| Author | xweber |
| Date | 2004-04-01 10:37 |
| Posts: |  Hi Nuggs,
thanks for your detailed question. I'll try to give you some answers. But first: have you ever "played" a little bit with a CMS, to see what happen with some content ?I? deliver to a module? Because its a bit hard to explain the whole concept - all those pro's and con's - of a CMS in direct compare to a "real html coded" web-page. Using a CMS like will require some kind of compromise. From the point of view "Data handling" opn will do the job (I think). From the point of view "displaying those data" opn will perhaps get close, but not 100%. So "why?": All output has to be calculated. From calling a page, opn runs through its code an decides what has to be displayed and "how". opn has a so called "box management" so you can place a box (and with the content of this box). After the "position" is calculated those content is arranged by a so called "theme". A theme fills the to be shown html with its structure tags: table, div, etc and of course has its "css file". Within this css you can define colours, font size, padding and so on. This will be a place where you'll have to spend some hours to get what you are looking for  .
So, a theme has the main emphasis on having "a website like i want". But a theme can only those data that get's through it. That?s why i mentioned this "box management". One advantage of opn is its box arrangement possibilities. Depending of what it should look alike its sometimes a bit "tricky" to get the desired result. opn has also a so called "tpl" system, so you can bind some boxes appearance on some "events". A event could be, that every time when this "forum box" is shown, on top of this box the "latest discussion box also should appear (and this should show the latest x posting)". Not enough this can also be group to so called "themegroups". For example on this site go to the "home" page. click on "development" and see a new side-box appear. Its still the same "home" page, but while calculation the output opn noticed that "you, the user" wanted also to display some development stuff. Another place to spend some hours .
So, that should introduce you to some features of opn, how output is "controllable" by the webmaster. I said "From the point of view "displaying those data" opn will perhaps get close, but not 100%.". After having adjusted the way the things has to be shown, the data itself (text, images, etc) is controlled by the module who is the "management tool" for this data. This can not be 100% controlled by you, the webmaster - because there is some hard-coded stuff. opn has tons of "settings" so you have some control of what should be displayed and how. So one opn-site may be look different from a second site running opn also. right now opn has a lot of those settings but i don?t know if they are enough for you to have the complete output the way you want. If you are missing something lets talk about and may be we add some more settings so you'll have it the way you want. This depends on "does it make sense also for other sites". If its possible for you download it and make a local installation of it. So its very easy to "play" a little with opn's power and restrictions. Don?t worry about installing a local web-server. There are some real good packages out there making this almost run "right of the box". I can give you a link to such a package i am also using for my own - if you want it. Alex |
