A Tale Of Two Template Engines – How Frameworks Speed Up Development
Frameworks are best known for giving a developer an abreviated environment, where they can create basic pages with minimal effort. How these frameworks are laid out greatly differ, but the logic is usually the similar by replacing content variables/markers in the inner array and using the framework to provide the infrastructure information like the header/footer/sidebar.
TemplateBlocks & LIME:VC appear to be the two latest entries on the block. TemplateBlocks uses a segmented design that holds the “pieces” of each design template in a set/template so that a collection of objects are the template (e.g. CSS, JS, HTML bits and pieces). It greatly speeds things up by allowing the user to merely naming a page, adding some content, then selecting which template to use (template being used in the appearance realm). The only difficulty that I’ve noticed is implementing customized script, but the basic items are included and it works fine as long as you are familiar with .htaccess or not maintaining many virtual instances on your apache install.
The TemplateBlocks Admin Panel is probably the strongest element to the application. It is well organized and very simple to use. The only criticism I have is that the template sets are all displayed together – if you have a set named “Default” – when you go to the blocks page, ALL of the objects from every template set are thrown in the mix. It would be helpful if the assigned attributes were marked or sorted by which template they’re associated with.
I’ve emailed with Makis (the developer of TemplateBlocks) on several occasions, he is always willing to listen and assist – which is a great asset to the application.
LIME:VC is a very new development that works along the same lines, but the goal was to provide an extremely light-weight framework that would help the back-end developer create front-end content quickly. It’s not CMS-oriented like TemplateBlocks, it’s slightly more manual, but it’s equally as easy to setup and use.
Louis Stowasser (developer) is the primary on the project, and has been working to implement plug-ins – a CMS plug-in exists at the moment. By developing the add-on components as plug-ins, it frees up the developer to “customize” an install instance so that each instance isn’t dragging around dead weight or utilizing/committing server-resources that are not needed to make the application run. It’s programming follows the Model-View-Controller design pattern to ensure clean code & reduce redundancy.
Keep an eye on LIME:VC in the future, it appears to be an upcoming trend as far as how applications may be made in the future using 3.0 technology (instance/object-based functionality that encompasses only the required applications to build out an instance of the LIME).
Products like Wordpress, Joomla, etc… have been used for years as a make-shift framework to help expedite website production, but along with all the dead weight/luggage, comes an entire array of site variables. Variables as which plugins are compatible with which version of the product (as it upgrades frequently), and how will upgrades effect customizations of the current instance.
If you can, download and try both TemplateBlocks & LIME:VC, and install them. You’ll be pleasantly surprised how easy they both are to work with. Using a framework will free up time to focus on the code more than the orchestration of building the actual pages. More importantly, a framework will only effect the items that are implemented – separating the business layer logic – and not jeopardizing functionality during an upgrade/update.
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July 4th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
I normally choose templating/frameworks depending upon the site. For example, for http://www.theatredelicatessen.co.uk I actually use wordpress for the templating as they wanted blogs too, so why not use wordpress for everything?
For other sites I have been looking for a simple templating framework that doesn’t have the smarty pitfalls so I will be looking into TemplateBlocks and Lime:VC.
July 5th, 2009 at 5:13 am
Actually, I use Wordpress depending upon the task too. Depending on the need, it’s a viable option. Plus, if you’re going to use blogs and services that exists as plugins, then it’s a good thing.
The only draw back is the follow-up of plugins during infrastructure Wordpress upgrades. You can lose some functionality if you’re forced to disable a plugin due to it not being updated to comply with the new release.
Because most of my sites are small business sites or sites that use mass marketing, I have to be able to ensure all the required features (plugins, if I’m using a Wordpress custom -site) are functional at all times.
That’s the only drawback I’ve seen with Wordpress.