Discussion Forum

JayMoog

Member

Registered: April 11, 2015

Posts: 8

Some pointers please

Hi,

So I've got a (sort of working) BigTree site, looking good so far.

Though it has no content, what next?
I'm having trouble finding any examples other than the 'Trees' online one, and I can't see the source code for that.

What I need:
We want to use BigTree to create an interactive catalogue for a museum.  To start with this will feature a very small subset of the artifacts.

We have an existing database of artifacts (to which we will add), and want to use bigtree to manage that - forms perhaps?

1:  Example of create a DB frontend form.

We then want pages to be created such that the URL (for example  http://museum.com/artifact/12345) will generate a page from that database artifact with ID 12345.
It should include text and pictures and links to related artifacts.  The pictures are either stored as blobs in the database or as files from BigTree resources depending on what is possible.

2:  Example, how to generate a page dynamically from database records.

Any help, examples, pointers appreaciated.

Is there a BigTree wiki?

timbuckingham

Administrator

From: Baltimore, MD

Registered: April 2, 2012

Posts: 974

Re: Some pointers please

The online Trees demo site is included with the default install -- if you check of "Install Example Site" it will install it as the default site. If you just want to see the template source code, it's in /core/example-site/templates/.

For your museum database setup you'll want two things:
- A routed template to power the "/artifact/" page
- A module for the artifacts database table

Routed templates work so that if you pass extra URL routes after the page's URL route they are added to the $bigtree["commands"] array that is available in your template OR they are automatically routed to pages within your template's directory. You can read more about templates here: https://www.bigtreecms.org/docs/dev-guide/templates/

So we'll say that http://www.museum.com/artifact/ is a page in Pages with a routed template of "Artifacts" that lives in /templates/routed/artifacts/. If you hit http://www.museum.com/artifact/, it's going to load /templates/routed/artifacts/default.php. If you hit http://www.museum.com/artifact/12345, it's STILL going to load default.php, but now "12345" will be the value of $bigtree["commands"][0]. If you want to have default.php serve up a landing page for your artifacts, what we would normally do is add a "details.php" file in your template's directory and direct users to http://www.museum.com/artifact/details/12345/. This will cause "details.php" to load and allow it to load your module data. This helps to keep your template directory cleaner, but you can also skip the details.php file and just check the $bigtree["commands"] array for data in default.php and use if/else logic to draw separate pages.

There's no BigTree wiki at the moment, though we may add one as the community grows. There's fairly good developer documentation located at https://www.bigtreecms.org/docs/dev-guide/installation/ but if you need more help or think of something to add there we'd love to see it grow!

JayMoog

Member

Registered: April 11, 2015

Posts: 8

Re: Some pointers please

Hi Tim,

Thanks for the info, that has helped a lot.   I'm sure there will be more questions though....

j.

JayMoog

Member

Registered: April 11, 2015

Posts: 8

Re: Some pointers please

Hi,

Arghhh, I'm still going in circles.

I've installed the 'Trees' demo site in parallel with my own efforts and I'm trying to understand the process to create anything other than a simple static page.

Perhaps what we need is a step-by-step walkthrough of how the Trees Demo site was built that we can follow as a learning exercise.

I'm probably being a bit slow here, but I can't seem to work out what is done for us by BigTree and what bits we need to complete ourselves.
Also, what order to build things in.   Modules, Templates, Routes, Callouts,..... it's all a mistery.
I can see various .php files appearing in the code tree, though these seem to be mostly empty placeholders.  Surely the point of selecting a CMS is to try to avoid having to learn CSS and PHP, with BigTree is that inevitable?

I can see the PHP in the Trees demo does some CSS in the form of div classes.  Are these styles predefined by BigTree, or indistry standards, are they documented or do I need to define them somewhere?

Sorry for being a bit of a noob.

timbuckingham

Administrator

From: Baltimore, MD

Registered: April 2, 2012

Posts: 974

Re: Some pointers please

You'll definitely need to know PHP (at a very basic level) and CSS to use BigTree. It's a very front-end developer friendly CMS, but it is meant for developers. BigTree doesn't do ANYTHING for the front end of your site by default -- it's really best used as a clean slate. The demo site is just there to give developers a basic understanding of how to build out routed templates and pull module content into templates. If you're looking for a CMS that lets you install a theme and start entering content, your best bet is going to be WordPress -- lots of things come pre-built in themes, though if you want any customization you still need to know PHP/HTML/CSS.

JayMoog

Member

Registered: April 11, 2015

Posts: 8

Re: Some pointers please

I know enough PHP, HTML and CSS to get by, though I'm no web programmer, I've done a little (hence volenteering to do this). I'm very experienced at C, Python, C++, assembler, Delphi, VHDL, Linux.
I'm just trying to understand what BigTrees does and does not do, and the steps required. I'm sure others will want the same answers.

Perhaps you are right in suggesting BigTree is not for us. I'll cirtainly look at WordPress, though I'd still like to better understand what needs to be done to get our site running in BigTree, from what I've seen so far it does not seem that much.  I hope the problems are just that of starting out.

Without doubt, what we ultimately want is going to take some programming (e.g. we need QR codes). But that effort has to be directed as this is not my day job. I'm trying to get the right information so that I set off down the right path at the outset and the subsequent effort is well spent.  Anything I create needs to be well documented as I'll not be maintaining it.

The people I am doing this for are not at all technical, so it worries me that I might leave them something too difficult to maintain, especially if the documentation is light.  If the documentation does not exist on how to create and maintain a BigTree site, I'm going to have to provide it!  Though I'm happy to share anything created in that process.

timbuckingham

Administrator

From: Baltimore, MD

Registered: April 2, 2012

Posts: 974

Re: Some pointers please

BigTree definitely provides an easy to maintain CMS from a content editor's perspective, but it really ends there. It's built to provide an elegant editing experience for end users and a blank slate to the front end experience for a developer. It has lots of powerful tools for building out the back end of your site, most of which can be found in the Developer Guide. Admittedly, it's not 100% comprehensive, but it provides most of what is needed for a fairly robust site.

There's also a basic User Guide that can be provided to content editors that gives a basic overview of common functionality in BigTree.

Web Admin

Member

Registered: April 24, 2017

Posts: 2

Re: Some pointers please

Just to support JayMoog's point, BigTree's documentation has not evolve since the post above and it has been two years when JayMoog asked about this. Even now I can't find anything with How-To-Steps for creating themes, modules, etc. In my opinion if you want the community/forum to grow, there should be tutorials, videos (I have just seen one video about this CMS), and default templates. Put the code out there so we can understand the structure of this platform. I'm not advanced developer but in order to become one, I have to learn and understand the architecture of the system and unfortunately BigTree doesn't offer that to its community.

I would understand if you/BigTree solely want the system to be used by developers (advanced devs) and engineers but if you want BigTree to grow as an Open Source, get the code out there for people see and learn how to customize the system, expand your documentation, tutorials, and videos. Until then people wont understand BigT and if the system was easier to use out of the box, there would have been videos out there by community members but there's none. Then we should ask, why there's nothing to teach How-To customize this platform for everyone?

I'm saying this because I'm currently struggling with this system. I have installed it on my local server to test it. I do have background in web development and front end, and the docs and user guide doesn't help much.

Looking forward to new videos and dev documentations!

Last edited by Web Admin (April 25, 2017 10:06am)