Automating theme creation with Nvu

  • Resolved Christiaan

    (@christiaan)


    19 years, 4 months ago

    With Nvu now out and gaining traction I wondered what the prospects are of a plugin/extension for Nvu that would allow someone to design a website without ever having to touch any code, and then output the theme files needed for WordPress. Is this kind of thing possible?

    (p.s. I’d prefer it is this didn’t become a discussion about the superiority of coding by hand.)

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)

  • A sort of wysiwyg css creation / layout / preview tool ?

    I think that’s quite some time away..

    Just thinking aloud…
    Even if it’s possible to design the layout of the blog with this (or any other “automated”) tool, you still have to know which template tags you want to include to make the blog work. In other words, you must know about them as much as for manual inclusion.

    Thread Starter Christiaan

    (@christiaan)

    Well the idea would be the designer tells her WYSIWYG editor, via the new wizzy WordPress extension, which part of her webpage layout is the sidebar, which is the header, the content, where she wants her search bar, et cetera, and the extension would enter the appropriate code automatically. So, no, you wouldn’t need to about about the tags in terms of coding, you’d only need to know how a WordPress site is structured.

    Personally, I would prefer “wysiwyg css creation” method that would everyone to design his/her website/blog without the need to learn the a€?codinga€?. However, for obvious reasons that may have some technical limitations.

    Nevertheless, I think that would have enabled many more people to get involved in web design.

    I beg to differ. Suppose, the “whatever extension” knows the code for the sidebar, but I’d like the calendar and the monthly archive, but not the meta, on the other hand user X wants all of them plus the category list, Y doesn’t want the Links list… etc. — But if I know “how the WP site is structured” and I know what elements I want, well, I can almost design the site by myself.

    Thread Starter Christiaan

    (@christiaan)

    Nvu is a WYSIWYG CSS creation tool.

    Thread Starter Christiaan

    (@christiaan)

    Can I just reiterate that I prefer this not to be a discussion about the superiority of coding by hand. Nvu is designed for non-technical people who may not want to learn code of any sort. Inputing code by hand into a HTML/php document is extremely different to telling a page layout design tool, “I want my calendar here”.

    Can Nvu render php? I mean how do layout the site without knowing the output?

    I’ve been hearing people layout wordpress with Dreamweaver. How does that work? Do they insert dummy content?

    I’ve never used this sort of tool, so, sorry for my ignorance.

    Seems to me that a plugin to work with Nvu (or any other wysiwyg) in this manner would need to offer a “check box” method or something similar: you’d first need to have the “designer” opt-in whatever he wants to see/be available on the finished page by checking boxes or some other sort of selection tool; then there’d need to be a switch to the layout section of Nvu so that the “designer” can juggle the opted-for page elements in the page space…. Interesting concept, though I’m not sure about the efficacy of using php + a plugin to accomplish this.

    Might be more logical to approach this as an expanded functionality for Nvu….

    I looked at Nvu a while back, but I’m beyond needing a tool of that sort myself…. could have used it 7 or 8 years ago maybe….

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)
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