Trying to replace content zones in typo3

2
votes

What I'm aiming to do!

I'm creating a template for a site in typo3, and i'd like to get rid of typo3's default content zones, and replace them with my own.

I.E. On the page menu.

to remove left, content, border

and to keep/add. Header. Main. Right.

The problem!

I've found snippets around the web, and bluntly, what I'm expecting to happen, isn't happening. Where every post seems to be "Thank you, great success! ++", the code I paste isn't throwing any errors, and isn't doing anything, well, at all.

My attempt

Via the typo3 documentation http://typo3.org/documentation/snippets/sd/24/

I call mod.SHARED.colPos_list in order to choose the three sections to display

t3lib_extMgm::addPageTSConfig('  
mod.SHARED.colPos_list = 0,1,3 
');

And I edit the TCA in extTables.php to set them to my specs.

$TCA["tt_content"]["columns"]["colPos"]["config"]["items"] = array (  
"1" => array ("Header||Header||||||||","1"),  
"0" => array ("Main||Main||||||||","0"),  
"3" => array ("Right||Right||||||||","3"),  
);

extTables.php is being called as as a die(); cuts the page.

I've cleared the cache and deleted typo3temp, logged out and in again.

But nothing happens.

My main guess, is, is this feature anything to do with templavoila? I removed it as I felt like trying out the new(er) typo3 fluid templating system, and didn't feel that I needed a GUI editor.

Any ideas?

2
typo3

2 Answers

2
votes

Well - the more pages and content elements you got the more problems you will have to face when using TemplaVoila. Having comma separated values in XML structures saved to a single database field will be a performance killer as soon as you want to collect content from more than one page (uncached teaser menus or the like). Handling of references and "unused elements" is questionable as well. Of course it will work for small to medium sites, but concept wise a clean approach looks different.

Backend layouts are available since TYPO3 4.5 and work flawlessly since they just represent a normalized relation between elements and pages based on colPos. If you need more, Grid Elements will take this principle to the next level, offering even nested structures but still based on normalized relations, which will make your life much easier when it comes to DB cleaning and other maintenance tasks.

Find an introduction to backend layouts here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsxfNd4TYbk

0
votes

Instead of removing default columns you can just rename them...

TIP: Use TemplaVoila extension for templating, you'll find much more flexibility there.