I'm writing blogs on Tumblr using HTML (I use HTML in order to control the content of my blogs flexibly and precisely) and I'm coding with Tumblr's own HTML editor, which is not so bad and I can continue writing in this way. However, there're some points I don't like, e.g.:
I can't adjust the width of the editor window and so the view looks a little compact.
After posting (or saving as draft), the source code will be automatically rearranged, pretty differently from my original version. That includes the line breaks, automatic adding of HTML tags (like </p>), and converting of special characters, like > to > and to (displayed as a dot).
My ideal wish is that I can use my own editor (namely Visual Studio Code) to manage my blogs. I could get a more familiar and comfortable working environment, together with useful functions like auto-complete. But there's still a conflict here - Very often I need to use the "Preview on Blog" feature (so that I can check the actual result).
To explain the situation, I describe an odd plan as example here. I could edit the source code using VS Code, during this I copy everything to Tumblr's editor when I need to "Preview on Blog", until posting. And whenever I need to update blogs I do the same work. That is, to keep a synchronous update of my blogs as local HTML files and online on Tumblr. But this way is not pretty convenient.
Is there a magical way to achieve a connection between the local editor and the website? Or, in general, how can I get a more comfortable workspace to write blogs on Tumblr using HTML?
Thanks a lot!
EDIT:
I'm not blogging on Tumblr anymore, I started to set up my own blogging platform using GitHub Pages and Jekyll.
(BTW, the code editor I use has changed from Visual Studio Code to NeoVim.)
Related
Ive got to do some work on a static html site that was originally developed using dreamweaver, i want to keep the site as static html, but ideally not use dreamweaver (even though it dose have templating as the programme feels ancient compared to Sublime Text).
In the past ive experimented with Hammer app, which was great, but had some minor flaws in my opinion to do with the variables throwing an error if they weren't defined, ie. when you dont want / need to set a meta description and as far as i can tell its no longer being developed.
Are there any other ways of generating static html that allow you to use what ever editor you prefer and have templating ?
If you really want just static (aka plain text?) file, what I do is load the original Macromedia generated file in a browser, then pull up the browser's Developer Tools, copy the main < HTML > tag, and paste that into whatever editor you're using now.
I have a course work for which I have to make a (as advanced as possible) WYSIWYG web page editor in VB.NET (2010). It should have a visual editor with drag-drop support for several elements such as anchors, images, tables etc., and it should generate HTML based on that structure.
I don't know where to begin though.. I have some experience with vb.net, I made a tabbed notepad vaguely following a tutorial, but I don't know how to make this drag-drop thingy in a richtextbox.
I've searched for a tutorial, but most of them are just too simple - a text editor with browser control rendering the HTML.. I found one really nice and advanced, but it's in german :-|
So, if anyone knows any resources / tutorials I could use to start things I'll appreciate it.
I won't start with a richtextbox. Do you want to realize it in WPF or Forms (I would recommend WPF)?
In WPF there is relative simple a Drag-And-Drop behavior for elements (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-en/library/ms742859.aspx).
I would start with some simple elements (e.g. TextBoxes) and drag-drop them from some sort of toolbox onto a grid with fixed columns and rows (and later use a canvas). And then generate the HTML-Code from that.
In general, most of the WYSIWYG browser based editors are written in Javascript using an editable DIV.
A good example is tinymce:
http://www.tinymce.com/
Download, including full source code, is available here:
http://www.tinymce.com/download/download.php
You can use CKEditor. Its one of the best WYSIWYG editor i have worked with. Its highly customizable and opensource.
Given below is the URL for the website:
http://ckeditor.com/
I'm trying to create a theme for a CMS, but it's proving nearly impossible, as I have no understanding of PHP or ASP.NET. I can put a site together via CSS and HTML, but I want clients to be able to add and edit content themselves. I'm about ready to give up on designing one altogether and just use an existing theme.
I've had a go at trying to understand the inner workings of Wordpress, SilverStripe, Umbraco and Pixie, but the tutorials have left me confounded. Are there other CMSes I should be looking into for a more simplified theming process?
I'd really love to be able to just drop a chunk of code into the content area of a given HTML page, and make that region editable from a WYSIWYG front end that the client can log into. Is there such a thing?
Anything but DotNetNuke.
I'd recommend giving Wordpress another try.
I'm no web developer, just a an average Java/C# programmer who needed a web site and has some basic knowledge of HTML and CSS. What I did was find a theme that was similar to what I wanted, then started tweaking it incrementally. My theme is pretty basic, but before long I got a pretty good grasp of "The Loop" and printing out category and page links and such.
How about Movable Type?
You can (and should) edit the templates via the web interface, they are divided into separate modules, so you can concentrate on one area of the site, styling is of course handled via CSS.
It took me a few hours without any prior experience with this CMS to completely port a Wordpress theme to MT - I found the documentation very helpful and didn't even have to look elsewhere.
An awesome thing about MT - it generates static pages based on the templates you defined. Meaning, very low load on the server, you don't need to query the database on every request, etc. You could probably do the same/similar by activating the cache plugin (or is it built in now?) in Wordpress, but here it's the default modus operandi so it's more stable and integrated with the CMS.
Drupal with the zen theme (or a "lighter" version of it: Starkish theme) seems like a popular choice (and well deserved, too). It gives you a good starting point, it has great documentation and many modules available.
PS: I've added this as an additional answer so that it can be voted upon separately from my other suggestion - I just could not stop myself from bringing up the Drupal + zen combo :)
I worked with Joomla, it is really easy to have a theme for it without knowing any programming language. When you install it using a simple installer, there will be a folder named templates. There are three simple themes each in its own folder. Just copy one of them,change XML data for that theme ( just to name it and have some details, no programming ) and change the contents of CSS and HTMLs. every where you see something unrelated to HTML like , copy them!! Names are descriptive. so you can guess what do they do. give it a try!
I'd really love to be able to just drop a chunk of code into the content area of a given HTML page, and make that region editable from a WYSIWYG front end that the client can log into. Is there such a thing?
The only system I've come across with this kind of functionality is Perch.
Just create your website using HTML/CSS as usual and chuck in a few small php tags where you want editable content. These areas are then added to an admin area for your clients to edit.
The only drawback is it costs £35 per site - I don't know if there's a free/open-source CMS with this functionality...
It's difficult to say which CMS will be the best one for you (maybe your question should be made into a community wiki question).
I have a little experience with mojoPortal, and found it to be easily customizable. There's a lot of documentation about how to skin your CMS and there a lots of complete skins that you can use as a starting point.
There is also a demo site, where you can see how the CMS works for an end-user.
Take a look at Joomla. That was the first CMS that I really used, and I still think its templating engine is better than most of the others out there.
Its template system essentially lets you build a standard web page, and then use some simple tags to define where the content and modules would go. You can override the output of most external components and modules without too much trouble, and the vast library of third-party extensions should help you add a ton of functionality to your site without much coding on your part. Joomla also has a fairly easy-to-use administrative backend, so your clients should like it too.
This page for themeing Wordpress helped me a lot:
Theme Development
UPDATE
Xichael,
If you know HTML and CSS pretty well, but you just don't want to spend time learning the Wordpress framework, then I think this is a good option for you (again, I can relate to your situation). Use Wordpress with the new Toolbox starter theme. It's super minimal.
Toolbox: An HTML5 WordPress Starter Theme
Here's an example of what it looks like. Just "View page source" and go to town on the CSS!
I've thought about writing my own very simple CMS just for handling pages, i.e. you have some sort of template, and then a <div> in the middle to drop in text from a WYSIWYG editor. You could even use XML as the data store to eliminate having to set up a database to store the page content.
It would sort of be re-inventing the wheel though, because there is so much polished CMS software out there already, but it wouldn't be that hard because it wouldn't have 99% of the features most systems have. However, what happens when your client wants to add something in the future that's already standard in an existing CMS or plugin?
If you are looking for a simple CMS tool, CMSimple is as basic as it gets. A small PHP based CMS system that does not even require a database or XML.
"CMSimple is the ideal tool for a single user to maintain a website."
Original version here: CMSimple.ORG
Original plus 2 enhanced versions here: Download CMSimple
117KB content manangement system
no database required; the entire site is stored in a single HTML file
built in WYSIWYG
no modules or widgets, no blog, no comments, etc., just basic pages
uses PHP (but no database)
Get themes here: dotcomwebdesign.com
I'm developing a wiki (based off of MediaWiki and Semantic Mediawiki+), and I'm having some trouble with tables - after making one, I'd like to be able to add another column or row in a WYSIWYG editor, as not all of the users know MediaWiki markup.
Currently, I can't change the # of rows/columns after creating a table through my WYSIWYG editor - is there a fix or another editor to do this?
I'm sure you can wire up TinyMCE as an editor. This supports table and block manipulation (along with a host of other options). There's even a page on meta.wikimedia.org about it.
We use the official FCK editor which works really well for tables. The only problem is if you then switch back to the default editor - you can get a lot of unexpected / not wanted formatting which makes it quite hard to read. But you can always go back (again) to FCK editing.
I'm looking for a HTML editor that kinda supports templated editing or live snippets or something like that.
Background: I'm working on a website for a friend. As there are no specifications what the webspace/webserver can or can't do, I decided to make it a pure HTML/CSS page, or rather 10 of them. I wrote a template, copied it 10 times and edited the content. And guess what, the template has to be changed.
Therefore I'm looking for a (HTML-)editor that has some kind of live template system where I can edit the content in as it where plain text and then save the project into the 10 pure HTML/CSS files.
I thought about using PHP (the only script language I've some knowledge in), but writing the underlying template script would cost me enough time that I could change all files by hand. I'm not that familiar with AJAX to know if there's a way to load content from another file. If so, this would be an option if there already is a script. With Webdeveloper (firefox extension) I could save the generated source code as HTML/CSS.
Thanks in advance
Edit: any hints how to do this without an editor are welcome
Edit2: In my mind the tool looks like a plain old text editor like SciTe, but capable of editing multiple files simultaneously in the same text area, so it looks like editing one ordinary file, but actually it's a whole bunch of files.
Dreamweaver will do this for you, it's had HTML templating of the type your describe built in from very early versions (because from how you phrase the question I do not think you're thinking along the lines of a PHP templating engine such as Smarty, but some sort of HTML layout formating)
Although I regularly look around for Dreamweaver replacements, and I've certainly been impressed by Aptana, I still tend to use Dreamweaver in my development stack simply because whereas I can compensate for some of the more coding-orientated features it misses, I find the WYSIWYG nature of the editor invaluable.
I would have used a template engine.
I wrote a post about a dead simple script using the Dwoo template engine and mod_rewrite, where I am taking the uri and loading the forrect data and template based on that. You should be able to get it running in a few minutes.
Maybe I am way off on this, but why don't you look into an Open Source Content Management System (PHP/MYSQL)? There are MANY light systems that are not like Drupal, Joomla (if you do not want the big bulk of those CMS's).
There are even a few good ones for light web design that are flat file driven.
That would be my suggestion, at least if not for this project, look into it for future projects.
Here is an example of a great micro CMS that would seem to fit the bill for what you are doing:
http://www.mini-print.com/