Save me some time?

[Janovetz]

Hello-

 

I'm just starting to setup an osCommerce site. I've read much of the docs and played with the PHP stuff by hand a bit. I also just purchased Adobe Creative Suite for some other documentation and thought I might be able to use the GoLive stuff.

 

I'm certainly not opposed to learning something new, but at this stage I try to limit it to things I'll use. So, is GoLive a reasonable thing to use to construct my site? In the past, I've done everything by hand and found it enormously time-intensive.

 

If I use it with osC, do I just edit the HTML/PHP pieces or do I have GoLive manage the whole thing as a ".site" ? Is there a suggested way to get things going? The wiki doesn't turn up anything for GoLive and a forum search didn't yield much either.

 

Jake

[johnk]

I hadn't heard of GoLive until I read your post so I went and had a look. I'm not sure how much time it will save you if any because the PHP and HTML in OSC code is like hundreds and thousands. (Remember them?) If you look at index.php through the WYSIWYG part of GoLive, you will just see a series of dotted borders. That dear friend is as good as it gets! The is not much HTML (visual) presentation in the code at all. Something as simple as one of the side infoboxes is divided up into five separate files, each adding a little to the final presentation and most of the html means nothing.

 

If you don't want to use one of the two available template engines (STS and BTS)but still want to shuffle things around, you could try my method. It's basic and rough. but it works.

 

The three items that build and OSC screen are HTLM tables, CCS classes and PHP echo statements. Looking at Index.php through your WYSIWYG editor means nothing but by adding a few simple HTML markers throughout the script you can begin to see what does what. With the find facility in your editor it only takes a minute.

 

Do your tables first. Concentrate on all <td>'s immediately after <table><tr>, but later you can extend it to <td>'s after a </td>. Immediately after the first <td> add a marker with the words "Position 1" (without the "") and Position 2 after the next.

 

Make sure you don't place markers under <td>'s appearing inside PHP code and this does occur frequently.

 

Now look at index.php through your WYSIWYG and everything will be a whole lot clearer. Best of all, run OSC on your server and see where the markers appear in real life. I actually leave them there until I've completely modified the page because they act as a super quick reference.

 

Next do the same with <td>'s inside the PHP code. This time type:

 

echo 'Position 1 (php)';

 

Now do all your PHP echo or print functions Mark their position by entering:

 

echo 'Position 1 (Php echo)'; etc.

 

And then all the lines containing "class="

 

Next time you run a huge file like admin's categories.php (over 1000 lines) and compare it with the actual categories/products section in admin, you will see how everything fits together. Of course the intrusion of these little markers will play havoc on what you see, but you will eventually refine them so that things will be back to normal in no time.

 

With regard to using Golive to manage the site, I'm not too sure it or any other manager like Dreamweaver could produce an accurate flow chart. I have to say I've never bothered to test it.

[gazzzzzza]

we use golive for it

it works fine

you dont have to setup a 'site' in golive

you can just modify the pages one by one without reference to the others

 

one thing though

go live aint much use with oscommerce because the layout view doesn't ever show much due to the way oscommerce is built using includes and php code - very little plain html is used. and because it grabs code from tons of includes these never show on the page whilst you are editing it so any tables etc that do show look wrong because they are missing tages which are included elsewhere!

 

so basically, golive/dreamweaver/any other similar tool are about as useful as notepad for modifying oscommerce cos you have to do it all through the source view which it sounds like you do anyway. Its unlikely to save you any timein my view. I have heavily modded oscommerce using golive and had no probs but as i said - i could have done it through notepad exactly the same.