It seems in Umbraco that every time I want to add a 'select' form input (dropdown) with a new range of options I need to create a new data type? Is this right? We have film listings and a drop down list on each film page with a different set of screening dates to select from on each. It appears we need to create hundreds of new datatypes every season just for the select inputs - is this right?
Yeah. That's true. It's just that the term "data type" could be somehow a bit confusing for the thing initially. Actually what's called a "data type" is more like an "instance of the datatype". So that - you have a, say, "base" datatype that defines how data are to be stored, what control is to be used for editing, what settings can be applyed to it, etc. And the datatypes that you can see in the tree are something like particular "instances" of those "base" datatypes. Actually they are sort of the same entities as anything other in the whole umbraco tree in terms that that they all can be freely created or deleted. Actually you can even completely delete all datatypes that umbraco initially installs for you and create your own ones from scratch.
That's a terrible way to organise things - is this due to .NET or just an Umbraco thing? I can't quite beleive it - are you sure? Makes me think they haven't really thought through the fundamentals of a CMS. There's no way you can manage a large website this way. I'd have literally thousands of datatypes after a few years, to manage in a fiddly, buggy little javascript menu, you can't manage anything more than the smallest, most limited of websites like this.
First off...As you have probably noticed when installing Umbraco without any skinning or packages it's pretty empty. It's just a shell. A shell, which it's up to you to define the content structure in, define the templates, renderings/macroes and datatypes.
You could go and create 100 different datatypes, which could be a solution for your needs. But not a very elegant or simple one. Surely it can be done better in your case. Since Umbraco is so flexible there are many different ways you can solve things - it's a matter of figuring out what makes sense for the project.
So these films you're mentioning - are they stored in an external database? Or are they in fact stored as content nodes in Umbraco? And could you describe a bit more thorougly what it is you're trying to achieve? Try sketching out a bit and then we can probably give you some pointers in what would be the right way to deal with the issues you're having at the moment.
Each new set of select options needs a new data type - is this right?
It seems in Umbraco that every time I want to add a 'select' form input (dropdown) with a new range of options I need to create a new data type? Is this right? We have film listings and a drop down list on each film page with a different set of screening dates to select from on each. It appears we need to create hundreds of new datatypes every season just for the select inputs - is this right?
Yeah. That's true. It's just that the term "data type" could be somehow a bit confusing for the thing initially. Actually what's called a "data type" is more like an "instance of the datatype". So that - you have a, say, "base" datatype that defines how data are to be stored, what control is to be used for editing, what settings can be applyed to it, etc. And the datatypes that you can see in the tree are something like particular "instances" of those "base" datatypes. Actually they are sort of the same entities as anything other in the whole umbraco tree in terms that that they all can be freely created or deleted. Actually you can even completely delete all datatypes that umbraco initially installs for you and create your own ones from scratch.
That's a terrible way to organise things - is this due to .NET or just an Umbraco thing? I can't quite beleive it - are you sure? Makes me think they haven't really thought through the fundamentals of a CMS. There's no way you can manage a large website this way. I'd have literally thousands of datatypes after a few years, to manage in a fiddly, buggy little javascript menu, you can't manage anything more than the smallest, most limited of websites like this.
Hi Jed
First off...As you have probably noticed when installing Umbraco without any skinning or packages it's pretty empty. It's just a shell. A shell, which it's up to you to define the content structure in, define the templates, renderings/macroes and datatypes.
You could go and create 100 different datatypes, which could be a solution for your needs. But not a very elegant or simple one. Surely it can be done better in your case. Since Umbraco is so flexible there are many different ways you can solve things - it's a matter of figuring out what makes sense for the project.
So these films you're mentioning - are they stored in an external database? Or are they in fact stored as content nodes in Umbraco? And could you describe a bit more thorougly what it is you're trying to achieve? Try sketching out a bit and then we can probably give you some pointers in what would be the right way to deal with the issues you're having at the moment.
/Jan
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