librelist archives

Re: [nesta] menu.txt

From:

Ben Burdick

Date:

2010-06-03 @ 23:47

Hi Graham,

Thanks for your reply and the suggestions.  As I mentioned in my comment, 
I've only just begun to play with nesta and certainly look forward to 
digging in a bit more and possibly even looking into making a plugin to 
accomplish this as I build things out and get a better idea of what I am 
after.  So thanks for the tips on that!  I think I'll dig into that a bit 
more this weekend.  I'll let you know if I come up with anything 
substantial. 

I don't really have any examples or hard requirements at the moment - but 
what I do know is I'd like more control over the content in the sidebar 
aside from just having a linkable category list.   Like how Oscar Del Ben 
has added an 'about' section to his @ http://oscardelben.com/blog or how 
wordpress lets you drop in pieces that add to your sidebar.  While it is 
very easy to customize already, being able to just drop some markdown 
files into a sidebars/ directory I think would lower the barrier of entry 
even more.  

Anyway, it was just a thought I had that I figured I'd share - I admit 
that it wasn't a completely fleshed out thought though, I'm still 
dissecting nesta at the moment and I do like the idea of approaching this 
with a plugin.  

Great work with Nesta by the way, I'm really enjoying what it has to offer.

Cheers,

Ben

On Jun 3, 2010, at 7:35 PM, Graham Ashton wrote:

> On 1 Jun 2010, at 23:30, Ben Burdick wrote:
> 
>> Been tinkering with Nesta today, considering it for an upcoming project
and I was wondering if there is any documentation on how to use menu.txt? 
I see its most basic usage from the sample content, but am curious how 
powerful it can be and what 'automagic' aspects it has (if any) aside from
category links. 
> 
> Hi Ben. Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner on this, I've been busy 
with a product launch.
> 
> I've never really thought about how the sidebar stuff could work beyond 
menu.txt, but I agree that it's currently rather basic. Category links is 
really all it can do right now.
> 
> In a comment on the site (http://effectif.com/nesta#comment-53505575) you said:
> 
>> I was thinking of some way to make the sidebar easier to customize and 
think that a good feature to add might be a sidebars/ directory. Here you 
could put .mdown files that get parsed, cached and loaded into the 
sidebar. Order is important when it comes to sidebars, so it would be nice
to have some sort of ordering system, perhaps a naming convention similar 
to how apache would load vhost files. If you're not familiar, files like 
"001-somesite" and "002-somesite" could exist in a directory and it would 
load them in numerical order. So the 001 config would always come first.
> 
> I'm up for giving Nesta a bit more intelligence, so long as it stays 
really simple for people to grasp. At the moment I think the barrier to 
entry is relatively low - you can be quite lazy, avoid most of the docs, 
and still get a site up and running fairly easy.
> 
> This kind of thing might be perfect for a plugin. I've not written 
anything about how to do it yet, but a theme is basically a plugin.
> 
> I think the way I'd approach this with the current code base would be by
modifying the layout. You can drop a new layout into local/views to 
override the default layout. The layout could then pull in partials (also 
stored in local/views) that handle side bars.
> 
> The local/views stuff is covered here: http://effectif.com/nesta/design
> 
> I realise that might not cover your requirements though. Do you need to 
show different sidebars in different orders on different pages? Are there 
any sites you could point me to that have the kind of side bar flexibility
that you need?
> 
> What were you thinking of putting in your sidebars/ files? Would it just
be a bit of Markdown, or do you need to put HTML/Haml in them? Have you 
any example sites I could have a look at to get a better feel for what 
you'd like to achieve?
> 
> Cheers,
> Graham

On 4 Jun 2010, at 00:47, Ben Burdick wrote:

> I don't really have any examples or hard requirements at the moment - 
but what I do know is I'd like more control over the content in the 
sidebar aside from just having a linkable category list.   Like how Oscar 
Del Ben has added an 'about' section to his @ http://oscardelben.com/blog 
or how wordpress lets you drop in pieces that add to your sidebar.  While 
it is very easy to customize already, being able to just drop some 
markdown files into a sidebars/ directory I think would lower the barrier 
of entry even more.  

Hi Ben.

I've made quite a few improvements to Nesta over the last few days, and 
I've just pushed a change which was largely inspired by your question.

I wanted to be able to insert an "About" section into my sidebar without 
having to override any of the default code that displays the category menu
or adds the social icons.

Here's the default sidebar code (in views/sidebar.haml):

    #sidebar
      = haml :categories, :layout => false
      = haml :feed, :layout => false
      = haml :social, :layout => false

I wanted to list some open source projects above the list of categories, 
and to stick an "About" section in above the social bookmarking icons.

I left the default sidebar template alone and created 
local/views/sidebar.haml, which gets used instead. It still uses the 
categories, feed and social templates from the main ./views directory, but
takes control over where they get called.

    http://github.com/gma/nesta/blob/effectif/local/views/sidebar.haml

You can see the result on http://effectif.com.

I think this is a great example of how I think we can keep the core code 
base clean and simple and configure Nesta sites with templates in the 
./local directory. Maybe I should write it up as a brief article...

Cheers,
Graham

Hey Graham,

That is excellent! Exactly what I was hoping for and much cleaner than my 
proposed ideas.  Great work, I will definitely be checking it out.

I agree too that an article on local would be great :)

Ben

On Jun 22, 2010, at 10:04 AM, Graham Ashton wrote:

> On 4 Jun 2010, at 00:47, Ben Burdick wrote:
> 
>> I don't really have any examples or hard requirements at the moment - 
but what I do know is I'd like more control over the content in the 
sidebar aside from just having a linkable category list.   Like how Oscar 
Del Ben has added an 'about' section to his @ http://oscardelben.com/blog 
or how wordpress lets you drop in pieces that add to your sidebar.  While 
it is very easy to customize already, being able to just drop some 
markdown files into a sidebars/ directory I think would lower the barrier 
of entry even more.  
> 
> Hi Ben.
> 
> I've made quite a few improvements to Nesta over the last few days, and 
I've just pushed a change which was largely inspired by your question.
> 
> I wanted to be able to insert an "About" section into my sidebar without
having to override any of the default code that displays the category menu
or adds the social icons.
> 
> Here's the default sidebar code (in views/sidebar.haml):
> 
>    #sidebar
>      = haml :categories, :layout => false
>      = haml :feed, :layout => false
>      = haml :social, :layout => false
> 
> I wanted to list some open source projects above the list of categories,
and to stick an "About" section in above the social bookmarking icons.
> 
> I left the default sidebar template alone and created 
local/views/sidebar.haml, which gets used instead. It still uses the 
categories, feed and social templates from the main ./views directory, but
takes control over where they get called.
> 
>    http://github.com/gma/nesta/blob/effectif/local/views/sidebar.haml
> 
> You can see the result on http://effectif.com.
> 
> I think this is a great example of how I think we can keep the core code
base clean and simple and configure Nesta sites with templates in the 
./local directory. Maybe I should write it up as a brief article...
> 
> Cheers,
> Graham