Some questions

[Gamebite]

Hi all,

I have been looking at the Contao case studies and i noticed something. There is not really one site that uses those common banne slideshow plugins. What is mean with this is those banners with tekst in them and with a link orsome info.

Now my question is, is there any good plugin/module for this? Because i have this template the makes use of it. I know jQuery has allot of these things but i can't recall seeing something like that before with contao.

And i also have another question. How can i make custom template tags? So i can get more content on my homepage instead of only top, middle, left, right, etc.. ?

Thanks in advance,

Michael

[septentrio]

Hi,

You can do a slideshow containing text elements, links, images using what we call a content element plugin. As far as i know, there are two extensions that can do this : pk_noobslide based on mootools library or ce_slider based on Jquery. It's really simple to use : Once one of these installed, create an article, set it t display in the header if you want it to be displayed in the header (make sure in your page layout that you can display an article into your header in that case). In your article, create a pk_noobslide start element then a pk_noobslide end, place your image, link or wathever between those elements.

To activate custom sections, go to the configuration in the back end, there's a palette called "custom sections" : just define the name of your sections separated with a comma.
In the page layout, link an article to each custom section.

Does it make sense ?

[Andreas]

And there is SlideItMoo, which works nice as well. Also try to search for 'slide' or 'slideshow' in BE repository catalog.

[Gamebite]

Thank you guys verry much for the reply, I will try it out

[Gamebite]

I knew the old way of creating custom templates, with the fe_page.tpl and the tags. but i can't seem to find this .tpl file anymore... What has changed in the way of creating custom templates now? Or is there a guide section on the website that shows you? I always followed the video on the website but it doesn't seem to work like that anymore or am i overlooking something?

Thanks in advance,

Michael

[septentrio]

Yes it has changed. It depends the output you want : html 5 or xhtml. If your output is set to html, then you must create a fe_page.html; otherwise it still uses the fe_page.tpl

[Gamebite]

thanks septentrio, worked like a charm Oh btw i tried the custom section bit, i add them in settings and asign it to an article. But i can't seem to get them to show, i searched a bit on the internet and i found te following options:

<?php echo $this->getCustomSections('section-01'); ?>

and

<?php if ($this->sections['section-01']): ?>
<?php echo $this->sections['section-01']; ?>
<?php endif; ?>

What am i doing wrong here? :?

[Andreas]

...If your output is set to html, then you must create a fe_page.html; otherwise it still uses the fe_page.tpl

No, use fe_page.html5 for HTML5 output and fe_page.xhtml for XHTML output.

[Andreas]

...
What am i doing wrong here? :?

I swear you forgot what septentrio told you 'In the page layout, link an article to each custom section'

What you found on internet you only need, if you arn't satisfied with the positions of contaos custom sections. But in 99% you not even need a contao custom section. Try to create your page layout with header, footer and the three columns first.

[septentrio]

...If your output is set to html, then you must create a fe_page.html; otherwise it still uses the fe_page.tpl

No, use fe_page.html5 for HTML5 output and fe_page.xhtml for XHTML output.

Sorry, i meant fe_page.xhtml

[Gamebite]

Well that's the thing, if you look at most of the websites on the internet you can see that the homepage is different from te content pages. For the website i am working on i need like:

- header (logo / navigation)
- The banner module i was asking for
- breadcrum, content section (these would go in the left colum)
- news section (these would go in the right colum)
- two service content blocks that i would like to have in the left colum under the content section.
- footer

So i had the idea that i needed custom sections for the banner module and the two service content blocks? ops: Because if not i don't know what the purpose is of custom sections then haha :lol:

[septentrio]

Hello,

Reading you, i believe it's not necesssary to have custom sections in your header.
You can place different modules in the header and the header would wrap your logo, your navigation and your banner.
To sum up :
logo -> module in the header
navigation -> module in the header
banner-> module in the header

breadcrumb -> module in the main column
articles -> main column

news list >module in the right column

Then define two custom sections in your config (custom_section1, custom_section_2 for exemple)

In the custom section palette from your page layout, activate the two sections you just created and assign their position to "before the footer element"
Depending on what you want to display into these sections, assign an article or a module you created.

ex :
articles -> custom_section1
my_module -> custom_section2

[Gamebite]

Thank you verry, verry much! i think i got it working now :D