I'm setting up my first Umbraco website. I have some questions:
1. What's the best practice for putting images on my pages? The easiest way I can imagine would be to put them in an "image" folder outside the Umbraco file structure and link to them, but I suspect Umbraco has a better way.
2. The same question, for other files such as PDFs.
3. What the best practice for using non-Umbraco .NET code on my Umbraco website? Say I want to use a non-Umbraco shopping cart, or forum, or some other .NET code.
4. Is it common or encouraged to use Visual Studio to edit Umbraco pages, such as master pages, rather than going through the Umbraco admin page?
I'm new to Umbraco but it looks pretty great so far. Thanks to you folks who created it and support it here :)
For 1) and 2) you would use the umbraco media section, which allows you to organize your images/pdf/etc using folders and insert hyperlinks to them into the richtext editor.
For 3) there is no generic solution as this depends on the structure of your external code, but you might either enhance the templates with your code/controls to integrate your code.
Regarding 4) I would recommend working in Umbraco as Visual Studio lacks support of Umbraco macros and stuff.
1 & 2) If the images are part of the template (master page) or CSS, I put them in an /images directory.
If the images or PDFs are something I would want to change easily through the admin area or have the users modify or add, then it goes in the media area.
3) Some combination of macros and XSLT extensions are usually how I deal with this issue. However, you can always have a special directory for that application and simply have Umbraco ignore that directory. Say if you wanted a forum or blog that isn't an Umbraco package.
4) I do like to work in Visual Studio when editing XSLT and JS files. However, I would stay away from template and CSS files. Templates because there is great support for placeholders, macros, and data fields in the Umbraco admin. CSS because Umbraco caches a version in the database and you can easily get your changes overwritten if you are working with others in a team.
Some questions, best practices
I'm setting up my first Umbraco website. I have some questions:
1. What's the best practice for putting images on my pages? The easiest way I can imagine would be to put them in an "image" folder outside the Umbraco file structure and link to them, but I suspect Umbraco has a better way.
2. The same question, for other files such as PDFs.
3. What the best practice for using non-Umbraco .NET code on my Umbraco website? Say I want to use a non-Umbraco shopping cart, or forum, or some other .NET code.
4. Is it common or encouraged to use Visual Studio to edit Umbraco pages, such as master pages, rather than going through the Umbraco admin page?
I'm new to Umbraco but it looks pretty great so far. Thanks to you folks who created it and support it here :)
For 1) and 2) you would use the umbraco media section, which allows you to organize your images/pdf/etc using folders and insert hyperlinks to them into the richtext editor.
For 3) there is no generic solution as this depends on the structure of your external code, but you might either enhance the templates with your code/controls to integrate your code.
Regarding 4) I would recommend working in Umbraco as Visual Studio lacks support of Umbraco macros and stuff.
Here's how I generally work:
1 & 2) If the images are part of the template (master page) or CSS, I put them in an /images directory.
If the images or PDFs are something I would want to change easily through the admin area or have the users modify or add, then it goes in the media area.
3) Some combination of macros and XSLT extensions are usually how I deal with this issue. However, you can always have a special directory for that application and simply have Umbraco ignore that directory. Say if you wanted a forum or blog that isn't an Umbraco package.
4) I do like to work in Visual Studio when editing XSLT and JS files. However, I would stay away from template and CSS files. Templates because there is great support for placeholders, macros, and data fields in the Umbraco admin. CSS because Umbraco caches a version in the database and you can easily get your changes overwritten if you are working with others in a team.
4.) I do 95% of my development work in Visual Studio. That goes for templates, CSS, XSLT & user controls. I just use Umbraco to create the stub
Paul, have you ever seen the CSS issue I was referring to? Its a doozy.
Thanks for all the suggestions
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