Aut because it was being output in html and that variable was empty it rendered blank as we both know too well! Thanks for the input have a great xmas

Would like to see the final product once you are done.

I have taken a lot of stuff from my knowledge of opencart which basically has a line of code in the controller class which checks for the presence of a template and if it does loads it, otherwise loads the default.

I’m actually going to be releasing new flexewebs.com web site which I have just built in straight, static HTML (just using some PHP includes for repeated blocks).

It works out (for small sites) that’s the best way to build, release and maintain things.

You are going through the same exact pains as we all are. :-/

There surely must be a better way of doing these things and OO for long time promised this, but I don’t think it has really happened.

I liked your comment about going down the rabbit hole. It’s very true!

Thanks for your response, yes I totally agree with you, a more modular situation which can be tailored to suit particular needs would be much more convenient. As I said, I am nearly finished with my CMS and I am thinking about allowing the user to change environment variables during the installer to opt in or out of certain parts of the functionality.

That way too, you can have different values set in the code to present different functionality depending on whether they are using your free version or the upgraded one which they pay for.

I was thinking along similar lines with regards to E-Commerce software a few months ago after being involved in an Opencart project.

I had a very difficult time tracing my way back through that CMS from View to Model in order to find the relevant parts to change. It’s like going down one rabbit hole and finding another. Anyway, the point is that I found it was extremely difficult to change the order of the way things happened in the checkout because everything was so interconnected and interdependent.

I was thinking what a great idea it would be to have the checkout process like a sequence diagram in the back office and be able to manipulate the flow at different points without having to go on a giant Easter egg hunt. If it hadn’t been for Dreamweaver’s search function and Firebug’s network panel, I would never have been able to track down all the knock-on atrocities which occurred from simple flow changes.

With regards to WordPress, I still use it for most of my free lance jobs, just because it is quick and easy and there are so many cool templates out there for it. I used to be a real purist and hand-code everything I did, even jobs for small businesses but I soon got tired of that once I became more focused on building applications. Now I would rather put the CSS design time into creating immersive UX and the development time into writing cool mash-ups to enhance them.