Queries related to Adobe CQ

Question

I have few queries regarding CQ. Your reply will really make the difference to my understanding.

1) Why exactly do we need template when what all template do is to have a resourceType property attached to a content-page component. At the time of creating new page, shouldn't authors directly select that component ?

2) In other CMS like Vignette, content authors create the contents separately (not directly on the page) for ex. products details and then those contents are iterated / processed to display on the page. But in CQ, the scenario is other way round. Authors directly create the content on the page. Now if same content is needed on other page, how will that be re-used ?

3) For pages like product details, there is a fixed structure of the content like product image, description etc. Now if there is parsys component used (widely used in geometrixx demo site), there will be possibility to add the any of the allowed components in any order in parsys. Will not this create content chaos ? OR it will be author's responsibility to add it as needed by page structure ?

Regards, Ronak

Answer 1

1) That is actually a good question, it would make more sense to somehow identify a component as page template. Though there is one reason for a template: The developer can already have some properties and even components within a parsys preset.

2) There is a Reference component in the foundation components which is for this exact use case. Within the dialog you can select any component from any other page. So you can create a dummy page outside of the navigation with frequently used text and reference them when needed.

3) That is always the problem between defined structure and author freedom. Each customer has to decide what is best for him. Though usually I end up having to give the author too much freedom for my liking: Welcome the infamous HTML component, because some marketing guy will have a fancy campaign online within 2 days...

EDIT (As requested some more detail to 1): In many projects I have a rather generic page component with layout options (hide the navigation, hide or show a teaser column, etc.) in the page properties. The most common used options have a separate template for the author to choose. So the underlying page component is the same for the templates but the preset layout options are specific to a template. I hope this clarifies it a bit. Else please create a seperate question as Dave suggested anyway and be a bit more precise of what you need to know.