Basic Website Template

[pinkman]

I am evaluating the WCM for use for our external website. I have to say I am struggling a little bit as to how to get started. I would like to create a basic 2 column + heading template, is there an example of how to do this somewhere? I haven't been able to find any Alfresco specific articles on this?

How would one go about this? If I am to use Freemarker or XSLT I still need to at a minimum, link to a different HTML page for the actual content, whilst using the same outlying template.

I am a Java web developer, but I have to keep things as simple as possible as it will be our Web Designer creating and maintaining the templates as much as possible.

I don't really want to dismiss Alfresco as an option, so any help more than welcome!

[pinkman]

After looking through the alfresco website from the demo, it appears that all HTML pages are entire pages unto themselves - it doesn't appear there is any templating used?

I was thinking of making a simple layout such as http://www.springframework.org/, where the header, title bar and left side are part of a template and the content in the middle comes from either XForms or is HTML.

The navigation bar I was thinking would be XML driven, and it would show only top level elements on the title bar, and children of the currently selected element on the left navigation bar. I have setup a XSLT for this and it is working (in a rudimentary way ), just not sure how to wrap this in a general template…

[kvc]

Hi -

A good place to start would be a recently opened project on our forge site.  This project provides a starter framework for a website.  Take a look, and please let us know if you've any questions.

http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/WSF

Kevin

[pinkman]

Thanks for the prompt reply .

This looks like exactly what I need, my only worry is that it is a little new but I will give it a shot.

I tried logging in using SVN to https://forge.alfresco.com/svn/wsf, I tried guest, anonymous, blank and anon usernames but to no avail. What username do I use for guest access so I can download the 'demo-website.war' file? Any idea?

[ariyer]

register at the site and try with your registered login. Same works for the SVN access.

[pinkman]

Alright I have booked it out from SVN, thanks for the help .

While WSF looks like it is definitely on the right track, and will be a great (much needed) addition to the Alfresco WCM arsenal, I don't think it is quite ready enough for us quite yet.

I could retro fit it to our needs, but time is of the essence for us unfortunately. I think we will roll out with Joomla (our web designer very familiar with Joomla). As time permits, and once the WSF project is more mature we will 'upgrade' our website to Alfresco.

Thanks for your help everyone - you are sure to hear back from me in a few months .