I’m new to Contentbox and I’m trying to figure out that best way to manage images and documents?
I have 100’s of images and documents I’d like to upload, but I’d like to add some meta data (i.e. alt, title, caption, description) and images in multiple sizes. I though i’d create a page for each image/document and reference them as related content in other pages. I beginning to find this may not be the best way to approach this. Can someone advise how best to achieve this?
Is there a ‘common size’ image setting (e.g large, medium, small, thumbnail, custom) that would resize an image when uploaded to those sizes?
I’ve created custom fields to a parent page, when I set the child page to inherit the custom fields are not inherited.
I would appreciate if someone can share how they are managing their images and how they are adding alt, caption, description tags etc.
I think creating a page for each image is on the right track, but I’d use the content store which is more intended for ad-hoc pieces of content. Note, pages have a URL route by default with their slug, but content store items are not automatically accessible unless they are include into other pages or blog entries.
What you’re describing sounds like an interesting idea of a module. Make it basically be a wrapper for the media manager that does the resizes for you and stores all the metadata (paths to each image size and descriptions, etc) in the content store. You could then register a widget in your module that would be used to render out an image and could have arguments or logic to output the correct size and descriptions, etc.
Thanks for your reply. Just so I’m understanding you correctly; for each “image” page created, I should create an entry in the content store where each entry would have the required custom tags (title, alt, caption…).
I’ve watched Luis’ video on Building content box modules, but I would be grateful if you can point me to a module you feel would be a good starting point for me to dissect and get a good understanding for me to build this wrapper.
Would this be something that’s likely to be added into ContentBox? To me it feels like a feature that would be expected in a CMS, the ability to manage images, documents and probably links.
> for each “image” page created, I should create an entry in the content store
Almost. I had suggested adding a content store record INSTEAD of a page. ContentBox has “pages”, (blog) “entries”, and “content store” items.
> I would be grateful if you can point me to a module
I’m going to tag Gavin, our ContentBox evangelist to reply to that one.
> Would this be something that’s likely to be added into ContentBox?
Maybe, but what’s wrong with it being a module? We’ve discussed custom content types before, but it honestly doesn’t come up too often.
> the ability to manage images, documents and probably links.
Well you can manage images-- just not with a bunch of metadata around them. We’ve not done anything for documents per se, but I don’t recall many people asking for it. Can you elaborate what you had in mind for managing links?
It seems like you are looking for some of the wordpress image management options.
We know that there are several moving from wordpress to ContentBox, and this is something that we need to resolve soon.
We have an Image Editor that is in a private beta right now… we’re hoping to release in 3.2 ( I don’t think we can get it in 3.1 in time ) which allows you to do resizing etc.
We’re looking to create a meta data system for images, to have multiple sized versions, with alt tags etc, but currently, we have a media manager that allows you to upload and store files, and then individually pick and choose how you use them. So you add the alt tags, title etc on a per use basis.
A page can have a selected image, but its up to the theme, module or widget to decide how its used.
Working with customers every day, we’re seeing more issues like this, and the customer content types is another, that we need to solve.
Currently, there is no CONTENTBOX way to solve these issues, some has with their own modules, but we know that people are looking for this from the core, so we’re going to be adding that, as soon as possible.
What CMS’s have you used before?
Maybe if you can point us at their implementations, we can come up with the best of breeds.
Nothing wrong with using a module but I feel ContentBox needs to cater more towards the end user (i.e. content Editors) rather than one with development experience.
I’m currently putting a demo site together for the organisation I’m working for as they are looking for a CMS system. Using Mura, I found it catered a lot more for the Editor, he/she doesn’t need to think about image sizing, they just know they can upload an image, add meta data, assign it to a content page and it just appears how it should. this allowed for adding carousels and galleries easy by just drag and drop. From the developers point of view I didn’t do very much except for building the template and referencing the correct image (small, medium, large, etc…). With ContentBox a lot more leg work is required before being able to do this rapid site development.
My above experience also extended to managing documents and links. With documents, I would want to add a description, know what type of document it is, size etc. I would like to be able to secure it so only certain users are able to see it but the basics of locking down documents to groups is not available. With links, Mura allows you to create links and manage links similar to how you would create/manage a page and then include them in the page content. Making a change to a link would also mean it automatically get’s updated in all other page content where it’s being referenced.
I personally love working with Contentbox as you can build anything you want using modules, from a developers point of view it’s fantastic. However demonstrating Mura to my bosses will be more appealing to them i feel, it has all the above as part of the core installation and more importantly to them I feel would be the ability for the editors to use basic drag/drop functionality such as adding carousel, image lightbox, gallery without the need of getting a developer involved.