Hi. When I was first reading about this CMS, one thing I really liked was when it said that you could basically use anything to create your pages and page designs. I have this template/theme/skin maker called Artisteer, which makes a wide variety of different kinds of all those things, for a wide variety of blogs, CMSs, and will even create an ASP.NET template in C# with a masterpage, stylesheets (3 different ones, since there are variants for IE6 and IE7), graphics, and everything -- can this be used in umbraco, and if so, could someone point me at some tutorial or other, because I'm really a complete newbie with ASP.NET stuff, and just installed umbraco late last night, so I'm still trying to get a handle on it.
Does the name "masterpage" imply what it sounds like, that it can be used as the basis of every page you create in this CMS? with those attached stylesheets, of course!
It is true that you can use nearly any html to create templates in Umbraco. Many folks have used templates originally created for WrodPress and other platforms as Umbraco templates. I am not certain the Artisteer 'master page' is the same as an Umbraco "master page" but it very well may be as Umbraco uses ASP.NET MasterPages for its templates.
I'd encourage you to give it it a try by simply pasting the Artisteer html into an Umbraco template(s) and see how it goes. There's no reason it won't work.
The Artisteer C# export-structure is quite hard to fit into Umbraco site I'm sorry to say. It includes quite some usercontrols which need some tweaking to run within umbraco as one would like.
It would be nice to have an Umbraco Export in Artisteer. Perhaps they will include that feature if enough people request it.
I used Artisteer for an Umbraco-site a while ago. what I did was briefly what one always need when one converts a generic html-template to Umbraco:
Use the regular Html-export to get the files Page.html, script.js, style.css, style.ie6.css, style.ie7.css and folder Images with images.
Copy the files to appropriate Umbraco-paths, and search-and-replace references to the paths (in both css and html)
Copy the html from Page.html to a Template and go through it piece by piece to fill it with dynamic content. (Also create child templates if it suits your site).
You can find a lot of help with this procedures in Umbraco help/tv and community sites.
The conversion was not too hard, and I finished my new site design. However the Artisteer structure had some issues with 3rd party controls I was using at that site, and in the end I actually let a designer do a complete new design...
Thanks for all the replies, you all -- though I'm not sure where someone got the idea that I don't know HTML, since I never said such a thing -- in fact HTML is the only part of all this in which I'm truly expert (well, CSS too, and graphics creation/manipulation -- just no C# !!). Not sure where that idea came from at all -- jump to conclusions much, sun? ;-P
I know what you other guys mean about the weird user-controls that Artisteer puts in their asp.net templates -- that's the whole problem with them, otherwise I'd just load one of those asp.net templates into Visual Studio and off I'd go -- but not even Visual Studio can interpret them correctly, so that must mean that they aren't really terribly "spec". Judging from their forum, others have the same problems with their asp.net templates -- not knowing exactly what to do with them or how to use them, since, when you load 'em into VisStudio, you get all this "error" stuff. Really weird, especially given that if you just upload one of their asp.net templates "as-is" to a server, they display just fine -- but VisStudio or Expression Web just kinda goes "huh?"
That sounds like a winner as far as creating a basic HTML/CSS template, and just sprucing it up to fit into Umbraco. You're right, it would be awesome if Artisteer added Umbraco-export functionality -- I might even re-up my subscription to them if they did, so I could get more new releases than just bug-fixes. That program came a LONG way during the year I was subscribed, but in the last few months I wasn't really seeing much being added or improved, so I didn't renew.
What I'm doing at the moment is taking the template I found called "VectorLover" and completely re-coloring it to suit my site -- I really hate light backgrounds, but I'm using VectorLover as the starting point rather than Jungleland, since it's highly graphic (backgrounds) which lets me recolor it a bit more easily. One thing that I notice though, that's really weird, is that in the media directory, there's like 20 diff numbered directories, each with one graphic and a thumb of it -- that is just bizarre! Are all Umbraco templates like that, and if so, why? That surely makes it difficult to find all the graphics in order to re-color them -- I'm using Firefox's Firebug and opera's "inspect element" to locate 'em all.
I re-read everything posted above, and had a question, to Paul Sterling; you said that many wordpress templates had been adapted to umbraco -- how about Joomla? I've created about 15-16 nice Joomla templates (starting them with Artisteer to get all the php code, but highly customized HTML, CSS, and better-optimized graphics, to make them really original and more usable); I'd love to be able to convert these to Umbraco and provide them for download alongside my Joomla templates at my main template site. Joomla puts stuff on the page using what they call "module positions," which are defined in the XML file for the template, and described in the usual way in the CSS with IDs and classes -- I'm not sure, since I *just* started looking at Umbraco, but would that be somewhat analogous to putting in the various bits that Umbraco wants in order to display dynamic content? -- basically just substituting the Umbraco-bits for the Joomla mod-position-bits?
(Just trying to wrap my mind around all this new and different stuff!)
So you gave up Artisteer? I think the program is useful for quick templatecreation and was thinking of creating some kind of export to Umbraco-tool for myself (and others if it became good enough), but then I would most likely use the Export-to-html-function and not Export to c#-project.
About the images : template images (and other static ones) suits well in a regular folder (/images). Media content has other advantages, like setting all kinds of properties for example.
Any piece of software that states that it'll do my web design for me is going to be evil in my book.
I read some testimonials on their website and it backs up my assumption :P. I've done 5 years of web development and I've also never had to learn Dreamweaver ;)
I used to be a hand-code hardliner myself, but you know what? I got tired of it. I got tired of having to update every last stinking page of huge websites everytime I wanted to update a site's look -- the last time I had to update my last handcoded-HTML site at 115 pages, I got REALLY sick of it. So I started fooling with CMSs. Started with Drupal, but that thing is so unwieldy, and they seem to issue a bugfix release about every other day -- sort of like phpNuke. That constant updating gets REALLY!!! old to the webmasters who use the product.
Then I tried out Joomla, and although it seemed odd and awkward at first, I soon came to love it, and still do; as I said, I've made about 15-16 templates for it, and have no plans to stop; I have 3 or 4 major websites on Joomla. At least they don't issue a bugfix 3 times a week; it's remarkably stable, and extremely well-supported by the community.
Then I got this wild hair to look into .NET things; tried out that *other* .NET CMS, you know the one I mean, and it's not bad, but I can't seem to get it upgraded, either because a) I still know so little about .NET, connection strings, web.config, etc, or b) because my host's implementation of ASP.NET isn't quite up to the standards they want for their newer releases; my host seems to only go to 3.5, but that program requires 3.51 for newer releases. So I started looking at other .NET CMSs that I might be able to get installed myself, without recourse to my host's auto-installer -- so I could learn something about how to install things in a .NET environment (Umbraco installed so nicely, I'm still impressed -- and amazed!).
And yes, Artisteer is a very fun way to originate designs, to try out looks, or just play around with different effects. No, you don't have to accept its output as carved-in-stone -- I don't. I always customize the HTML and the CSS and the images (it doesn't optimize the image file sizes very well) after doing the export, before zipping it up and installing it or placing it for download at my site.
As for Dreamweaver, I'm finally starting to try and learn it; I find it almost impenetrable -- HTML is a sweet piece of cake compared to that program's vagaries. Same for Expression Web, and good lord, I haven't managed to figure out enough about Visual Studio yet to even claim it -- probably because I'm not a programmer; no C, C+, C#, no VB; nothing but good old HTML/CSS, but hey, I'm willing to learn -- my son is currently studying for a degree in Web/Application Development, and he's promised to teach me C# once he learns it. (yes, he's a silicon-chip off the old mommy!) ;-)
But I've decided that there might be a lot of different good ways to make web pages -- Dreamweaver, VisStudio (if I can learn them!), Artisteer templates in CMS programs, or just good ol' HTML -- to stick to one way at the expense of all the others is a) self-defeating, and b) purist-posturing. I used to do that sort of posturing constantly, hollering about how wysiwyg editors inserted lots of extraneous and even erroneous code, and you know what, sometimes they do. So there's the value of knowing how to hand-code -- you go in and take OUT that extraneous code, and fix the wrong code, before publishing. Easy as that.
Jonas, no, I wouldn't say I've given up Artisteer; I just didn't renew when my year's subscription ended, so now I get only bug-fix release downloads, instead of major new versions. I still use it a lot; I really enjoy it as a way of visualizing a design before having to get into the nitty-gritty of the code, and at some point, when they come out with some bang-up nifty new features, I'll probably re-subscribe. It's good to know that I can use a plain "images" folder, instead of having to divvy up all the images into a subdir for each one -- that kinda scared me, when I saw it. WHEW!
So you gave up Artisteer? I think the program is useful for quick templatecreation and was thinking of creating some kind of export to Umbraco-tool for myself (and others if it became good enough), but then I would most likely use the Export-to-html-function and not Export to c#-project.
About the images : template images (and other static ones) suits well in a regular folder (/images). Media content has other advantages, like setting all kinds of properties for example.
Cheers
Jonas
Hi, Jonas
You can create now Artisteer plug-in for export to Umbraco with artisteer Export Plug-ins. You can read more about this here: http://www.artisteer.com/?p=dev
Artisteer ASP.NET template?
Hi. When I was first reading about this CMS, one thing I really liked was when it said that you could basically use anything to create your pages and page designs. I have this template/theme/skin maker called Artisteer, which makes a wide variety of different kinds of all those things, for a wide variety of blogs, CMSs, and will even create an ASP.NET template in C# with a masterpage, stylesheets (3 different ones, since there are variants for IE6 and IE7), graphics, and everything -- can this be used in umbraco, and if so, could someone point me at some tutorial or other, because I'm really a complete newbie with ASP.NET stuff, and just installed umbraco late last night, so I'm still trying to get a handle on it.
Does the name "masterpage" imply what it sounds like, that it can be used as the basis of every page you create in this CMS? with those attached stylesheets, of course!
Thx much,
Andria
If you don't know html and css, Artisteer is not' very suitable for you. you can read more at its site. This is not a problem about umbraco.
Hi Andria -
It is true that you can use nearly any html to create templates in Umbraco. Many folks have used templates originally created for WrodPress and other platforms as Umbraco templates. I am not certain the Artisteer 'master page' is the same as an Umbraco "master page" but it very well may be as Umbraco uses ASP.NET MasterPages for its templates.
I'd encourage you to give it it a try by simply pasting the Artisteer html into an Umbraco template(s) and see how it goes. There's no reason it won't work.
-Paul
Hi!
The Artisteer C# export-structure is quite hard to fit into Umbraco site I'm sorry to say. It includes quite some usercontrols which need some tweaking to run within umbraco as one would like.
It would be nice to have an Umbraco Export in Artisteer. Perhaps they will include that feature if enough people request it.
I used Artisteer for an Umbraco-site a while ago. what I did was briefly what one always need when one converts a generic html-template to Umbraco:
Use the regular Html-export to get the files Page.html, script.js, style.css, style.ie6.css, style.ie7.css and folder Images with images.
Copy the files to appropriate Umbraco-paths, and search-and-replace references to the paths (in both css and html)
Copy the html from Page.html to a Template and go through it piece by piece to fill it with dynamic content. (Also create child templates if it suits your site).
You can find a lot of help with this procedures in Umbraco help/tv and community sites.
The conversion was not too hard, and I finished my new site design. However the Artisteer structure had some issues with 3rd party controls I was using at that site, and in the end I actually let a designer do a complete new design...
Good luck with your project!
Regards
Jonas Eriksson
Thanks for all the replies, you all -- though I'm not sure where someone got the idea that I don't know HTML, since I never said such a thing -- in fact HTML is the only part of all this in which I'm truly expert (well, CSS too, and graphics creation/manipulation -- just no C# !!). Not sure where that idea came from at all -- jump to conclusions much, sun? ;-P
I know what you other guys mean about the weird user-controls that Artisteer puts in their asp.net templates -- that's the whole problem with them, otherwise I'd just load one of those asp.net templates into Visual Studio and off I'd go -- but not even Visual Studio can interpret them correctly, so that must mean that they aren't really terribly "spec". Judging from their forum, others have the same problems with their asp.net templates -- not knowing exactly what to do with them or how to use them, since, when you load 'em into VisStudio, you get all this "error" stuff. Really weird, especially given that if you just upload one of their asp.net templates "as-is" to a server, they display just fine -- but VisStudio or Expression Web just kinda goes "huh?"
That sounds like a winner as far as creating a basic HTML/CSS template, and just sprucing it up to fit into Umbraco. You're right, it would be awesome if Artisteer added Umbraco-export functionality -- I might even re-up my subscription to them if they did, so I could get more new releases than just bug-fixes. That program came a LONG way during the year I was subscribed, but in the last few months I wasn't really seeing much being added or improved, so I didn't renew.
What I'm doing at the moment is taking the template I found called "VectorLover" and completely re-coloring it to suit my site -- I really hate light backgrounds, but I'm using VectorLover as the starting point rather than Jungleland, since it's highly graphic (backgrounds) which lets me recolor it a bit more easily. One thing that I notice though, that's really weird, is that in the media directory, there's like 20 diff numbered directories, each with one graphic and a thumb of it -- that is just bizarre! Are all Umbraco templates like that, and if so, why? That surely makes it difficult to find all the graphics in order to re-color them -- I'm using Firefox's Firebug and opera's "inspect element" to locate 'em all.
Thx again!
Andria
I re-read everything posted above, and had a question, to Paul Sterling; you said that many wordpress templates had been adapted to umbraco -- how about Joomla? I've created about 15-16 nice Joomla templates (starting them with Artisteer to get all the php code, but highly customized HTML, CSS, and better-optimized graphics, to make them really original and more usable); I'd love to be able to convert these to Umbraco and provide them for download alongside my Joomla templates at my main template site. Joomla puts stuff on the page using what they call "module positions," which are defined in the XML file for the template, and described in the usual way in the CSS with IDs and classes -- I'm not sure, since I *just* started looking at Umbraco, but would that be somewhat analogous to putting in the various bits that Umbraco wants in order to display dynamic content? -- basically just substituting the Umbraco-bits for the Joomla mod-position-bits?
(Just trying to wrap my mind around all this new and different stuff!)
Thx!
Andria
Hi!
So you gave up Artisteer? I think the program is useful for quick templatecreation and was thinking of creating some kind of export to Umbraco-tool for myself (and others if it became good enough), but then I would most likely use the Export-to-html-function and not Export to c#-project.
About the images : template images (and other static ones) suits well in a regular folder (/images). Media content has other advantages, like setting all kinds of properties for example.
Cheers
Jonas
Any piece of software that states that it'll do my web design for me is going to be evil in my book.
I read some testimonials on their website and it backs up my assumption :P. I've done 5 years of web development and I've also never had to learn Dreamweaver ;)
Yeah, but it's a fun tool - and you get the results quick. For some kind of sites the produced code is good enough imho.
I used to be a hand-code hardliner myself, but you know what? I got tired of it. I got tired of having to update every last stinking page of huge websites everytime I wanted to update a site's look -- the last time I had to update my last handcoded-HTML site at 115 pages, I got REALLY sick of it. So I started fooling with CMSs. Started with Drupal, but that thing is so unwieldy, and they seem to issue a bugfix release about every other day -- sort of like phpNuke. That constant updating gets REALLY!!! old to the webmasters who use the product.
Then I tried out Joomla, and although it seemed odd and awkward at first, I soon came to love it, and still do; as I said, I've made about 15-16 templates for it, and have no plans to stop; I have 3 or 4 major websites on Joomla. At least they don't issue a bugfix 3 times a week; it's remarkably stable, and extremely well-supported by the community.
Then I got this wild hair to look into .NET things; tried out that *other* .NET CMS, you know the one I mean, and it's not bad, but I can't seem to get it upgraded, either because a) I still know so little about .NET, connection strings, web.config, etc, or b) because my host's implementation of ASP.NET isn't quite up to the standards they want for their newer releases; my host seems to only go to 3.5, but that program requires 3.51 for newer releases. So I started looking at other .NET CMSs that I might be able to get installed myself, without recourse to my host's auto-installer -- so I could learn something about how to install things in a .NET environment (Umbraco installed so nicely, I'm still impressed -- and amazed!).
And yes, Artisteer is a very fun way to originate designs, to try out looks, or just play around with different effects. No, you don't have to accept its output as carved-in-stone -- I don't. I always customize the HTML and the CSS and the images (it doesn't optimize the image file sizes very well) after doing the export, before zipping it up and installing it or placing it for download at my site.
As for Dreamweaver, I'm finally starting to try and learn it; I find it almost impenetrable -- HTML is a sweet piece of cake compared to that program's vagaries. Same for Expression Web, and good lord, I haven't managed to figure out enough about Visual Studio yet to even claim it -- probably because I'm not a programmer; no C, C+, C#, no VB; nothing but good old HTML/CSS, but hey, I'm willing to learn -- my son is currently studying for a degree in Web/Application Development, and he's promised to teach me C# once he learns it. (yes, he's a silicon-chip off the old mommy!) ;-)
But I've decided that there might be a lot of different good ways to make web pages -- Dreamweaver, VisStudio (if I can learn them!), Artisteer templates in CMS programs, or just good ol' HTML -- to stick to one way at the expense of all the others is a) self-defeating, and b) purist-posturing. I used to do that sort of posturing constantly, hollering about how wysiwyg editors inserted lots of extraneous and even erroneous code, and you know what, sometimes they do. So there's the value of knowing how to hand-code -- you go in and take OUT that extraneous code, and fix the wrong code, before publishing. Easy as that.
Jonas, no, I wouldn't say I've given up Artisteer; I just didn't renew when my year's subscription ended, so now I get only bug-fix release downloads, instead of major new versions. I still use it a lot; I really enjoy it as a way of visualizing a design before having to get into the nitty-gritty of the code, and at some point, when they come out with some bang-up nifty new features, I'll probably re-subscribe. It's good to know that I can use a plain "images" folder, instead of having to divvy up all the images into a subdir for each one -- that kinda scared me, when I saw it. WHEW!
--Andria
@ Jonas Eriksson
Hi!
So you gave up Artisteer? I think the program is useful for quick templatecreation and was thinking of creating some kind of export to Umbraco-tool for myself (and others if it became good enough), but then I would most likely use the Export-to-html-function and not Export to c#-project.
About the images : template images (and other static ones) suits well in a regular folder (/images). Media content has other advantages, like setting all kinds of properties for example.
Cheers
Jonas
Hi, Jonas
You can create now Artisteer plug-in for export to Umbraco with artisteer Export Plug-ins. You can read more about this here: http://www.artisteer.com/?p=dev
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