Archive for the ‘Documentation’ Category

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Template Data – Part 3: The Newspaper Drop

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

Of all the data you’ll use to build Hot Ink templates, probably the most important is the data associated with your newspaper itself. The “newspaper drop” is available and contains the same data on all templates and no matter what the context.

To learn more about Liquid, the templating language used by Hot Ink, read the Liquid wiki at http://wiki.github.com/tobi/liquid

Your newspaper’s drop is the main piece of data used for building your template’s structure. If you’re interested in fleshing out your template with a little more data, be sure to take a good look at what’s inside this drop. We’re still adding new features to the site, so look forward to this drop expanding significantly over the next few month.
(more…)

Posted in Advanced, Core Concepts, Development, Documentation, Features, Introductory | No Comments »

Template Data – Part 2: The Mediafile Drop

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

“Mediafiles” is the general term we use in Hot Ink to describe files you’ve uploaded into the archive. This can be any type of file, but Hot Ink provides special support for both .mp3s and images (and more supported mediafile types are coming soon.) When you upload a mediafile, Hot Ink automatically detects what sort of file it is and initializes it accordingly.

Regardless of what type of mediafile you’re dealing with, its data is contained inside a “mediafile drop”. For more information on Liquid, the templating language used by Hot Ink, read “Liquid for Designers” on the Liquid wiki: http://wiki.github.com/tobi/liquid/liquid-for-designers

It’s important to note that you’ll most often access mediafiles in association with articles, specifically mediafiles returned through the article.mediafiles array. A convenient way to use the mediafiles array, especially in front page teasers, is to simply access the first mediafile in the array using the syntax: “article.mediafiles.first”. The alternative is to loop over the mediafiles array using a Liquid for loop: “{% for mediafile in article.mediafiles %}” to access an
articles images. You need to use one of these methods even if you’ve only got one mediafile attached to your article.

Posted in Documentation, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Template Data – Part 1: The Article Drop

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

When working with Liquid, the Hot Ink templating system, each type of object (like an article, a mediafile, an issue or even your newspaper itself) has data associated with it that’s available for use in your templates. Which piece of data is available depends on which template your working in, but perhaps the simplest case is a Hot Ink article page template. On each article template there’s a variable called “article” representing the article requested by the user.

(more…)

Posted in Advanced, Core Concepts, Development, Documentation, Features, Introductory | No Comments »

Introduction to Website Design with Hot Ink

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

**This post is a basic introduction to using the Hot Ink templating system. You may recognize it as the introduction to the Hot Ink Publisher google doc some users have had access to. Others have contributed to this document (thank to all of you), I’m posting it here to give it a wider audience and to help answer some questions forusers new to Hot Ink.**

Publishing with Hot Ink is different from publishing with any other content management system. Hot Ink strives to make it possible for you to exercise the same kind of careful control over the structure, appearance and composition of your website as you do over the print edition of your publication. Because it’s so flexible, the templating system can be a little overwhelming at first. To help make it a little easier to understand by defining some key terms.

In order to be visible to the public, your website must have a design and it must be set to be your website’s current design.

A design is a collection of layouts, templates, stylesheets, javascript files and images that together define the complete visual
presentation of your website. You can have as many designs as you like, but only one of them may be current at any one time. The design
designated as current is the one shown to readers when they visit your website.

Designs control the appearance of your site using templates. Templates are dynamic HTML files written using a templating language called Liquid. Liquid is a simple, easy-to-learn addition to standard HTML that makes it possible to build complex templates that accommodate a variety of individual types and forms of content gracefully. For example, a well written Liquid template for your article page will display the article differently depending on whether the content is
horizontal or vertical, an image or an audiofile, has a subhead or no subhead. (more…)

Posted in Core Concepts, Development, Documentation, Features, Introductory | No Comments »

Don’t be alarmed

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

Hey folks,

I’m about to post a ton of HotInk documentation that was previously only available on our email list serv and authored by Chris and Andrew. These articles are easy to find: they’re all in the Documentation category.

You can thank me later.

Mark

Posted in Announcements, Documentation, Introductory | No Comments »

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