Already got a Master and Theme, how hard to integrate Mojo?

This forum is only for questions or discussions about working with the mojoPortal source code in Visual Studio, obtaining the source code from the repository, developing custom features, etc. If your question is not along these lines this is not the right forum. Please try to post your question in the appropriate forum.

Please do not post questions about design, CSS, or skinning here. Use the Help With Skins Forum for those questions.

This forum is for discussing mojoPortal development

This forum is only for questions or discussions about working with the mojoPortal source code in Visual Studio, obtaining the source code from the repository, developing custom features, etc. If your question is not along these lines this is not the right forum. Please try to post your question in the appropriate forum.

You can monitor commits to the repository from this page. We also recommend developers to subscribe to email notifications in the developer forum as occasionally important things are announced.

Before posting questions here you might want to review the developer documentation.

Do not post questions about design, CSS, or skinning here. Use the Help With Skins Forum for those questions.
This thread is closed to new posts. You must sign in to post in the forums.
9/24/2009 9:01:01 PM
remesq
Gravatar
Total Posts 1
View Posts

Already got a Master and Theme, how hard to integrate Mojo?

I understand that questions like this might be overlooked, but I am not asking HOW to do it, but rather if its doable: I spent the better part of the last month (apart from my regular job) creating the basics for a website.  Then I discovered MojoPortal.  While I did not get to the plumbing of security, etc. for my site, I did start with the premise that the look and feel of the site is what will grab everyone first, not what's underneath.  I intended to start plumbing after having the look and feel to my satisfaction (again, then I found MojoPortal).

So far I got the CSS down on my main Master Page.  My other Master Pages require some slight tweaking for differences in what I offer, which won't be as time consuming. I basically have the site working the way that I want, with the general Master Page stuff all laid out for me, and the navigation is also set up.  Essentially, I am ready to start creating my the content pages beyond the first level of the site (Home, Contact Us, About Us, etc. pages already created).

My question would be, given that I like the way my site looks, feels and navigates (generally how it flows and is laid out), and having found MojoPortal AFTER I did all of that, would it be too hard to keep using my styles, would it be too hard to mesh or, worse yet, would I have to start over?

Thanks.

-Rob

9/25/2009 6:37:37 AM
Joe Audette
Gravatar
Total Posts 18439
View Posts

Re: Already got a Master and Theme, how hard to integrate Mojo?

Hi Rob,

Its not possible to just plugin and use your master page and theme. Its probably doable to harvest the style rules and create a mojoportal skin that looks like your design, but you would need to use the mojoportal css selectors and bring your style rules into to the correct existing selectors or ones you can figure out based on the markup.

We do not really use ASP.NET themes for styling anything because using themes produces bulky markup with inline style.

I recommend you start with an existing skin that has the closest layout to your design, give it a new name, then customize it step by step to achieve your design. The css not the master page is what is primarily responsible for layout and style. Of all the included skins there are maybe 3 different versions of layout.master (in terms of main layout). There is magic code behind the layout.master of a mojoportal skin that helps all of our skins adapt from 1 to 3 column layout according to the presence of content system content in regions corresponding to columns. It basically shhows and hides the columns and assigns different css classes to the columns as needed

I recommend you read all of our skinning documentation first. Some of it needs to be updated because we organize the css files a little more simply than before. Definitely read the section about layout on this page. If you're not a CSS expert then this article should also help you get going.

Hope it helps,

Joe

You must sign in to post in the forums. This thread is closed to new posts.