Bookpedia: Problem editing Templates

[nik@tiad]

Dear *pedia community,

i recently started using bookpedia to creat a digital catalogue of a magazine collection.

Everything works pretty well so far but i would like to use the Export->HTML function to make the catalogue usable on other laptops for my collegues.
The best template for me seems to be "Fancy Index", which i need to edit to change the fields to my customized fields. Everytime I edit the template though (i use Brackets html editor for mac), save it and try to export the bookpedia list, it doesn't really work in the browser. The Layout doesn't work anymore, it displays everything more as a pure text-page. Also, i can't figure out how to change the fields (author, genre etc.) to my custom fields. I use the german version btw.

Can anyone help me with that? Would really appreciate it!

I wanted to attach some Screenshots to help explain the problem, but there is no way uploading images here, or is there?

Anyway, thanks again in advance!

Nik

[Conor]

Glad to hear you are diving into the customization of the Pedias.

First of make sure that you are woking of the copy of the Fancy Index now in your ~/Library/Application Support/Bookpedia/Templates folder. Make a small change to the main text and make sure that is working, to know that you have everything setup right and your editing the right file with Bracket.

I think what might be happening is that you are missing the "Images/FancyIndexImages" folder that should also be copied there in the same "Templates" folder. You can get it from inside the program by control clicking on DVDpedia and then using "Show Package Contents" and navigating to "Resources/Templates/Images". All this should have been copied automatically if you used the "Edit" button from the HTML export page, that creates the "MyFancyIndex". The name of the images folder should match the name of the new HTML template file.

You should have:

Templates
MyFancyIndex.html
MyFancyIndexDetails.html
Images
MyFancyIndexImages
Bunch of css files and images here

From there you can proceed in steps as Fancy Index is one of the more advanced templates that allows for searching and sorting. But changing the [key:...] and [translate:] tags should be enough.

If you want to get even fancier you can look at Gamepedia Viewer for modification. It pulls the data directly from the same database that Gamepedia uses, stored on a Dropbox account. Meaning it keeps the same data synced at all times. But even I have trouble wrapping my head about that impressive bit of export template.


Regards,
Conor

[nik@tiad]

Dear Conor,

thanks so much for your quick reply! Copying the images folder to the new exported one did the trick!
I am still trying to figure out how to change each field (author, genre, title) etc. to my customized fields? Can you help me with that ?

edit: okay figured that 1 out myself.

I still have trouble with Cover Photos - which folder do they need to go to, in ordner to be displayed in the HTML?

Also, when i open the fancyindex in either Safari/Chrome or Firefox - the title detail layout does not work the way it's intended i think. There opens this kind of flash window, but no details show. it's just like 20px high and 800px wide. The details only show when i right click the title and open in another tab.

THanks again in advance, all the best
nik

[FineWine]

Hi there @nik@tiad. Having written a couple of Templates myself for DVDpedia (Moderator & Jungle Green) a few years ago I know how much fun and sometimes frustrating it can be.

Have you discovered these "How to Guides" written by Bruji (a very smart Top Dog): Creating a Template and Template Tags

As always with coding per se, the devil is in the detail.

Keep asking those questions, we are all here to help each other.

PS: thank you for pointing out "Brackets". I used to use "TextWrangler" but that has gone now and been replaced by BBEdit which for the full set of features you must buy a licence

[Conor]

Glad you were able to get some of those things changed and working.

To change the fields, look in the HTML and look for [key:. This will show you were the current field are and you can change them for something like [key:custom1] or [key:custom2] depending on what custom fields you are using. ([Translate:) will show you the headers that you might want to change as well. No need for the translate tag, you can simply make it "My Field" as you won't be needing it in different languages.

The details is likely not opening as you might be missing some CSS. Do make sure that FancyIndexImages/colorbox/colorbox.css is there. Otherwise you can try removing the class="cb nw" from the URL around title so that it does not use the color box plugin and opens like a regular window.

In Fancy Index the covers are automatically exported by the FancyIndexDetails and are inside "details/Images" and are also made small for that template. If you want to export them with the first template look at the the top of FancyIndex and you will see a meta tag that say <meta name="image-export" content="no" /> that you can change. Then images URL would be [key:coverImageURL] or if you want to reference the ones in details it would be "details/[key:coverImageURL]".

Hope that helps to clear up some of the issues. As Finewine pointed out it's a slow process as there is a lot packed in there.

[nik@tiad]

Hey and thanks again so much for your help people!

It's getting better with each step The images are working now (there was a double /details/details/images in the url which only had to be deleted)!

Also all the fields are working so far.

Just this color box plugin thing doesn't really make sense to me. The css images folder is in there. When i move it to another folder/delete it, it works like you said: it opens the details in a new tab. Of course that would be a quite acceptable solution. I'm just curious to see how it would look with the working plugin. Maybe any idea what else could cause this?

This is my last question Everything else is working perfectly.