Hi all, I just want to know if it is a good idea to use Umbraco for a website for a theater. It should consist of few text pages but users should also see all shows and their date and times, actors, etc.
I was thinking about creating document type for actors (Name, Age, Photo), document type for shows (Title, description, place, duration, etc.) and document type for an instance of a show (date, time, price).
Shows should have 0..N instances witch dates and 0..N actors.
There will be around 20 shows with dozens of show dates.
Is it possible to do that in Umbraco and is it a good idea or I should go a different way?
Hi Filip
Umbraco is an ideal solution for this sort of content management problem.
Your idea is a good one.
You could have an actors page with a list of actors under it.
You could have a shows page with a list of shows under it.
When you create a show you could pick the actors using the multinode tree picker.
You could have a page for the show times.
You can use nested content to create a list of shows with the date and time.
Thank you a lot Paul for your answer. The multinode tree picker was what I was missing in my design.
There is one more thing which I am not really sure how to handle it. Shows should be imported from a remote location via XML feed. I can write a script which loads the shows and will be called every day. But is it possible to insert the shows programmatically? And also update their properties like current free seats?
Does Umbraco have something like periodically called scripts?
Umbraco has a build in task-runner but it's not always that reliable since it requires the app to be "awake" in order for the tasks to be run. So if the site is not being visited frequently enough at some point the server will go idle and the import task might not happen.
If you want to avoid writing the import yourself you should also have a look at CMSImport by Richard Soeteman - It should be possible to configure som scheduled imports I believe. But be aware that this is a commercial package though but it's possible to try it for free with a limit of 500 imports.
Also I'd like to add to Paul's suggestions that if for some reason you don't need the actors to have their own pages but just need to be able to display them on a show with sime simple Bio then you can create them as shared content, which you can of course also pick using the multinode treepicker like the content that should have a template.
By shared content I mean that you create a document type called "Shared content" and then create a "Actor folder" and then you allow the actor folder to be created under "Shared content" and under the "Actor folder" you can create the actors.
The shared content folder should be created at the "Root" - Directly under the "Content" node in Umbraco where you would also create your "Homepage" document type.
This approach can of course also be used for other kind of items that don't need their own template like if you need to place some infoboxes on the pages, which should be reusable like the actors will be.
Umbraco for theater website
Hi all, I just want to know if it is a good idea to use Umbraco for a website for a theater. It should consist of few text pages but users should also see all shows and their date and times, actors, etc.
I was thinking about creating document type for actors (Name, Age, Photo), document type for shows (Title, description, place, duration, etc.) and document type for an instance of a show (date, time, price).
Shows should have 0..N instances witch dates and 0..N actors.
There will be around 20 shows with dozens of show dates.
Is it possible to do that in Umbraco and is it a good idea or I should go a different way?
Thanks a lot for any advise,
Filip
Hi Filip Umbraco is an ideal solution for this sort of content management problem. Your idea is a good one.
You could have an actors page with a list of actors under it. You could have a shows page with a list of shows under it. When you create a show you could pick the actors using the multinode tree picker.
You could have a page for the show times. You can use nested content to create a list of shows with the date and time.
I would enjoy making a site like this in Umbraco.
Enjoy
Kind regards
Paul
Thank you a lot Paul for your answer. The multinode tree picker was what I was missing in my design.
There is one more thing which I am not really sure how to handle it. Shows should be imported from a remote location via XML feed. I can write a script which loads the shows and will be called every day. But is it possible to insert the shows programmatically? And also update their properties like current free seats?
Does Umbraco have something like periodically called scripts?
Filip
Hi Filip and welcome to Our and Umbraco :-)
Umbraco has a build in task-runner but it's not always that reliable since it requires the app to be "awake" in order for the tasks to be run. So if the site is not being visited frequently enough at some point the server will go idle and the import task might not happen.
However it's possible to use Hangfire for this I believe. Christhian Amaya has written about how to integrate it with Umbraco here http://camaya.co/posts/2016/07/31/how-to-integrate-hangfire-with-umbraco/
John D. Jones also has a take on this here http://www.jondjones.com/learn-umbraco-cms/umbraco-developers-guide/umbraco-event-handling/how-to-intergrate-hangfire-into-the-umbraco-backend
And Harvey Williams writes a bit about the downsides of using the built in Umbraco task runner and the alternatives here https://harveywilliams.net/blog/better-task-scheduling-in-umbraco
If you want to avoid writing the import yourself you should also have a look at CMSImport by Richard Soeteman - It should be possible to configure som scheduled imports I believe. But be aware that this is a commercial package though but it's possible to try it for free with a limit of 500 imports.
Also I'd like to add to Paul's suggestions that if for some reason you don't need the actors to have their own pages but just need to be able to display them on a show with sime simple Bio then you can create them as shared content, which you can of course also pick using the multinode treepicker like the content that should have a template.
By shared content I mean that you create a document type called "Shared content" and then create a "Actor folder" and then you allow the actor folder to be created under "Shared content" and under the "Actor folder" you can create the actors.
The shared content folder should be created at the "Root" - Directly under the "Content" node in Umbraco where you would also create your "Homepage" document type.
This approach can of course also be used for other kind of items that don't need their own template like if you need to place some infoboxes on the pages, which should be reusable like the actors will be.
I hope this makes sense :)
/Jan
is working on a reply...