Symphony.

I'm trying to use Symphony for the first time.

I suddenly realized that a lot of the difficulty I'm having getting familiar with the Admin interface is related to the fact that the topics of so many of the pages are the same.

Let me explain: Though it might be perfectly obvious for a veteran Symphonian who is familiar with the look of the Admin interface that he is working on the Pages -> Articles, Components -> Data Sources -> Articles, or Sections -> Articles page, a novice is confronted with the fact that all these pages are simply titled "Articles."

And there is no breadcumb trail or subhead to help the novice or reinforce a mental image of the system map. Providing such guideposting would be very helpful, I think.

Tony

I'm not sure where you're getting this behavior. If I navigate to the Articles data source, I see Symphony - Data Sources - Categories in the page title bar. Could you please elaborate the steps to get the behavior you experience?

Oh, the page title bar. Hmm... When I say the pages are "titled" Articles, I mean Articles is the word inside the H2 tags on the page.

I intuitively expect to see the "Components," "Pages," or "Section" mention on the actual page, particularly since the Blueprints menu item displays blue, indicating I'm in the Blueprints area.

In other words, since such a high-level guidepost is provided on the actual page, why not one a bit more specific? I really wouldn't (didn't) think to look in the page title bar for the distinction.

Funny, I only look at the page title. Habit over time I guess since best practice when using Symphony is to use multiple tabs. I would normally have a tab open for a page/utility, data source and debug for the page. So I look to the tab titles as I jump around.

Nonetheless, what you're saying makes sense. I'm not sure how the team will view redundant navigation in the core. Perhaps it should be implemented with an extension.

And welcome, it only gets more exciting!

Thanks for the welcome, Lewis.

I'm not talking about adding further navigation, but simply an informational element -- a guidepost. This would only involve what I think is a slight modification to the the backend, just to get the page title bar information you mention into the actual "subheading" on the HTML page.

Cheers, Tony

The problem with that is is that those "subheading"s are not static Tony. Just because you are using the default install those headings are what they are. For me, I started a build with a clean install and my "section"s are not called articles but installed called "Entries". So my datasources reflect this name as well as other parts of my system. Symphony isn't a typical CMS. In fact, I believe it deserves it's own classification.

Good questions though, they bring up good issues that will be present with the more users that check out the system that have not used it before and are not entirely sure on the extent in which the system can be modified.