a very intuitive way to do it. I´ve attached a screendump of the Typo3 backend and the demo can found here: http://demo.opensourcecms.com/typo3.

name: admin
password: demo123

My proposal would be to have tabs for header, main, left and right sections, so you would´nt have to click into a box (eg. 'main' section) and back again to enter a new box (eg. 'header' section).

Usually the client don´t need to access to eg. 'Header' or 'Sidebar', but that should´nt be the argument of not making easy for them if necessary.

Best regards,
Robert & Ingemann

[Ola]

It turned out that the distinction between users and members (back and front end users) has many advantages but is not an ideal solution in scenarios where the same users shall have access to both the back end and the front end. Also, quite a few users have trouble understanding why pages and articles are two separate modules instead of one tree. Both are likely to be changed in the next major release (TYPOlight 3).

Does anyone know when Contao 3 is planned to be released?

[MacKP]

Hi Ola,
no one (leo don't know it) knows when Contao 3 will come.
The plan is, that the first Alpha will be there at the end of 2011.

So there is no news about that ;-)

regards