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Hi guys,

Just a question to know how do you usually handle css for entries edited by content editors?
do you give people strict rules or let them write inline css for their needs?

bye
Francesco

A content editor should handle the content, not how that content is styled.
So I always provide as little formatting options as I can get away with and the formatting is dictated by the main stylesheet.

I’ve never had content editors handling CSS.  The CMS should enforce the design integrity of the site, and content editors should only worry about content.

I agree with e-man and Boyink. In a perfect world that way is best, but that’s not how my content driven site works. A site like A List Apart works well with a strict “content only” workflow for the editors. They have a standard layout with one photo at the top and text that follows. I’d say this type of structure is more future proof. For instance, you can more easily switch your content to a responsive design. If your CMS content is full of HTML/CSS, that may cause problems with future layout changes.

One of my sites has over 50 different content editors. Many have their own blogs while others are entering news articles. I use WYGWAM to allow the content editors to add photos and captions throughout the articles. Whether they use the code view and literally type in their own CSS or use the WYSIWYG editor to do the layout, HTML/CSS that I didn’t write gets pumped into my final pages (and permanently stored in the database). I don’t like it, but it’s a trade off I’m willing to accept for more content rich articles. I have style guidelines for the content editors, but they still have to be carefully watched as they periodically manage to break things (or just ignore the guidelines altogether).

If your content being edited is basic blocks of text and titles, I would definitely lock the editors out of being able to add any CSS at all. If you’re running a news/editorial site, I think you may have to give them some basic style/formatting options.

True - I haven’t had to build a site with that kind of flexibility.  These days with the idea of COPE the less styling you have saved in your entries the better positioned you’ll be to deliver the content in different contexts to different devices.

Is there possibly some middle ground of developing a vocabulary of styles that you can offer as options through custom fields that trigger template conditionals to apply styles?

Hi Guys, thanks for your replies and sorry for being late… 😊

I agree with this sentence “A content editor should handle the content, not how that content is styled.” but even if my sites have no more than 2 or 3 content editors the problem is always in sections like blogs where from time to time the editor needs to make “something different” 😊 but I am always scared about what they can do with Wygwam… (I have seen tables nested into tables nested into other tables 😊 )

I think I’ll just handle that problems with some css stuff.

byeeeee
Francesco

Don’t forget that in Wygwam you can also define custom styles http://pixelandtonic.com/wygwam/docs/style-set
It’s really powerful, I do this a lot if a client needs specific styles for e.g. footnotes. Could be made to work for a lot of elements too.

Hey e-man,

this was VERY usefull!
Thank you!

bye
Francesco