I have a few ideas for the templates interface:
- Move the templates into the “Design” tab of the Finder, rather than having to switch over to the special design view using the dropdown on top of the page.
- Templates should be able to be organized into folders just like any other asset. This is imperative for large sites with many templates.
- The Import Template feature should be able to overwrite an existing template if needed. I was recently working on our homepage template, and was having issues with the Drag and Drop interface, so I exported it to edit it manually. After doing so, I re-uploaded it, but it created a new copy rather than asking me if I wanted to overwrite the existing one.
- Add the ability for design-time stylesheets. For example, we use a tabs interface in several of our layouts, and the CSS hides the tabs until they are shown with JS at runtime; this makes it difficult to edit the content in the CMS (because the tabs are invisible). If we could define a special CSS file to load only while in the CMS interface (e.g. it would not be shown in production), it would help with editing the content in these regions.
- Add the ability to add descriptive text to the widgets, or change the default “This Rich Text is empty” image. This is imperative for a complex template. Even my experienced designers have to come ask me what a particular widget on the page is for. It would be very helpful to be able to add some sort of hint text like “Add the main page content here” or “add the gallery here” in the widgets to inform users about what to use them for.