Shared Content Block on Template

Posted by Community Admin on 03-Aug-2018 22:05

Shared Content Block on Template

All Replies

Posted by Community Admin on 19-Apr-2011 00:00

I hope that I am just overlooking something, but when I have a shared content block, I would like to be able to add it to a page template as well as a page.... just like in Sitefinity 3.7.
I've been waiting weeks for certain things like shared content and now it seems like it has less functionality than Sitefinity 3.7.

Our site structure is such that we have a Sitefinity instance on a sub-domain which is for content shared across sites. We need to be able to use shared content and alternate providers on not only pages, but templates as well.

How are people supposed to migrate to this new version when major differences in functionality exist??

I welcome any suggestions or any news such as "that was an oversight....tomorrow you can download an update that will fix the problem"...

Posted by Community Admin on 25-Apr-2011 00:00

Hello Scott Rozman,

Can you please elaborate a little bit more on the exact use case scenario you wish to achieve? It is true that by design we decided to have shared content only on Pages, and here's our logic behind this - if you place some content on a page template, the template itself is a shared resource - you can use it as any page's template or you can base another template on it, but in both cases you are 'sharing' the template's content accross the site, which is similar to the functionality provided by the shared content on pages. Please do not hesitate to share your feedback on this, as it is very important for us to know our customer's opinion on such matters. Thanks in advance.

Greetings,
Boyan Barnev
the Telerik team


Posted by Community Admin on 25-Apr-2011 00:00

Hello Sitefinity,

this opinion is not practical and not user centered. - Minimum use of shared content is to put it into a footer line with copyright, address, phone number and so on. - And these things normal are written once and presented at each page.

Once more: poor implementation.

Posted by Community Admin on 25-Apr-2011 00:00

Hey Robert,
  But in the case of a footer, it just being in the template will make it "shared" (per say) across all pages on that template.  The only case in which that wouldn't be true is if you had multiple masterpages who (for some reason) all didn't inherit from the same root template.

Posted by Community Admin on 25-Apr-2011 00:00

You got it ----- there a more than one masterpages !!!!

Posted by Community Admin on 25-Apr-2011 00:00

So I take it then this is a legacy 3.x issue which is now showing up in 4 since nested masterpages were horrible under 3.x?

Posted by Community Admin on 28-Apr-2011 00:00

Hi Steve,

Can you, please, point out a case with nested master pages not working in Sitefinity - I've tested several scenarios myself and the basic functionality provided by using nested masterpage is working flawlessly, maybe there's some specific use case that we need to turn our attention to? Concerning shared content in templates, indeed I got Robert's point - that's is the only (and unfortunately exactly his case) scenario where shared content might be used in a template. So far the decision not to include shared content in template was to prevent users from getting confused about whether a shared content is present on a template or a page, track its changes etc. Maybe we should discuss this this issue more with our UX team to ensure we're meeting all client demands. In the meantime your constructive feedback will be highly appreciated.

Best wishes,
Boyan Barnev
the Telerik team


Posted by Community Admin on 28-Apr-2011 00:00

HI Boyan

i completely agree about 'shared content' being made available for templates. I have a master page as my main template, then have six templates based on this. I want the same 'shared content' on five of the templates, but not the sixth. So the easiest route presumably would be 'common content' rather than another layer of nested templates?

Thanks

Cheers
Richard

One more thing... also with the problems of messing around with nested templates when you want to make changes to the pages and which templates they are using, and losing content placeholder settings etc, I would of thought this would be a safer route to go.

Posted by Community Admin on 28-Apr-2011 00:00

@Boyan
  Ivan responded to me about a problem I had a while ago (I can't find it with the search)...essentially I had two PHYSICAL masterpages with one being nested.  I was trying to make a common footer.  When I added widget content to the root master (I cant remember if it was layouts or widgets themselves) they weren't flowing into pages based on the CHILD masterpage.  So the solution was to make the child in the backend with the template designer...and that seemed to work.

Posted by Community Admin on 28-Apr-2011 00:00

In my original post, I mention multiple sub-domains. Say we have 20 Sitefinity instances and want to share a footer across them via multiple content providers. We were doing this with 3.7 as well as sharing other content like menus of links. We want to manage them centrally and want the flexibility to use them or not on different nested masterpages. I can see the point about making things to users are not confused, but there are plenty of other areas where things get complicated already.

Posted by Community Admin on 17-May-2011 00:00

Agreed with all, shared content items for template is required. Editing content in Content Blocks is a lot easier than going into templates directly.

At the end of the day, adding the functionality will give developers and editors freedom and flexibility to do it how they prefer, it was a logical approach to content setup with shared items at template level

Posted by Community Admin on 26-Jul-2011 00:00

I agree.  Shared Content on templates is a requirement.  Many of us have LOTS of SiteFinity sites developed and given the trouble with nested masters in 3.x, we migrated to templates with shared content.  It is enough work to migrate the data from 3.x to 4.x without adding even more to migrate/fix.  Further, personally, I used shared content as a way to allow my users to edit content without going to the pages or templates.  Given that the design CSS conflicts with the SiteFinity administrative view, it is really difficult to give some users access to complex page layouts as they cannot "tell" what is going on or have a terrible time clicking the edit because it is behind something, etc.  Therefore, I use Shared Content as a way to allow the user to simply focus on the text - no matter where it is (header, footer, body, etc.).  Please bring that functionality back.

Posted by Community Admin on 11-Aug-2011 00:00

I agree.  For the current site I'm working on, I am strictly using Sitefinity templates (no external master pages).  As I will have multiple templates (home page, landing page, content page), I had really hoped to be able to add something like the client's contact info to a shared content block and just drag it in on all three templates.   Shared content seemed like a fantastic way to do this: the client could easily edit the text in one place and we could use it on multiple templates.  Instead, I've had to create a widget so I can re-use the same text on all three templates.  Is adding the use of shared content on template pages on the upgrade road map at all?

Posted by Community Admin on 11-Aug-2011 00:00

I agree, no shared contents on templates complicates template construction a great deal from a user and web designer perspective. Inheriting templates does not cover all real world scenarios. Also while on the subject, the content placeholder name should really show up when editing the template sections in the admin like in v3. These requests would help streamline and speed up web design and template management big time.

Posted by Community Admin on 13-Aug-2011 00:00

Vote for it in PITS :)

Posted by Community Admin on 20-Sep-2011 00:00

Noticed a comment in PITS pointing to this article: http://jbokkers.posterous.com/shared-content-in-sitefinity-4-templates

Enabling content sharing in templates requires one setting change.

Posted by Community Admin on 20-Sep-2011 00:00

I wonder what implications this has???

Posted by Community Admin on 20-Sep-2011 00:00

I've just tried it and it seems to work.  

When editing a page template there are now two Content Block widgets listed in the right side bar.  If you use the first one listed the content editor includes the the "select from existing content" and "share across pages" buttons.  The second content block widget must be the original neutered template version.

I added a content block to a template and hooked up a shared content I had already created.  I then created a couple pages based on the template.  Didn't notice any problems, the content displays.

Posted by Community Admin on 20-Sep-2011 00:00

Thanks a mil for finding this gem and checking it out!

Posted by Community Admin on 20-Sep-2011 00:00

Have to admit I'm a little concerned about using it.  It is a system setting, so it's not quite a hack, but will telerik support it or break it down the road?

On the other hand, it's a feature I need!

Posted by Community Admin on 20-Sep-2011 00:00

Upon further testing I can report that this doesn't hold up.  Updates to the shared content block don't propagate to the pages.

Posted by Community Admin on 30-Sep-2011 00:00

Hi Josh,

updated content will propagate to the pages after a publish of the template.

Alternative setting if you don't want to have 2 Content Block widgets listed in the right side bar:

Go to Settings >> Advanced >> Toolboxes >> Toolboxes >> PageControls >> Sections >> ContentToolboxSection >> Tools >> TemplatesContentBlock

Change:
Telerik.Sitefinity.Modules.GenericContent.Web.UI.ContentBlockBase, Telerik.Sitefinity, Version=4.2.1650.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b28c218413bdf563

To:
Telerik.Sitefinity.Modules.GenericContent.Web.UI.ContentBlock, Telerik.Sitefinity, Version=4.2.1650.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b28c218413bdf563

Now you can set back 'VisibilityMode' from 'none' to 'pages' under Settings >> Advanced >> Toolboxes >> Toolboxes >> PageControls >> Sections >> ContentToolboxSection >> Tools >> ContentBlock

Kind regards
Udo

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