I was introduced to TYPO3 in 2006, when I started working at a ministry that was using static pages exported out of Dreamweaver. As a lazy programmer who strives for automation, I knew we needed a real content management system. We needed a full solution that was in Open Source, could grow with us, and allowed quick and easy template modifications as our goals and design ideas changed. We looked at a lot of options, but finally settled on TYPO3 after talking to some other developers I respected. They convinced me it was worth the initial effort of learning a whole new CMS (Content Management System) to have the customizability and extensibility that only TYPO3 could offer. I'm happy to say that we rebuilt that site in TYPO3 without ever looking back, but I'm a little embarrassed to admit that it took us years to learn all the possible customizations and extensions that we could use to change how templates work for our frontend users and backend editors.
My goal in this book is to show just how easy it is to build powerful, extensible websites and get you started on that next major website that you're just waiting to build. We're going to step through creating templates, building menus, updating the backend, making mobile sites, going international, and more.
Because TYPO3 has become so powerful and modular, there are often more than a few templating methods that can yield the same results. There are alternative (and possibly better) methods to many of the templating examples in this book, but I have tried to choose the easiest or most powerful techniques in each case to get a site up and running as quickly as possible. If you want to dive deeper into any particular topic after finishing this book though, I recommend continuing to learn through the online documentation at http://typo3.org/documentation/ and the other TYPO3 books from Packt Publishing (http://www.packtpub.com/books?keys=typo3&x=0&y=0).
This first chapter is going to walk you through setting up a test site to experiment and play with for the rest of the book. Even if you have a site currently running on TYPO3, I recommend setting up a fresh test site as described. With a test site, we can all start with a blank template to build on, and I really don't want anyone breaking a live site when we test different menu systems or internationalization later on.
In this chapter you will:
- Learn a little about the history of creating templates in TYPO3
- Install a powerful TYPO3 extension for templating called TemplaVoila!
- Create a working TYPO3 template from ten lines of HTML
- Set up a working page tree with example content and functioning menus
In order to follow the tutorials in the book, there are a few requirements:
- Basic HTML/CSS knowledge: None of the examples use very complex HTML or CSS, but a basic understanding is necessary to build proper TYPO3 templates.
- Text editor: You won't require any special development software for this book, but a good text editor is handy for creating HTML templates and writing code. I use TextMate on a Mac, but e-TextEditor (Windows), Notepad++ (Windows), BBedit (Mac), or jEdit (Java) all have extensions for HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and TYPO3's own configuration language, TypoScript.
- Test server: We need a place to run our examples during the tutorial. If you already have a hosted server that supports MySQL and PHP 5.2 (with ImageMagick or GraphicsMagick and GDLib/FreeType), you can use that. This may sound like a lot, but most hosting providers offer this by default. Otherwise, you can run TYPO3 on your own computer using either XAMPP (Windows, Linux, or Mac) or MAMP (Mac only). Both of these packages allow you to run a full test server locally on your machine, and they already include a web server (Apache), MySQL, and PHP 5.2 (with the necessary graphics libraries).
- TYPO3 4.4 or higher with the dummy package installed: All of the examples in the tutorial have been tested on 4.4.2, but they should work equally well on future versions of TYPO3. You can download the newest version of the TYPO3 source with a dummy package at http://www.typo3.org/download/. If you have not installed TYPO3 before, detailed instructions are available in the TYPO3 documentation library (http://typo3.org/documentation/document-library/extension-manuals/doc_inst_upgr/current/).