Symphony.

On the main screenshot on the homepage of Symphony, the XSL files are hot (links). This is what my install looks like:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/z4j72rnf7gssy98/Screenshot%202014-07-30%2014.47.11.png

I've installed a few plugins and changed file permissions trying to address this, but can't figure out how to edit the content of those files via the CMS.

Any help?

Thanks, David

This feature has been removed. Short story: The community thinks that it it's much better to use a decent text editor to edit the files.

Oh. So... hmm... ok. Everything-but-content Management System? haha..

Thanks.

Everything-but-content Management System? haha..

Templates aren't the content though, they're a developer focussed method of displaying content.

The decision was made as it is common (and best) practice to create your site and it's templates and utilities off site, and use a version control system to maintain them. Allowing editing in the CMS on a live site goes against this workflow.

If you're editing content in the templates, you're doing it wrong simply. Templates should create the markup to display the content provided by sections. Little bits of microcopy could be in templates, but otherwise, it's considered bad practice.

Oh. So... hmm... ok. Everything-but-content Management System? haha..

That would be template management (or more specifically editing); something I don't believe any CMS does apart from older versions of Symphony.

I would like to see it worked into an extension at some point, as it can be convenient on some occasions to view the template from the backend, but it's definitely edge-case, and not something you want to be encouraging your content managers to be interacting with.

Anyone who wants to be able to access Page templates the old way can install my new extension Workspace Manager B for Symphony 2.4+. Unlike the older Workspace Manager, there is no need to install 'Code Editor' to provide syntax highlighting.

Awesome, thanks @Petertron, it's a handy feature in some cases so good to have something that fills its need!

To each his own, but, honestly, I can't imagine Symphony without this extension (which was previously a feature), coz you always need to edit here and there, on the fly.

@Petertron Your extension seems to be broken. The URLs have php code in them which breaks things. For example, when I try to click a link, you will get something like test1/symphony/workspace/manager/utilities/%3C?=%20$editor_url%20?%3Eget-archive.xsl/

@Ecko, evidently your PHP installation does not allow short echo tags, as in <?= $editor_url ?>. Now I realize there is a setting in php.ini for this. You can download my updated version from GitHub now.

@diomed

Depends on your workflow, we use git almost exclusively in our studio now, and so unless you were also committing those changes via SSH they'd cause discrepancies and confusion.

Generally speaking you should avoid editing code in the live environment anyway… but I appreciate we all do it from time to time (and hopefully feel dirty about it).

If I were to use the extension it would most likely be for during development, for rare occasions when I just need to tweak a character or two in the code and I don't have quicker access to the actual source files.

But I agree, to each their own, I'm glad to see it as an extension even though I rarely use it - it's just nice to have options!

Another thought: servers tend to have means of editing text files.

nano pages/template.xsl

FTP clients also offer remote file editing.

Sorry I'm completely new to this CMS and I'm following the Beginner Guide, but I still don't get it how can I modify my home.xls, I mean I got it that the previous way to handle it has been removed, so my question is how to proceed if I want to modify my home.xls?

Thank you in advance

@gokyo66, you can edit xsl files through your favorite text editor or IDE, as you are doing it with css, js etc.

xsl template files in Symphony are then to be found in 2 directories:

1. /workspace/pages/ - here are being saved frontend pages you create through Symphony's Blueprints > Pages admin or backend. Pages usually hold small portion of XSL code just to import utilities from the next described directory.
2. /workspace/utilities/ - this directory is ment to hold all the various XSL stylesheet or templates you've prepared or obtained for transforming your XML or CMS data into e.g. HTML output. Access to these files through a Symphony backend interface was the one thing that was removed, because normally you want to edit these files via a full featured text editor, as these are just simple files and something you develop a lot when building a website under Symphony. So hence the benefit to use a standard text editor.

So please check out these two directories.

Hope this helped.

@juro

you really help me out, thank you, really appreciate your support

You're welcome.

@gokyo66: If you still want to edit XSL files from within Symphony then you can install the extension Workspacer. Rename the folder as "workspacer" before installing.