{"id":1017,"date":"2010-03-13T02:55:51","date_gmt":"2010-03-13T09:55:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/web-content-management-systems-from-a-designers-perspective\/"},"modified":"2010-03-13T10:55:54","modified_gmt":"2010-03-13T17:55:54","slug":"web-content-management-systems-from-a-designers-perspective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/web-content-management-systems-from-a-designers-perspective\/","title":{"rendered":"Web Content Management Systems from a Designer&#8217;s Perspective"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Saturday, March 13, 2010 9:30am<br \/>Presenters:<br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.adobe.com\/sfegette\/\" onclick=\"$('presenter_bio_52892').toggle()\">Scott Fegette &#8211; Adobe<\/a><br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/chrischarlton.us\/\">Chris Charlton<\/a> &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/xtnd.us\/\">XTND.US<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The biggest shift in CMS since the 90&#8217;s is designers coming over in droves from the static world.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Why CMS?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Rich Functionality<\/li>\n<li>Content Centralization<\/li>\n<li>Client Management &#8211; great way hand over the keys to someone<\/li>\n<li>Designer\/Developer Communities &#8211; lots of shared code and expertise<\/li>\n<li>Open Platform<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>The Big Four<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>WordPress &#8211; simple<\/li>\n<li>Drupal &#8211; very powerful<\/li>\n<li>Joomla &#8211; a bit more designer focused<\/li>\n<li>Expression Engine &#8211; very rich (commercial)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Decisions, Decisions<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Run-time System &#8211; all live, pages generated when called for<\/li>\n<li>Publish-time system &#8211; all the heavy lifting is done when you publish &#8211; a bit static, and maybe more robust<\/li>\n<li>Style Management<\/li>\n<li>Deployment &#8211; critical part when deciding, how difficult is it to get out there and maintain<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Static Design<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Static design starts to break down in a CMS, not just a design wrapper for flat pages any more.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Design States<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Navigation States &#8211; buttons\/breadcrumbs\/drop-down menus need to be designed around<\/li>\n<li>Presentational States &#8211; the guts of the CMS, all the pages\/posts of the site.<\/li>\n<li>Logical States &#8211; session login, showing slightly different content based on roll<\/li>\n<li>Dynamic Content &#8211; not a print layout. You need to adapt to the type of content being desgned<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Themeing<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Encapsulated design system<\/li>\n<li>Fast design iteration &#8211; allow you to create a design quickly, or swap through them to see how different things interact. It&#8217;s easy to mock up certain things (larger headlines) and go back and fourth to see how things react.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>What&#8217;s in a theme?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>System-specific metadata<br \/>WordPress &#8211; CSS comments<br \/>Drupal &#8211; .info file<\/li>\n<li>Physical directory structure<\/li>\n<li>Markup\/Logic\/CSS assets<\/li>\n<li>External Modules (as required)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Theming Wokflow A<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Use baseline theme for markup<\/li>\n<li>Design primarily in CSS layer<\/li>\n<li>Working &#8216;within the box&#8217; &#8211; pushing things in the direction they need vs. from scratch<\/li>\n<li>No control over dynamic classes<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Theming Workflow B<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Start from HTML\/CSS comp<\/li>\n<li>Integrate directly into PHP<\/li>\n<li>Less constraints, more risk<\/li>\n<li>Requires knowledge of system architecture<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Markup Challenges<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Generated vs. On-disk markup<\/li>\n<li>Code Fragmentation<\/li>\n<li>Dynamic Styles<\/li>\n<li>Real-time previewing issues<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>CSS Challenges<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Inline vs. Included Styles<\/li>\n<li>Themes vs. Core<\/li>\n<li>Module CSS<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Being Efficient<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Encapsulated CSS Layer<\/li>\n<li>Flexible, Straightforward Markup<\/li>\n<li>Comments &amp; Generated Code<\/li>\n<li>Version Control (easy ti back out quickly if something gets messed up)<\/li>\n<li>Subthemes and Design Abstraction<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Building Better Mousetraps<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Saving and previewing app states<\/li>\n<li>Real time DOM Access<\/li>\n<li>Dynamically-related Assets<\/li>\n<li>Framework-specific configuration<\/li>\n<li>Work more freely<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>The Technical Stuff&#8230;<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>HTML\/XHTML (markup) + CSS<\/li>\n<li>JavaScript (optional)<\/li>\n<li>Basic PHP<\/li>\n<li>Source Code Management (subversion &#8211; SVN)<\/li>\n<li>Multiple environments discipline (local, dev, staging, live)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Saturday, March 13, 2010 9:30amPresenters:Scott Fegette &#8211; AdobeChris Charlton &#8211; XTND.US The biggest shift in CMS since the 90&#8217;s is designers coming over in droves from the static world. Why CMS? Rich Functionality Content Centralization Client Management &#8211; great way hand over the keys to someone Designer\/Developer Communities &#8211; lots of shared code and expertise&#8230;  <a class=\"excerpt-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/web-content-management-systems-from-a-designers-perspective\/\" title=\"Read Web Content Management Systems from a Designer&#8217;s Perspective\">Read more &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sxsw"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1017"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1017\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1018,"href":"https:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1017\/revisions\/1018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}