Nested content element in TYPO3 for content box / card (Bootstrap) with FLUIDTEMPLATE

Question

I am currently changing the template system of the website of our football club. The website is currently build with TYPO3 6.2 with TemplaVoila as template engine and the CSS framework YAML. I want to change this now to native FLUIDTEMPLATE and the CSS framework Bootstrap (I do this with an own template extension).

I would like to do as much as possible with native TYPO3 methods and I want avoid external extensions as much as possible. We ran in a really messy situation with TemplaVoila and I want to avoid this in the future. After I changed the template system I also want to upgrade the TYPO3 to a newer version (7.6 or 8) but I would like to stay on 6.2 for the moment.

I have the following challenge for which I did not find a solution built-in TYPO3 methods: Our website consists of two columns, one column for the main content and one column for a sidebar. In the sidebar, the content is displayed in boxes (using bootstrap cards, formerly panels).

A box consists of a headline and content. The content can be text, image or even a plugin (we use the extension T3Sports for our sports league management). Now I would like to create a (specially created) content element that represents a wrapper around the actual content. From this wrapper or content element the name for the headline of the box should be taken. Within this content element a content element can be created again, quite normally from the selection if you create a new content element in TYPO3.

With extensions such as gridelements or fluidcontent that would work, but I would like to know if this can also be done with built-in functionalities of TYPO3? So far I have found nothing, so I would be grateful for tips.

Thank you in advance for any tips,

Bastian

Answer 1

You could define your own Fluid Styled Content - Content Elements (FSC-CEs).
Here you can find a tutorial.

But do you really need additional Content Elements (CEs)?
Two options come to mind:

1. change your CSS, so you can use std-CEs and if they occur in that special column they are styled different.
2. add the option for special layouts by evaluating the layout field to add the styling for specal boxes. (these boxes-styles can be used in every column)

In general: try to avoid container CEs just for a special styling. The handling in FE and BE is very complicated and confusing.

Answer 2

You could give the backport of fluid styled content a try: content_rendering_core: I used in in 6.2 to replace css styled content and it worked and then, after upgrading to 7 it was just a question of uninstalling content_rendering_core and installing fluid styled content (and include the static ts templates). I created a 'fluid styled' slider inspired from 'fluid_styled_slider' (see git) under 6.2 and it ran perfectly after upgrades to 7.6 and, just recently, 8.7.10 without glitches, both in frontend and in backend).