Hi Ben
I’ve just spent some time setting up a new test site and playing around with different approaches. You’re indeed right in saying that some content-related action needs to be taken in Headway before BB will recognise and act but it’s a bit more complex than that, as far as I can see. And, with respect, I think it is to do with BB, at least in part in the sense that it relates to interaction between the two products.
It seems that:
a. If I set up and publish a new page in WP and then go to BB it won’t recognise this as a location for a template or for rows or modules, as you said. However, if Headway is not running as the theme (I used 2016 for this) then BB will recognise a brand new page as an appropriate location for a new BB template, row or module.
b. If I set up in Headway a single (or more) header block then there’s exactly the same behaviour as in a. (It may be that other blocks such as, say, a footer block on its own or in conjunction with a header block will work but I’ve not tried that.)
c. If I set up a content block then, indeed, BB will let me place a template or add rows or modules. And, further, this design remains in Headway design mode.
d. If I take the page described in a. above and then add blocks, including content blocks, it makes no difference - BB still won’t operate on it. It appears that once the page has been loaded into BB before Headway then it’s finished for BB editing purposes. (It may be that the behaviour I reported earlier, that of the content not initially being visible but appearing after a publication, might be the case but I didn’t check.)
e. If I then attempt to place this page in the bin I get an error message and the page remains visible and accessible through the dashboard; however, it also appears in the bin and if it’s then deleted from the bin it also disappears on the dashboard list. (Clearly, I’ve refreshed the dashboard page or reloaded it appropriately between times.)
f. I haven’t tested this exhaustively but the behaviour of placing a template appears capricious in that it appears to place the entire template into the first (and succeeding, see next) content block; that is on a page with header, content and footer (and widget) blocks placed in three different wrappers the requested template was placed in the middle, in the content block irrespective of whether I asked for it to replace the existing template or be appended to it. I accept that placing a footer above a template might seem eccentric but it’s a perfectly reasonable thing to do in the sense of then seeking to modify the template for whatever purposes - in other words shouldn’t it be possible for the user to decide where the start of the template should be, exactly as with rows or modules?
g. I then opened another test page with a header, three small content blocks, and a footer and loaded a templatge from BB. This template was automatically repeated as necessary by BB until all three content blocks were filled.
h. I then created another page with the same structure as in g. except that one of the content bocks was a Headway Swiss Army content block and this wasn’t then recognised by BB. Yes, of course, it’s a block from a third party plug-in and it’s quite reasonable that BB might not have programmed the relevant identification but I mention it from my perspective as being a limitation as the two Pizazz blocks and the attendant library are important for my own design needs.
i. Lastly, I created yet another new page, as in g., added a template through BB (which then repeated and filled the three blocks as before). I then added five content blocks - the middle one very narrow - and through BB appended a second template, something which resulted in a glorious mess, including overwritten elements, and which I’ve just emailed to you in HTML form.
Given that BB will recognise at least some other themes as suitable locations for taking new templates, rows and so on it seems reasonable that it should do the same with Headway although I accept there may be a difference in that in other themes the relevant area(s) may be implied by default. It’s also the case, of course, that if one knows that it’s necessary first to create a Headway content block then that’s an oddity to remember and easily work round (the problem comes, though, that if one doesn’t then the only option is to delete the relevant page and start again with a replacement). It seems to me, though, that the fact that one can’t specify where a template starts (and stops) and, further and related to that, that it will fill up any content space it finds, duplicating itself if necessary, is another serious problem. Granted it’s again possible to work round that but one then ends up needing to remember too many bits and pieces to ensure that the two products work well together and to avoid gotchas. I can certainly see the the considerable benefits that BB can bring to design and I wish it were otherwise but I don’t find them ready to work seamlessly together in the way that I at least would want to use two products to complement each other and without spending time worrying about inconsistencies or non-intuitive responses. A shame, but there it is. I shall, however, evaluate things yet again and it may turn out to be the case that the template issue is less of a problem than I currently think (although there’s also the risk that there are other interface problems not yet found) and the general design benefits outweigh using templates anyway. Let’s see.
Thanks again for your help.
Murdoch
