Symphony.

Hello again! I finally put together something almost half decent with Symphony. Yaayy.. But I'm not 100% happy with it and want a little guidance/professional opinion before I go and destroy my site.

I have four main issues.

1) I would like portfolio pages to function like the home page. What? I want the text to scroll above my slider and thus make the slider area bigger. From my understanding, I could do that like this, having my text as the captions somehow but I'm worried it will all just break if it's outside of the main script.

2) The portfolio link above includes a video. How can I get this video into my slider? The slider runs off a system that is basically the same as the default images DS. Will linking a Video Link extension to the DS work? Is there something well-suited?

I read a post here and think that Publish Tabs may help me with both those issues? Would that mean each tab becoming a slide or just publish tabs for the text and my image script still working the same way? (slider runs off the image DS)

3) Aside from needing serious CSS love, my blog is seriously lacking a comment function. I've tried and tried to add this but I can't for the life of me get it to save my comments or even register the event happening. In fact, it doesn't even show some forced comments I put into the db. I'm definitely doing it wrong though they do load in the debug. I have had similar problems before. I tried that solution though my architecture is different so I probably just made a typo or overlooked something.

4) I think (3) may be linked to my URL parsing. I am using basically the exact code from the bauhaus ensemble. It uses a when/if statement so things show as /portfolio/page rather than /portfolio/portfolio-entry/page . I imagine as my site grows that will have serious drawbacks so I want to nip it in the bud now. Any good solutions for this?

Anyway, once I fix all this and tidy up the CSS etc, I'm considering releasing this an ensemble if anyone's interested? That may involve making it with a different (free) slider for purpose of the ensemble or releasing it on envato but..hopefully that's a minor. I'd rather stick it on github tbh. So, all help is appreciated!

Hi Etch,

about the time, as of me - unfortunately no. But to my little review on your points, to sum up:

• You may want to have a second Symphony installation to simply try things / extensions out along. You will know them by the time you try.
• I think you want to befriend yourself more with XSLT, XPATH.

I went through your points and site and in general, you just need to continue what you are already doing, because you did a great job already. You are going a good way. This is my main view.

In particular:

1) and 2) is all about hacking XSLT, XPATH and having fields for data. And for sliding whatever stuff I use 99% the RoyalSlider you are already using (but it is not royalty free). With Symphony core features you can populate just any plugin out there.

About Publish Tabs - no. But as I said in the summary above...

lacking a comment function...

I think there is a commenting feature build within the Symphony's default workspace, which is part of the main Symphony download I also linked above, or available separately.

As of bauhause ensemble, which is for sure great, I am afraid I'm not familiar with the details.

Huh, I didn't help much, but you are doing well!

Hey Juro. I don't have much time myself :) No idea when I'll be actioning all of this but thought I'd see if anyone has experience from similar scenarios.

I am considering making a second installation for testing. It's pretty easy on webfaction and I have a few domains so it's going to happen eventually. I'll probably clone this exactly as it is and just.. tear it apart. I'm still very much learning xslt, xpath and even git... After all these years. It's very apparent when I stare blankly at the pages for hours on end haha.

Symphony always appealed to me for its compatibility with.. anything.

This is actually built from the default ensemble. For some reason though, comments seem to break whenever I try and rename what they are linked to (I changed articles to journal). I've checked every link so I think it is a problem with my xslt formatting, which again points to the if statement in my mind. I usually tend to look for a more creative solution than it actually needs so yeah, a test build will probably help me a lot. No point pushing myself to do it all live.

Thanks for some guidance!

I don't have much time myself ...

Actually I had this idea :) not to speak about the thread's title - but at the same time I understand your enthusiasm and will to move it forward if some possible way.

I am considering making a second installation for testing ...

Cool, just be sure to have a backup of everything. I also have a nice hosting with good support. It is sure different than yours, depends on country, but also nice. As for domains, for me it is enough to have one domain, under which I can have as many subdomains as I like, each acting as a separate full featured web site.

Anyway, where I'm aiming is, if you have thought to have it run locally? It would save you time during development and overall trying or playing around. What OS do you have, Mac or so? (Or maybe I don't understand the last sentence "No point pushing myself to do it all live." and you have everything locally set up already, sorry, my english).

Yes, as of installation, I would also install a clean default version of Symphony to compare what is what in XSL files and XSL utilities, line by line if needed.

About GIT, I would say don't mind it and go for ZIP files in the first line of getting known Symphony ways etc. I have GIT also in my list of wanna-knows.

I changed articles to journal...

Was it a name of a section, or a datasource, or only some xsl:text in XSLT template? Can you paste or pin point the code?

It's very apparent when I stare blankly at the pages for hours on end haha.

I know this just too well :)

Ok, be sure to enjoy your time the best possible way and share the code if to look at something.

All the best!