Customizing the layout of the admin edit page

Why

After having created a custom widget (see Creating a custom widget on the edit page), we want to hide widgets that we don’t need.

Page structure

To hide default widgets from the page, we need to change the template that loads these widgets.

The edit page widgets are grouped into 2 main areas, main and sidebar. These groups are created by the files _admin_edit_main_parts.tpl and _admin_edit_sidebar_parts.tpl.

Content parts

We won’t change the default Zotonic edit template; instead we will override it by adding the category to the filename.

Create a file _admin_edit_main_parts.webshop.tpl and give it the contents:

{% all catinclude "_admin_edit_basics.tpl" id is_editable=is_editable languages=languages %}
{% all catinclude "_admin_edit_content.tpl" id is_editable=is_editable languages=languages %}
{% include "_admin_edit_content_advanced.tpl" %}

This template will now load the Basic widget (Title, Summary, Short title), all content widgets (for now only _admin_edit_content.webshop.tpl), and the default Advanced widget.

Sidebar

For the sidebar area you can follow the same procedure. Of course you need to keep the submit buttons, so always include _admin_edit_content_publish.tpl.

Category and instance

To show a block on a category edit page, but not on an instance of that category, check for id.is_a.meta. To show the block “Features” on the category page we write:

{% if id.is_a.meta %}
{% include "_admin_edit_meta_features.tpl" %}
{% endif %}

Word of caution

Admin templates will evolve over time. Custom changes you make now may not work after an update. Use these guidelines at your own risk.