django-block-content

Yet another flat content tool for django... this time with easily customized themes.

Configuration

INSTALLED_APPS = [
  ...
  'block_content',
  ...
  'django_markup',
  ...
]

Requirements

The default setup requires django-markup for markdown support.

Why themes?

There are all sorts of special use-cases for flat content. You might want to style certain types of content differently, for example: pop-up help text. This would require some custom javascript which you would include in your theme's template. Other examples include alerts, info-bars, and plain text.

Example

Want to allow your staff users to edit some help text on the site, but the help text should pop up from a "?" icons? Easy, just create a new theme.

block_content/pop_up_help.html

<div class="hidden_help block_{{block.key}}">
  {{ block.content }}
</div>
<i
  class="help-icon"
  onclick="showHelp('block_{{block.key}}')"></i>
<script>
  def showHelp(key) {
    ...
  }
</script>

path/to/your/template.html

{% extends 'base.html' %}
{% load block_content %}
<h1>This is a webpage</h1>
<p>Do great things</p>
{% block_content 'home_page_footer' %}

Notes

Rationale for having themes stored as templates and having their keys stored in the database:

I looked at adding a BLOCK_CONTENT_THEMES settings variable that could store a list of theme, then all the themes would be in code, but this left the possibility that a change to the code could leave the database out of sync.

Since a new theme couldn't be used until someone actually updated a Block in the database anyway, it seemed like the best option to create a Theme model.