Symphony.

Im working on an inherited symphony site.

Everything is great, far superior to wordpress, except…CSS.

How does one create a CSS.

The most logical space, entitled ‘formatting’ contains only two files HTML and Pretty HTML… is there something missing.

It seems the only way to use CSS is uploading via FTP?? Sounds crazy if not a serious oversight to an otherwise great system.

Where your CSS files live depends on how the developer you inherited from set it up. You should check out the Beginners Guide to get a sense of how Symphony works.

As far as editing CSS, most Symphony developers do chose to do so in their text editor because it’s bound to have far more powerful features than any browser-based implementation. That said, you can use the File Manager to access and edit your CSS in teh back end if you like.

Hi cafca, Welcome!

I think I understand that you want to create new CSS styles to apply to the sites output? If so, the most likely location would be within the example.com/workspace directory. There is no strictly enforced location for css.

The original site author may have created a way to add CSS styles through the Symphony interface, but this is not built-in to the system itself.

edit: Craig’s speedy fingers FTW.

Thanks for your speedy fingers.

In other words, there is no handy section under Pages | Components | Sections | Formatters and so forth that one can edit CSS—as one creates and edits XSL.

Following such logic it would them make sense to revert to writing all XSL in a textpad on a local machine,,and upload it into a non-specific directory. and so on… cuz That would be fun.

The point in modern technology, whether CMS or MVC iphone app is to separate content or data from presentation and business logic. or form from function. And one direction that Symphony is likely pursuing.

Often the line between content and presentation is blurred. Such is XSL that is not purely ‘style’ despite its name, containing ample business logic. CSS is one point that is nothing but style (except for the few IE hiccups)

Moreover, a CSS file probably gets more edits than an xsl file. Making it easy to edit is a smart move.

On a side note, I see very little mention of CSS in documentation.

At any rate, I would call this a serious oversight but will add that this is an otherwise great system.

I want to reiterate that you should definitely read through the docs a bit more thoroughly to get a better understanding of how Symphony works. Then, if you still believe we’ve made a serious oversight, you’re welcome to tell us so :)

Furthermore, like I said, you can easily install the File Manager extension and edit CSS in the back end to you heart’s content.

To clarify, you end goal is to edit a file on the webserver, correct? Or would you prefer to be storing the css in a database?

It is important to understand the system more and what its goals are before you decide that there has been an oversight.

Take for example if I wasn’t wearing pants. (I am) You might say there was a serious oversight when I was getting dressed. But what if I happened to be a male stripper? (I am not) There would have been no oversight.

One of Symphony’s goals is to keep the core as lean as possible, and one way this is accomplished is by making all non-essential features extensions.

This is most obvious in the commitment to keep Symphony’s core as lean as possible, with most non-essential features split out as extensions. This makes it easier for core functions to improve and evolve over time, and for development focus to be more fluid and responsive. (from The Tao of Symphony)

Like Craig mentioned, there is the File Manager extension that will allow you to edit css files from the admin.

Following such logic it would them make sense to revert to writing all XSL in a textpad on a local machine,,and upload it into a non-specific directory. and so on… cuz That would be fun.

Writing your code on a local machine with a text editor is by far the most well accepted and recommend best practice there is! Working locally is highly recommended.

On a side note, I see very little mention of CSS in documentation. At any rate, I would call this a serious oversight but will add that this is an otherwise great system.

There is little mention of CSS in the documentation because prior experience of CSS (and web development workflow) is expected (just the same as the documentation doesn’t detail how you should write HTML or JavaScript).

I’ll echo the sentiment of the above by adding that Symphony is a content management system and not a web development framework or a fully-fledged way to develop your entire website. Its overall aim is to manage your content (of which CSS is not). In exactly the same way, it does not let you upload a favicon, create a robots.txt file, modify your .htaccess file directly, write JavaScript etc.

It seems that File Manager is the way to go. Thank you. Nevertheless, Im surprised by these supporting comments for the lack of a common utility called a text area form. And one that is included and used all over for various purposes.

Surely symphony fails your best practices since backend textareas are prevalent, from editing content to .xsl files. Except the one technology that is the least ‘code’ in nature. However, I would not claim that Symphony is failing best practices given that it is near to the best solution for utilizing xml, xslt, xpath, and css in the ways they were envisioned.

I do believe that easy editing of css is needed and an oversight for several reasons: a) css has no need for powerful editor rich features; b) css is often changed with minor tweaking: red to green, 12pt to 14pt font size c) text area forms are in place for for editing various files in Symphony; d) hence it is not wavering far from the idea of barebones system; d) css is the least destructive of code, thanks to the foresight of W3 and other consortiums; e) finally on a non-technical note, gathering further usernames, passwords, files, downloads, plugins is all very dull.

And so is wading through yet another manual in order to discover features is neither efficient nor interesting. XML and adjoining techs is nothing new at all. Nor is the concept of minimalism and purity. As mentioned most of this stuff is standard. So my point was simple, was i missing something? Thanks for the File Manager pointer, but the rest of the rants are not required.

However, since it seems many of you’re driven for some reason to support some higher goal of Toaism. I will question that Symphony is not a web development framework. For certain its a bit of both CMS and Web framework. And probably stronger on the latter given its chosen database, mysql lacks data level locking and associated functions.

But who cares about such purity between CMS and framework. A pure CMS would be comprised of a NAS, SAN, a file or database server with some data integrity rules and very little else. This system would cost a fortune. Creating and editing content would then be done locally for integrity sakes. But such is not the way of Sympony which is fine. Its free for goodness sakes; what do you expect? PHP stands for Personal Home Page. Yet LAMP has proven to be a highly successful solution for the web. Free yet really really good.

Incidentally, my comparatively short post (its not a doctrine) makes zero inquiries into the nature of CSS or Javascript, robots or htaccess. Why is it that people assume a privilege on technical knowledge. Fracking geeks.

Peace and thanks to some of you.

This is not the way to endear yourself to a community of helpful individuals. I can understand frustrations from inheriting sites using tools you don’t understand (I’ve been there myself. I’m still there most days), and Symphony can have a steep learning curve.

This is the most helpful and friendly community of individuals that I’ve come across so far, man they’ve helped me out of some confusion, and at times put up with my frustrations, so please don’t resort to insults on this forum, we’re all here to help you if you need it.

I’m closing this because I’m not sure there’s much else constructive that can be said beyond clarifying misinterpretations with clearer explanations. One for the docs perhaps: if you need to manage your site assets (CSS, JS, robots.txt etc.) without source control or (S)FTP then the File Manager extension is the way to go.