Hi Brandon, I hear your frustration. I encourage you to stick with it. Get through the excellent official Django tutorial. I have observed individuals of wildly varying skill levels and backgrounds use Mezzanine to great effect. The key that unlocks Mezzanine is always Django.
There was talk recently on this list about a WordPress.com clone based on Mezzanine. I hope someone does it and sees wild success. Keep in mind that Mezzanine was built by developers who needed a powerful, consistent, and flexible platform on which to build bigger projects. Mezzanine is for developers, without apology. The first parts of the documentation make it clear that a knowledge of Django is required and that the target audience are front- and back-end developers and systems administrators. Finally: Until I deploy, I have nothing. So the first task is always to deploy. A successful running deployment – even to a local VM – is the *mis en place* of software development. - ken On Wed, Apr 29, 2015 at 2:52 PM, Brandon Keith Biggs < [email protected]> wrote: > Hello, > I have been looking around the web, comparing different python CMSes with > Mezzanine and I keep coming back here. I am wondering why mezzanine does > not implement functionality for non developers to use it out of the box? > So for example, I have my website on wordPress and would like to migrate > it to mezzanine. I know python, but not django. In order for me to move my > site to mezzanine and make it look like I want, I need to both modify the > CSS file, the template files, learn django so I can display some variables > that I have on my front-page and figure out how to deploy mezzanine on a > server. > After I get my website up and running I want to learn django and start > building apps. > Granted, mezzanine has a much easier entry than any other python CMS I > found, but I think it could and should be a little easier. After all, there > is a huge audience of people who know basic python and would really like to > use a python CMS, but don't want to learn django or a complex templating > language to create a good looking website. > For example, why does it take 5 commands to run? (granted 5 is really good > as most other places take 10+), but mezzanine-project myproject could > totally make the db, setup the user and ask if you would like to run the > server. (possibly a -s or -b could setup the server for server-side > development and -b could set the folder like it is now). > I have not yet deployed it on a server yet, so can't say how difficult it > is, but it would be really awesome if mezzanine either did what > wordPress.com does or give a really easy (no more than 10 step) tutorial on > how to install mezzanine on something like Python Anywhere. > Also, why does mezzanine not have a content folder with subfolders of > plugins, themes, apps and the default templates? I think it would be super > easy to make and would promote well-organized site structure. > > I know that mezzanine is built for developers, but so is python. I think > that mezzanine could totally remain super developer friendly while also > being non programmer and basic python programmer friendly. > > These are just a few thoughts from someone who is just coming into > mezzanine never having developed for the web in python before. (Other than > brython :)). I really would like to tell people to use mezzanine rather > than wordPress because learning how to script in python is just so much > easier than learning how to script in PHP, but currently it is too complex. > I am learning django and hopefully I can either make a separate CMS based > off mezzanine or help mezzanine to become novice friendly. > Thanks, > > Brandon Keith Biggs <http://www.brandonkeithbiggs.com/> > On 4/22/2015 4:46 PM, Josh Cartmell wrote: > > Hi Brandon, hopefully the following are helpful answers! > > 1. Title + the publishing controls are present across all things that > inherit from the Displayable class where as the type of content on those > various models will vary from class to class. Blog Posts have categories > and content, Rich Text Pages just have content, Links have no content, > etc... All the admin classes of those models inherit from Displayable so > they end up all having those things grouped. Besides the technical reasons > I think the consistency is useful and I find it nice to always be able to > have the publishing controls right there. > 2. The editor is a WYSIWYG, particularly one called TinyMCE. Here's > what they have to say about accessibility, > http://www.tinymce.com/wiki.php/TinyMCE3x:Accessibility, but maybe > some or all of that isn't working? > You can change what is used though, for example in your project's > settings.py file you could put: > RICHTEXT_WIDGET_CLASS = "forms.Textarea" > Doing that should get rid of the WYSIWYG and those types of fields > should just show up as normal HMTL textareas. That would affect any admin > user, not just yourself. > 3. There isn't anything like that built in, there might be other > projects that do things like that for Django that you could integrate with > Mezzanine. > 4. I don't think we have considered Brython but it should be easy to > integrate any front end technology you want. Right now Mezzanine ships > with Twitter Bootstrap as a frontend framework and I think most people, > myself included, are very happy with it. But really, Mezzanine doesn't > force front end technology on you, it just default to Twitter Bootstrap and > you can change that easily by changing your project's base.html > Brython does look interesting though so I may have to take a look at > it at some point! > 5. Mezzanine does have some user account/profile support. Here are > the docs, http://mezzanine.jupo.org/docs/user-accounts.html. Mezzanine > doesn't have any social login support but there are quite a few Django apps > that do that which you could use to add that functionality > 6. I tend to use https://www.digitalocean.com/ (VPS) or > https://www.webfaction.com/ (shared host). I've never used it on a > cPanel host but you do need ssh access to a host to be able to deploy > Mezzanine. > 7. Mezzanine doesn't have plugins in the same sense as Wordpress. You > can't install anything through Mezzanine's admin interface other than > possibly adding some Javascript to the content of pages. Here is a list of > modules that have been created for use with Mezzanine, > http://mezzanine.jupo.org/docs/overview.html#third-party-modules but > most if not all of them probably require modifying at a minimum your > projects settings.py file > > Here are a few more thoughts: > > Mezzanine is Django so anything you can do with Django you can do in > Mezzanine. That means that when you look for modules you can cast a wider > net than just looking for things that were specifically made for Mezzanine > > The following is my opinion and I'm sure my bias towards Mezzanine will > show. Mezzanine and Wordpress have fundamentally different philosophies. > Wordpress is more targeted at end users by making it easy to install > plugins through the admin interface. I tend to think that with a Wordpress > site you could get 80% to 90% of the functionality you want with plugins > but that last 10% may be very difficult. Mezzanine on the other hand > requires you to either have a developer or know how to code yourself. It > doesn't try to be all things to all people but does provide a solid core > feature set and makes it easy for a Django developer to add missing > functionality. > > Hopefully that helps. Welcome to Mezzanine and please keep asking > questions. Good luck! > > On Wed, Apr 22, 2015 at 6:10 AM, Brandon Keith Biggs < > [email protected]> wrote: > >> Hello, >> After spending 8 months with wordPress, I am throwing my hands up and >> moving back to my home language python. >> I saw mezzanine was probably the cms that would give me the least >> problems, but I have some questions: >> 1. The edit page screen is really messy and difficult to navigate. I am >> using a screen reader, so that may be part of it, but why is the publish >> date stuff right under the title? why is not content right under title? I >> would like to enter the title, hit tab and enter the page content. Also, >> why is the body text editor not a multi edit field? The weird thing is that >> it now is almost unusable... I can't use navigation commands to get into it >> or out of it, it says "paragraph editable" while arrowing through each line >> and there is no advantage anywhere for having this. Perhaps it is a wysiwyg >> editor and that is why I don't see anything good about it. If so, how can I >> disable the wysiwyg editor for my account? >> 2. Not being able to write html from within the editor is horrible, I >> need to fix it. I spent all last night trying to think about how one could >> change the user permissions on them self, but couldn't come up with >> anything. Perhaps it has to do with the backend, but it just seems so >> unlikely it will never happen. >> 3. Is it possible to add short-codes or code within the editor so I can >> access variables and or functions that I have created without making a >> template? >> 4. Has mezzanine considered distributing brython along with the servers? >> I can add it, but it would make more sense to have things in brython rather >> than javascript for a python based product... >> 5. How is the user account support? I would like to have people connect >> with Facebook or google and grab info from there to populate the user's >> fields on their account pages. >> 6. What hosts are easy to use with mezzanine? I am looking for a new one >> and would prefer one with CPanel. >> 7. Are all the plugins there on the front page? Is there a way to get >> plugins or templates from within the dashboard? This is something that >> makes wordPress exceptional for quick development. >> Thank you, >> >> -- >> Brandon Keith Biggs <http://www.brandonkeithbiggs.com/> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "Mezzanine Users" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to [email protected]. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >> > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Mezzanine Users" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Mezzanine Users" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Mezzanine Users" group. 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