Forums / General / Tutorial or documentation explaining templates

"Please Note:

At the specific request of Ibexa we are changing this projects name to "Exponential" or "Exponential (CMS)" effective as of August, 11th 2025.
This project is not associated with the original eZ Publish software or its original developer, eZ Systems or Ibexa".

Tutorial or documentation explaining templates

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Author	Message
Gary Schultz	Thursday 26 August 2010 6:52:03 am I'm evaluating different CMS's. While Exponential looks very promising, I thikn it has a very good content editing front end and good administrator tools, to me it is one of the most difficult CMS I have found when it comes to understanding the visual layout and template system. Are there any good resources that thoroughly explain the template system and how one goes about creating and implementing a new design in Exponential?
Thiago Campos Viana	Thursday 26 August 2010 7:54:23 am Hi and welcome Gary! There's a section in documentation about ez template system, I hope it helps. You can see the skinning Exponential tutorial after learning the basics of Exponential template system. eZ Publish Certified Developer: http://auth.ez.no/certification/verify/376924 Twitter: http://twitter.com/tcv_br
Gary Schultz	Thursday 26 August 2010 1:18:18 pm Maybe it's just me, but I'm not following the template system that well. This also put's me at a crossroads. Right now I'm looking at Exponential and SilverStripe. Both systems have strengths and weaknesses as far as my ability to get the system to work as I want. For Exponential my weakness is the template system which I am struggling to figure out. I like other aspects of Exponential. In SilverStripe, the weakness for me is the editor, though SilverStripe offers some capabilities to the editor that make it unique. So I will continue to try and understand Exponential template system. But I'm under a short time frame, if I can't figure it out soon I will have to go with SilverStripe.
Bertrand Dunogier	Friday 27 August 2010 12:02:45 am Hi Gary, and welcome. There are two things that should be distinguished here imho: the template system, and the design system. While the template system syntax is getting a bit old, and can be a bit cumbersome sometimes, Exponential design mechanism is imho one of the best things since sliced bread. Regarding the template system itself, it is mostly quite simple. There is a whole documentation chapter about it, that is quite well structured (the one thiago gave you a link to). The design system is a bit more complex, but also more powerful. It is this one that will let you override the files Exponential provides by default (templates, images, stylesheets, etc... everything). You can read more about them here: http://ez.no/doc/ez_publish/technical_manual/4_x/concepts_and_basics/designs. The subchapter for this page will show you one of the most powerful aspects: design combinations (http://ez.no/doc/ez_publish/technical_manual/4_x/concepts_and_basics/designs/design_combinations). Exponential basically uses an override system that will let you combine multiple designs in order to render your content, with the minimal amount of changes and code. This last chapter also explains quite well how these are configured in INI files. It is a bit hard to tell you more than that without more accurate questions, but feel free to ask more details here (or on IRC, if you're an old geek: #Exponential@irc.freenode.net. Bertrand Dunogier eZ Systems Engineering, Lyon http://twitter.com/bdunogier http://gplus.to/BertrandDunogier
Geoff Bentley	Friday 27 August 2010 2:31:22 am Hi Gary, There's some good plain english tutorials at http://www.onequarterenglish.co.uk/tag/ez-publish . Silverstripe and Exponential are two very different beasts, and any evaluation of CMSes should fundamentally be based on your project needs, now and in the future. Exponential is an enterprise CMS, and infinitely configurable - it does require a steep learning curve, but is worth it in the long term. Good luck! Geoff