Talk:Web template system

Incorrect Object of Discussion

The article provides the following text:
"Templates are commonly used to:

   Display personal information or daily activities as in a blog
   Sell products online
   Display information about a company or organization
   Display family history
   Display a gallery of photos
   Place music files such as MP3 files on-line for play through a web browser
   Place videos online for public viewing
   Set up a private login area online"

NOTE: Cursory reading of the items provided in the enumeration will readily tell any reader they do not pertain to a "Template" per se but rather, to a WEB PAGE that is generated by a Template pertained in the article. The template described in the article for example DO NOT "sell products online" or "display a gallery of photo". It is the web page generated by such template that provide any such text functionality (those provided in the list). I was attempting to provide an edit but unfortunately, objections were made but without understanding what they were objecting for. Hence, the foregoing discussion as to send the message across the community; "Kindly use informed, unbiased, and objective judgement in evaluating an edit before airing an objection." Good day, Wikipedians!

--FERDINAND A. OREAS
--Tuesday, 13 April 2021
--Caloocan, Metro Manila, Philippines

Original research - merge and trim?

This entire "series" of templating articles appears to have a lot of original research in it and represents an attempt to formalize a nomenclature for a set of technologies that are still in enormous evolution and flux themselves. The /Archive 1 even suggests putting original research in "supplementary pages" where are simply other wikipedia articles. That isn't what wikipedia is for. I would suggest merging some of the articles together and cutting out the stuff that isn't referencable. --NealMcB 18:08, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Hello NealMcB your suggestions are on the mark, but also not new. These "articles" have required a lot of work and energy even to get them in the state they are in now. The stuff in the "supplementary pages" was originally deleted by me and other editors, but that started a dispute, so what you see is some of the side-effects of an attempt at a good-faith compromise.

Moreover, I had requested that the "supplemental" O-R content be moved to the User namespace (which is not uncommon), not the main article namespace. (although it looks like some of the O-R content has been moved to the user namespace of its original contributor). So your digested summary of the archived talk is a tad simplistic.

There is a long history to these "articles." Much of it needs to be removed, much needs to be cited, and some of it has actually been both cited and checked by people informed on the subject matter. I don't disagree with your "merge and trim" suggestion one bit; but please don't assume you have stumbled upon an enclave of ignorance where people do not know what Wikipedia is for.

If you care, you can find more background here, and more background here. dr.ef.tymac 04:02, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Right on! I did spend time with the archived discussion that I referenced and I appreciate your work, as well as the enthusiasm of nearly all the contributors. I just thought that after the talk page was archived, it was important to put something in the new talk page, so I made a modest attempt, with a reference, for others that just stumbled across it. --NealMcB 15:29, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Good point. Thanks for doing that, it makes a lot of sense. dr.ef.tymac 15:50, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Disagree as these are separate topics that should stay separate. Tag for verifiability if necessary but it seems we have consensus and there are certainly supporting references out there. samj (talk) 10:12, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Nothing seems to have been improved in in the last 3 years. Still no references. I do not even think the title of this article has a verifiable source. Justinc (talk) 12:50, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

ZPT -> TAL

I replaced the entry

Zope Page Templates

Zope

Is a Embedded programable language implemented as a Attribute Language.

by the reference to the now-existing Template Attribute Language article. I'm not sure what is meant by "embedded programmable language" anyway; IMHO it is no programming language at all; if "programable language" was written on purpos, it must be explained, which doesn't seem to me to be the case at the linked location. --TobiasHerp 17:05, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

(MOB)HTML is not a Server-side language

There are at Web_template_system#Server-side_systems list the item "Merge On Browse", but it is a Web_template_system#Distributed_systems item good candidate, because a "client side templating ENGINE" (with server-side inputs and temmplates) runs in a "distributed fashion".

Embedded complex language

Someone should repair all those Embedded complex language links. Most of them do not point to the same target nor the Target exists. I didn't find any further explanation of what Embedded complex language means at all. (sorry, english is not my favorite language...) 11:14, 10 November 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.153.48.164 (talk)

Overly formalistic article

This article on a technology subject has apparently fallen under the spell of a project focused on philosophical metathinking about "Systems" (an all-encompassing vague word). This has caused the article to become borderline useless for those of us with a practical interest in the subject. For someone reading up on current web page generation technology, this page provides only confusion and semi-nonsense too far removed from reality to be of any value. Furthermore the article does not link to an alternative real-world article on the subject, even if such an article might exist somewhere.

More specifically, some major issues with the content of this article are:

1. The article and drawings seem to confuse what used to be called "catalog web publishing systems" with what is nowadays commonly called "content management systems" both of which categories includes template-based subcategories. The main distinction is that the former kind of system is about turning a structured database into a web site based on that data, while the latter is about providing uniform layout and styles to a collection of documents (which may happen to be stored in a database, but are not otherwise database-like). An example of a catalog publishing system in current use is the module pages at [CPAN], an example of a content management system is Wikipedia itself.
2. The article uses terminology from "Systems science" rather than the slightly different terminology used by practitioners in the field. This makes the article hard to read and difficult to accurately understand and verify.
3. The systems categorized as "Outside server systems" at a minimum need to be split into 2 main categories: author-side systems (such as FrontPage and Dreamweaver) and backoffice server systems (such as Website Meta Language). The former resides where the content author writes pages, while the latter runs on an intermediate server which collects content or data together and produces finished pages which are then bulk uploaded to the web server for later retrieval by visitors.
4. The lists of specific technologies lack some obvious entries such as ASP.NET (a Microsoft technology quite separate from their older ASP technology, except by name and category), and Website Meta Language (the latter of which links to this article as its category).

77.215.46.17 (talk) 23:08, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

We're a good example

...of a site that uses templates; could this be cited? For the record, a client-side template system based on ours could be simulated using iframes and DOM (parser functions would be executed in the browser using JavaScript). 68.173.113.106 (talk) 22:38, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to one external link on Web template system. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add {{cbignore}} after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add {{nobots|deny=InternetArchiveBot}} to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://web.archive.org/20121204081204/http://www.phpwact.org:80/pattern/template_view to http://www.phpwact.org/pattern/template_view#separating_html_from_programming_code

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Separately discuss static site generators and editors

The section on static site generators discusses WYSIWYG HTML editors instead. The two should be separated.

A static site generator is not an editor and does not include an editor; it is an application that generates (the files of) the website from a description in some other (often generator-specific) format. Editing the source files and using the generator are two separate things. This format may or may not look like HTML pages with some templating syntax thrown in, so the connection with this article is tenuous. Examples: Hugo, Jekyll, Gatsby; some more are listed here.

Web page editors such as FrontPage and DreamWeaver interactively let their users create websites directly, without a separate site generation process. When using some templating, they will do a bit of static site generation under the hood; but generators they aren't. Rp (talk) 21:16, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Frontpage, dreamweaver?

These are long discontinued - why is this not indicated? Gordon Findlay (talk) 09:00, 28 February 2022 (UTC)