Plan examples, every page #

Decide page types, layouts, menus, languages and who changes what, before building.

1. Make an inventory of the page types: Before building, list which kinds of pages the site has and which layout each gets: the content classes in the tree and the layout mappings.
2. Choose the layout type for a page type: The layout type fixes the zones: Header / Main / Footer (layout_2) for most Fit & Healthy pages, Header / Left / Right / Footer (layout_4) for a sidebar.
3. Plan the shared zones first: Decide which zones every page shares (header, footer) and which some share (prefooter), before building page layouts.
4. Decide who changes what: Split the site between editors (content and Layouts) and developers (templates, settings) before building, so each change has an owner.
5. Prototype a page in a draft: Build the layout in the editor, look at it, and throw it away with Discard: nothing is published until Publish layout.
6. Wireframe a page with titles and spacers: Lay out the sections of a new page with Title blocks and Spacers before the real content exists.
7. Plan which lists are hand-picked and which fill themselves: For every list, decide manual collection (editors pick) or dynamic collection (a query) before building.
8. Plan how items look in lists: Item view types (Standard, Overlay, Card, Line, Mini, List item, with or without intro) decide each item's look; plan them per list.
9. Plan the header and footer menus: On the Fit & Healthy theme the header menu and the footer's first line are menu.ini lists and the footer's second line is content; plan who maintains which.
10. Plan a second language: Each language version is a siteaccess with its own settings (menus) and can get its own layouts through a Siteaccess condition.
11. Plan the mapping priorities: The first enabled mapping by priority whose targets and conditions match wins; plan priorities so specific mappings come first.
12. Plan your design extension: One extension for everything site-specific: templates, stylesheets, settings, translations - named, versioned and activated in the right place.
13. List the block types you will need: Compare the page designs with the block types the editor offers; plan new block types only for what is missing.
14. Plan which cache each change needs: Write down per kind of change which cache to clear, so launches and updates do not end in "it does not show".
15. Plan how layouts are kept and versioned: Layouts live in the database; plan regular exports (exp:layouts export) so they can be compared, restored and moved.
16. Inventory layouts and settings from the console: exp:layouts list and exp:ini where give a complete, scriptable picture of an installation's layouts and menu settings.
17. Collect the node IDs the menus will use: Menus and manual collections refer to node IDs; collect them (and their remote IDs) when the tree is built.
18. Plan campaigns with start and end dates: A mapping can have a Time condition (from, to); plan campaign layouts with it: since explayouts 1.4.42 the layout switches at the start and the end, without lag.
19. Plan A/B variants of a page: A Query parameter condition gives one address a second layout: since explayouts 1.4.42 /showcase and /showcase?variant=b each get their own layout on every request.
20. Plan accessibility into the blocks: Use the fields the blocks have for it - Image alt text, Heading level, link texts - and keep one h1 per page.
21. Plan image sizes: Galleries take a thumbnail size alias, templates an image class; plan which sizes the design needs.
22. Plan the forms: Forms on Fit & Healthy are content (Contact form, Feedback form, Lead form classes), shown by their full views; layouts place them.
23. Plan a blog section: Blog posts (class NG Blog post) already share the article mapping on Fit & Healthy; plan the listing page and its lists.
24. Plan a recipes section: Recipes have their own layout (Full / Recipe, layout_4 with a sidebar) and their own mapping; plan the category page and its lists.
25. Plan topic pages: Topics (class Topic: Running, Workout, Health, HIIT) have the layout Full / Topic; plan what a topic page lists.
26. Plan a video section: Video content (NG Video) lives below Video (node 164) and gets Full / Video; plan the landing page's lists.
27. Plan where galleries come from: Gallery blocks read images from a folder; gallery content items (NG Gallery) are stories of their own. Plan which is which.
28. Plan moving layouts from staging to production: Build on a staging installation, then export and import the layouts; content is matched by remote ID and path.
29. Plan a sandbox for risky changes: Try changes that must be published to be seen on a copy of the installation, never on the live site.
30. Plan to measure the work: Count the steps and time the waiting parts of typical changes, as on these pages, to compare the two ways on your own site.
31. Plan the footer links folder: The footer's second line is the children of one folder (remote ID in menu.ini [SiteInfo] FooterLinksRemoteID); plan its items and their order.
32. Plan who publishes layouts: A layout is changed in a draft and published as a whole; plan who may publish shared layouts, as they change many pages at once.
33. Plan the content model before the layouts: Layouts arrange content; the classes and fields come first. Check what the existing classes offer.
34. Plan for speed: Cached pages answered in 22 to 102 ms on the test copy, a page after a full template clear in about 3 s; plan launches and cache clears with that in mind.
35. Plan the site's own documentation: Write down the layouts, mappings, menus and templates of the site in the same structure as these pages, so the next person can change them.

Related pages #

• Life-cycle examples
• Two ways to build
• Free documentation: this page is free to copy, translate and improve under the GNU FDL 1.3.