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Abandoned by our developer and need help changing details

Abandoned by our developer and need help changing details

Tuesday 04 August 2009 3:42:28 am - 9 replies

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André R.

Tuesday 04 August 2009 3:55:58 am

It sounds like it is 'hard coded' in a template, witch one it is is impossible to know without 1. knowing the install OR 2. searching through the templates somehow, if on linux server using 'grep'* for instance.

When you find it, you should be able to just change the number and save the file, then you'll probably need to clear template and template block cache to see the change.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grep

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Clemens T

Tuesday 04 August 2009 5:38:59 am

Sam,

As a follow-up, since this text is probably in a template somwhere:

Before changing anything, please backup your existing website.

If you have no eZ Publish experience, then I would download all the files, and search in them for the words you would like to change, in that way you can see which template (or file) has to be changed. This is somewhat of a blunt method, but in most occassions this will work. After that, upload and overwrite the file you've changed. Next, don't forget to clear caches in the admin of the site and see if the change worked on your frontend.

It does sound like there are going to be more problems like this in the future. Do you have anyone in-house with eZ Publish experience? Otherwise, please feel free to contact me (clemens[@]maxcode.nl), maybe my company can assist you if you experience these problems in the future.

Regards,
Clemens

Cori Roberts

Tuesday 04 August 2009 9:46:09 am

Alright here is an EASY way to find it. (sorry dev guys, not everything is an over complicated way to find things.)

If you have Firefox (and not in Vista because it doesn't seem to work in Vista, at least not for me and not without a lot of extra editing which I know you don't want to do, I'm in your same boat right now) Download a plugin called firebug and once it's all installed and working (click the little bug in the lower right corner of your window is how you get it to open) and select the menu option (sorry can't remember which one right off hand you'll need to click) then click your phone number on your site (which you should already have in the window when you do this). The window to the right, in your Firebug console will show you EXACTLY where the phone number is (file path and everything) and then all you'll be able to go to it and change it. No fuss no muss.

Good luck!

André R.

Tuesday 04 August 2009 2:22:55 pm

Cori, where did you get that version of firebug? I would want that also since on the right side in my version I only have Style / Layout / DOM. So unless the phone number is a image, background image or css:content attribute (which isn't supported by IE < 8) that won't work with my version at least =) This could work if you enable [TemplateSettings]ShowXHTMLCode, so eZ Publish outputs html comments with template paths, but it will most likely break the page layout* so not a good solution on live sites unless you don't care if the design is wrong while you debug the design.

Sam: If this is all Greek to you or any of your co workers, I suggest you follow Clemens proposal and contact him or any of the hundreds of eZ Partners for some assistance.
Or if you do manage to follow my tips above, just post what you found here (as much details as possible) and some of us might be able to help you further.

* Reason being that it will include a html comment before the doctype in your html, witch will make your browser render the page in quirks mode.

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Cori Roberts

Tuesday 04 August 2009 3:08:38 pm

Remember he's not going to edit in Firebug he just needs to know where it IS so he can change it and this is MUCH easier than sitting and going through tons of files.

Even if it's an image the file path will be displayed on the right OR it'll show him the CSS which will have a file path where the image is located.

I can't tell you if my version of firebug is different than yours, just know that's how I find my images and text that I need to find to edit. You can also hover over the element and it will display a file path momentarily. For a beginner like myself I found this invaluable, because documentation here is way to technical for average cms user. Yes I'm griping again, lol!

ALSO on the left panel (this displays simultaneously while on the right, it will show a hierarchy of the actual page content and if you scroll up to the top of the hierarchy you'll also most likely be able to figure out where the phone number is. Just requires some patience and little to no coding knowledge, although looking through the code can be a little daunting. (Somestimes Firebug will deselect what you just clicked on) I wouldn't recommend following the other instructions if you're a newbie, it WILL frustrate you and you WILL get lost. Our coders here are too smart for their own good, lol.

Also as a last resort you can also try just right clicking your page and select page source. Once again you'll have to look through the HTML there but you'll be able to see if the phone number is there and in the Title bar of the window is a file path. HOWEVER if it turns out that your info is stored in a file with the extension .php then you can use something as simple as Notepad to open it once you've downloaded it, make the change and re-upload it being sure to use " " around the file name or it won't save as php. I think that is the easiest way, at least to me, being a beginner like they are.

Gaetano Giunta

Tuesday 04 August 2009 3:57:24 pm

@Cori: did you really try to do what you are suggesting here with a page from an eZ Publish installation?

I am afraid that the situation actually IS more complex that what you want it to be, and, as André already said, there is very little that a browser can do here - Sam will have to either
1- look at the files on his server searching for the tel. number or,
2- enable the debug information within eZP and look at the list of used templates displayed at the bottom of the page

The nice thing about solution 2 is that non-technical users can enable it temporarily via the admin interface, using the toolbox at the bottom of the right column, and then switch it back off as it was before.

As for why your solution will not work:

- firebug will help the user to locate the text he is searching for within the web page (ie. html code)
- doing a 'show source' and searching for the text within the source amounts to the same
- once you have found that out, you will have to find the file on the server that generates that particular piece of text...
- ...but in eZ Publish no given html page is rendered from a single php file. They are not html files saved on disk, either. All html pages are instead assembled dynamically and sent to the browser as the result of the execution of many php files and template files (the ones ending in .tpl, that you find in the subdirs of 'design')
- the template files usually hold all the non-content text that is output into the html page, but there are exceptions: text can also come from the translation system (which means it is read from .ts files) or a developer of a custom extension might be reading it from an ini file or an external resource
- of the usage of all these resources there is no trace in the rendered html, unless you enable the 'debug outoput'

Hope this helps. Maybe we could put together a graphical illustration of this process and add it to the docs...

Principal Consultant International Business
Member of the Community Project Board

Cori Roberts

Tuesday 04 August 2009 5:21:30 pm

LOL

I swear no one REALLY reads anything here (even myself on a lot of occasion). I have said twice to use Firebug to help him LOCATE where the phone number is so that he can change it via FTP as opposed to downloading and searching hundreds of files.

And to answer you, YES that's exactly how I found each and every CSS, text and image that I needed to find to alter my own site.

I stated last post that he will not be altering it via the browser, simply finding it. In short finding the needle in the haystack without going through the haystack.

View source MAY work if what he's looking for is listed there. I'm providing alternate NON-technical ways of him finding the file rather than the very long, very complicated way of looking for a small single thing. I stress NOT CHANGE THE FILE THAT WAY. But find it. It's easier to change it if he knows where it is.

Edit:

Also I might add I've been able to look at OTHER EZ sites this way and even borrow their graphics, styles and am working on a header as well. I in fact borrowed several elements from Elle this way. I'm not highly technical but I find ways to do things when I can't get a clear read on the technical and make it simple. Just because it's not the way you all know, doesn't mean it won't work.

In this case it does not hurt for the OP to have options and as I said, I'm NOT a developer and having to try to do this the original way presented, drove ME crazy. I found Firebug from someone else here and immediately knew where to find files and how to change them when I could find them. Now sometimes elements were spread out across 3 different files but I'll take that over 100 files any day.

Rainer Krauss

Wednesday 05 August 2009 12:02:47 am

@Sam Telling from what you've posted I presume your phone number is hard coded in a Template file. Try the GREP solution outlined by my previous posters to locate the file to find the one that contains the number. And make sure to make a backup of the files beforehand. Backups are always handy, just in case. For further work on your system, there's hundreds of eZ Systems Partners. Try the search on the eZ website to locate some. Good luck!

André R.

Wednesday 05 August 2009 12:11:59 am

Cori, mine and Gaetano's point is that IF this is in a template (*.tpl files), then it will be in the html ouput on the page, for instance like this:

<div class="phone-number">(999) 9999 9999</div>

And while you can use firebug to find out where in the html structure the phone number is, it won't tell you anything about witch template this is coming from. Is it the menu/*.tpl? page_header.tpl maybe? Or pagelayout.tpl perhaps? or since this is developed by someone, maybe a completely different template witch is included in pagealyout.tpl?
So, what I'm saying is that your suggestion won't work on most template based systems, unless the phone number is like I said a image or background image, witch I highly doubt

NOTE: This discussion is starting to get very off topic! Please stay on topic (No, this post isn't..)

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