Have you gotten sick of the workflow “create template -> save as file -> download from FTP”?
Do you wish you can just create a file, upload to FTP and have Expression Engine automatically recognize is it as a new template?
This is what this new extension does. After you install it, you can start your template’s lifecycle as a physical file, instead of as an entry in a database!
Guaranteed to shave of 34 seconds, of your precious time, or….I don’t know…just try it out!
I’m probably having an off day but I just downloaded this as it seems very interesting. I already had a site setup to save templates to a folder so I tried creating a new file in one of the already created folders but should I now be seeing that template showing up in my control panel as I’m not getting it showing.
Is there something I should do perhaps? (I do have the extension enabled by the way )
Have you tried accessing it from your web browser? The main point of this is that you only have to create a template, and view it! In fact there should be little reason why you should ever need to view it from the control panel for purposes of editing it…especially since the default text area is not very conducive to editing templates (you can’t do basic things like hitting tab!).
Although to be honest there is an extension out there which alleviates some of these pains, called cm_template_editor, but nothing beats dreamweaver, textmate, notepad++, vim or whatever the heck you like to use for editing templates.
Thanks for trying it out though, and let me know if this helps!
Have you tried accessing it from your web browser?
Yep I was right, I was having an off day
blocka - 18 May 2009 11:48 AM
The main point of this is that you only have to create a template, and view it! In fact there should be little reason why you should ever need to view it from the control panel for purposes of editing it…especially since the default text area is not very conducive to editing templates (you can’t do basic things like hitting tab!).
Although to be honest there is an extension out there which alleviates some of these pains, called cm_template_editor, but nothing beats dreamweaver, textmate, notepad++, vim or whatever the heck you like to use for editing templates.
There is also an extension that allows just for tabs too but this does look really quite useful, well done and thanks again.
Actually just noticed that once you’ve visited the template in the browser once then it appears in the control panel anyway so best of all worlds really
Fantastic little extension that one, well done again.
What happens in the situation when you delete a template (which was saved as a file after you created the template in CP) via CP then it still shows the file on the server, but does not display when you try to browse to the page, and it does not show up in the CP, does it automatically take that file and create the template within the cp?
What happens in the situation when you delete a template (which was saved as a file after you created the template in CP) via CP then it still shows the file on the server, but does not display when you try to browse to the page, and it does not show up in the CP, does it automatically take that file and create the template within the cp?
With this extension running, as long as the physical file exists on the file system, it will show up. This is because normally a template has to exist in the database for it to display. This extension merely inserts it into the database for you if the file exists.
My concern is, you know how you initially create the template in the cp template module, then save as a file?
It then shows up on the server where you can edit it in your editor of choice, which is great.
But when you delete that template via the cp within the templates module, it will not show up there anymore, but the hard file still displays on the server.
So my question is, once I delete the template from the cp, does it redisplay since the hard file exists on the server?
My concern is, you know how you initially create the template in the cp template module, then save as a file?
It then shows up on the server where you can edit it in your editor of choice, which is great.
But when you delete that template via the cp within the templates module, it will not show up there anymore, but the hard file still displays on the server.
So my question is, once I delete the template from the cp, does it redisplay since the hard file exists on the server?
All you have to do then is delete the file! I’m assuming if you have the ability to put it up there, you have the ability to take it down.
I got it to work, but I dont’ see how this saves any time. Now I create the php file save it and then I have to go to my broswer and type in domain.com/index.php/template_group/template_name before it gets registered in the database… seems to me like it takes just about the same amount of time.
I got it to work, but I dont’ see how this saves any time. Now I create the php file save it and then I have to go to my broswer and type in domain.com/index.php/template_group/template_name before it gets registered in the database… seems to me like it takes just about the same amount of time.
The point is that you can get working on your template much quicker. The way I work, I rarely ever touch the templates in the CP. Certainly not for editing them. I work on my templates exclusively as files, so it’s a waste of time for me to go to the CP (also assumes i’m logged in…sometimes I don’t want to be logged in!), select the template group, make a template, put something in there and make sure “save as file” is selected, download from FTP, edit in notepad++.
That’s 6 steps to start working on my template.
As opposed to:
Create file locally. Upload. Browse. Get some more sleep….
Didn’t work for my unfortunately. I created some hidden templates and they didn’t show up.
This should work with hidden templates, but obviously they’re not going to show up since they’re hidden. But it should still create them (ie., they should still show up in the CP). Are they not showing up at all?
Sounds interesting, and thanks for creating this. I have one question: if the main objective is to speed things up then why not just use ‘It’s All Text!’ plugin for firefox - which permits you to open the contents of any textarea in your favourite editor; then when you hit save, it automatically updates the text window - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4125
Just a thought. Of course your plugin would permit the templates to be managed via CVS or similar which I guess could have some advantages…
Sounds interesting, and thanks for creating this. I have one question: if the main objective is to speed things up then why not just use ‘It’s All Text!’ plugin for firefox - which permits you to open the contents of any textarea in your favourite editor; then when you hit save, it automatically updates the text window - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4125
Just a thought. Of course your plugin would permit the templates to be managed via CVS or similar which I guess could have some advantages…
All the best
Interesting firefox extension. Thanks for showing me that.
Even using that though, there’s still some “overhead” in having to actually go to the CP to create the template in the first place.
And of course as you mentioned, version control! On all by big EE projects, I do use subversion, so for me, as far as I’m concerned, the templates should only need to exists in the filesystem!
But I believe this certainly offers its own advantages, even if you’re only using one server with direct FTP access.
At first I could not get this extension to work, either on my MAMP development environment or the testing area of my production server.
I was going to delete the extension but decided to make a few changes to a post that required a clearing of the EE caches, and voila, the extension started working.
I think this is a great little extension. As the author points out, it is not going to save you a great deal of time, but it does cut down on the number of steps involved and the number of windows that have to be switched to set up a template.
For that alone Blocka thank you. I now have an extra 30 seconds to procrastinate about my next task…
[Added]
What would be a nice addition if at all possible is to have the extension recognise the default template group.
As it stands on my system, for the extension to pick up a template in the root (example.com/templatizertest) I have to run it through example.com/default_template_group/templatizertest , however for the extension to acknowledge a template in the ‘features’ template group all that is needed is example.com/features/templatizertest
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