Quote:
Originally Posted by TMM_John
Thanks. 
Running a software company and selling a product is a totally different world than doing one off custom development & consulting for people. There are many needs and issues to balance. IMO, its a lot harder, but the reward can of course be quite more substantial.
Running a software company by making all tech decisions based solely on efficiency will run it straight into the ground. Take into account many other factors which are very important (and not getting a detailed discussion from me here) and SMARTY makes a lot of sense. |
John, I stand by what I said, TMM does the best work with smarty... and not only that but, in my opinion, does the best job at implementing a CMS in terms of template organization and a logical web interface for modifying, duplicating, extending templates, etc... In fact whenever I'm asked about what CMS someone should go with that's in the adult industry, Carma is my first answer and NATS is my first answer for affiliate software. So don't take my comments to heart too much, you guys are running a fantastic software development company.
I understand that many people opt for Smarty in a close source platform to protect their interests however...
{ carma function_name properties, etc... }
could be performed easier by a simple
<?=function_name('whatever')?>
and it doesn't take knowledge of an additional language, only knowledge of what functions are opened up to the user...
I wrote my first major CMS, now used by government agencies, cities, companies, utility companies, etc..., 10 years ago. The adult industry take on a CMS is different from mainstream... The idea that the logic for creating datasets rests in Smarty or PHP which is added onto the project by the individual company utilizing it is off, in my opinion.
CMSs that I've written in the past don't take a person with template and/or developer knowledge to create additional pages, new content, new data sets, etc...
Instead they provide an interface where you assign the data set to any given page (page as defined by an end user visiting a specific url). You display to the user a list of data sets which are available and what conditions are available for those data sets... In adult industry terms a content site wants to add a new page that shows the latest 10 models to be added... They create a new page, chose the template, fill in the title, meta content, etc... and then select data sets to add to the page as well as a variable name. So, in this example, they would select Gallery -> Models and choose their count (10), their sort (added_on), their sort order (desc), and a variable name (we'll call it modelList). (They could also choose a template for the loop if there's more than defaults).
In the template for their page they could select a previously used template, like Carma allows now, and then simply click a button for "Add Data Set" or whatever you'd like to call it... JS prompt for the name (modelList) and a tag of: <?=$modelList?> is dropped in place.
I would add that this can be streamlined for templates (PHP) in the system which have a generic $content var for anything that will be populated in that area. In this case a user of the CMS would never even need to look at any template...
There isn't anything wrong per se with the way most adult CMSs do it now, it just places a lot of work in the hands of developers... This method allows anyone to create new pages with new data sets without having to be versed in Smarty or even PHP.