Hi Leo

I was thinking that a capacity to be able to edit simple content from the frontend would be a nice feature. Especially for some users.

best

Mark

why ? you can edit in the backend ... a typical *nobody used that tool* ...

Good question, here I hope is a good answer...

I am doing a site where there is the possibility of up to 30 people needing to edit pages. Some of them just about know how to turn a computer on. Editing from the front page feels more intuitive as it is clear where you are. I was thinking along the lines of the way MODx http://modxcms.com/ does this and Drupal to some extent ie an 'edit this page' tab that opens up a text edit window with the content of the page or section being edited. Would allow quick and easy editing of the main content. Especially useful in word heavy sites.

cheers

Mark

Hi Mark,

mark:

Some of them just about know how to turn a computer on.

even if there was a front end tab, it would only be visible if a user is logged in... So each user has to open the back end at least once... Then, as you know from working with TYPOlight, it is not that simple to just "edit this page"... A page has modules and articles... Where would the "edit this page" button take a user?

By the way, a front end tab would require to port the whole user access system to the front end which is a lot of work... At the moment, I do not think that TYPOlight requires this feature... I am trying to keep it as lightweight as it can be... I am not rebuilding TYPO3, MODx or phpwcms...

Regards
Leo

Hi Leo

Yes, I would agree that it is not worth the work. What I like about TL is its light weigthness. It was just a thought.

In terms of the edit this page idea I suppose it could be done in the webyep http://www.obdev.at/products/webyep/index.html fashion ie each article gets an edit tab/button.

Anyway, just thinking

Mark

Hi Mark,

I have developed a CMS that works like webyeb before I did TYPOlight... It was a different approach and it required a different system architecture, however, I liked the fact that there was no back end... Today, a CMS like this could be done with AJAX and all the Web 2.0 JavaScript stuff and sometimes I seriously think about re-doing my old CMS... However, I do have enough work with TYPOlight ;-)

Regards
Leo

While front-end editing is not much of a priority for me, if it were ever implemented, I think it should be done where editors can really only change the text on the page. Otherwise, you'd be replicating the backend in the frontend of the site. A very cool approach would be to add an Ajax "edit in place" function only to text sections, as seen in Factory Nove from www.stuffedguys.com.

--> go here http://try.factorynova.com/code/pub/login.html?xlogin=admin&xpwd=demo&redirect=http://try.factorynova.com/code/
--> click login
--> click a project name
--> click a task
--> double-click the task name or description and you can edit them in place

As I said, though, I don't see this as being a feature that is fully worth the time/effort that would go into it. What would be nice is to have the "Front-end preview" button in the upper-left of the cms admin send you directly to the page you are editing.

I second Ben on editing textual content from the frontend, but I can imagine it's not that easy if Leo had to move a lot of authorization bits to the front end.
How about if a user has a backend session while browsing the frontend, he/her gets a link to edit the page. This link simply opens the backend editor for that page-ID?

I think the form to DB is as close as we will get with TL, if anyone ever figures out how to make it work.

The CMS modX ist using a frontend editing module called "Quick Edit"
Maybe there is a way to adapt it or something similar into typolight.

you find details under:
http://www.modxcms.com/quickedit.html

It would be a blessing espeacially for small clients, where you have to keep it a simple as any possible.

The problem of backend/frontend access rights still remains. Since they are two completely separate systems, it would be difficult to implement a module that could achieve it without someone logging into the backend first. And if you are already logging into the backend...

Though it does seem like it would be helpful for non-technical users.

Michael,

I end up creating very restrictive permissions for clients, where they can only see Articles, Site structure and File manager. Then, I restrict the fields they can see to only be the essentials. For instance, I leave out css id and class for each CE, among other things. By doing this, the cms can become very stripped down and simple for our non-technical users.

Of course someone has to Login into the backend before he/she can edit in the frontend.

And there must be a way to read the session from the backend. Because when you are logged in in the backend you can see articles and pages, that are not published.

And for the Raison d'être (the reason to be) for such a tool: Usability!
Changing texts on a webpage tage a lot of clicks and reloads, that are in an everyday environment very annoying. First you have to click on articles <reload> then on the article itself <reload> than on the element you wanna change <reload> and finally you can change the content.

This is particularly annoying in an article is composed more than one element.

For a typical user it is much more intuitive to surf through the site and directly choose the content he/she wants to change. The visual paradime of the frontend and the backend are often very differnt.

I don't mean an add anywhere feature like here: http://37signals.blogs.com/products/2007/10/new-backpack-fe.html

The only reason I started using Drupal was that it had a "edit page" button on the page you want to change. Before I spent a lot of time explaining my own built cms to customers. This cms works structuraly exactly like typolight. But the poor structure of Drupal and the hard to edit parts (like taxonomy links displaying with every node by default where I never use them) just got too much. I can set up Typolight with a very detailed permissions set, add all content and build a new template + css in 5 hours. I have never managed doing anything as precise in Drupal, nor was I ever this fast (template building took longer because I always "had to" style the "backend" as well, otherwise the user would sometimes use the backend template and sometimes the frontend template, but both for editing which would be confusing). Fastest I have been in Drupal was 8 hours for a comparable system as the 5 hours I just mentioned.

So now I'm back at explaining the system to our customers taking longer. I already got the question if a button on the frontend wouldn't be easier, even though I am using typolight for about two weeks and I only completed 2 sites so far (when including backend training).

Most customers I have would only need one content element per article and one article per page. So the could edit the entire pagecontent with a single click if the frontend put in a link to edit. The actual link is easy, it would be something like "/typolight/main.php?do=article&table=tl_content&act=edit&id=1". Open this in a popup window and refresh the other page when the window closes. The popup can be opened with backend rights? Ok, deciding if the button should be shown in the first place is probably a problem as well?

I built a competition signin system using my own cms. I made everything editable on the pages themselves so I could integrate it as a module on other peoples websites without having to provide a second (and different) backend. Everything is point and click, drag and droppable, "wow can I do that". It takes one demonstration without showing all features and even older customers who have completely no affinity for pc's and really only use it to email (and browse some news website), because it is the only thing they now how to, can use it afterwards. The only thing I have had to explain twice is dragging and dropping. What I want to say with this is that any edit function button on the frontend will increase usability a lot.

I saw MODx today for the first time. I like the quickedit function. Not exactly what I had in mind, but usefull. No reason though to just switch systems again especially after the hughe impression typolight has made so far.

Leo,
About the performance; is there no way to let administrators decide for themselves if frontend editing is possible? If there is a way then this might also not affect performance if the "extention" (if it would be an extention) is not switched on.

Ben,
Stripped down or not; the abstract concept of a page having articles and articles having content elements in relation to "webpage I can see with my text on it" is a big problem for most of my clients. I just switched back to this concept because Drupal started to become a annoyance to me every time I used it for a new website. Typolight excites me every time I see things that already exist that I've always wanted from a cms but hadn't had the time for to build into my own cms.

Here's a proof of concept:

Code:

/**
	 * Parse the template file and return it as string
	 * @return string
	 * @throws Exception
	 */
	public function parse()
	{
		// Extract variables (backwards compatibility)
		if ($GLOBALS['TL_CONFIG']['extractTplVars'])
		{
			extract($this->arrData);
		}
		
		ob_start();
		include($this->getTemplate($this->strTemplate));
		$strBuffer = ob_get_contents();
		ob_end_clean();
		
		if (TL_MODE == 'BE' || substr($this->strTemplate, 0, 3) == 'fe_')
			return $strBuffer;

		$backtrace = debug_backtrace();
		foreach( $backtrace as $step )
		{
			if ($step['function'] == 'generate')
			{
				$class = $step['class'];
				foreach( $GLOBALS['FE_MOD'] as $modules )
				{
					$key = array_search($class, $modules);
					if ($key !== false)
					{
						$do = 'modules&act=edit';
						$id = $step['object']->id;
						break;
					}
				}
			}
			else if ($step['function'] == 'getContentElement')
			{
				$do = 'article&table=tl_content&act=edit';
				$id = $step['args'][0];
			}
		}
		
		if (!strlen($do) || !strlen($id))
			return $strBuffer;

		return '<div onmouseover="this.style.background=\'#FFAAAA\'; this.firstChild.style.visibility=\'visible\'"  onmouseout="this.style.background=\'transparent\'; this.firstChild.style.visibility=\'hidden\'"><div style="position: absolute; right: 0px; z-index:998; padding: 5px; visibility: hidden"><a href="typolight/main.php?do='.$do.'&id='.$id.'" onclick="window.open(this.href, \'backend\'); return false"><img src="system/themes/default/images/edit.gif" alt="" /></a></div>'.$strBuffer.'</div>';
	}

Replace this function in file system/library/Template.php. Make a copy first!

Basically it does highlight sections on mouseover and provide an edit link in the top right corner. Currently supports modules and content elements. Rights management is up to the backend, but thats no problem for me. There currently no option to turn on or of, but as I said, it's a proof of conecpt...

PS: Did you notice I like the idea to edit from frontend?