Avoiding repetition

Posted: 20 April 2009

I really hate having to do the same thing over and over again, and I know I'm not alone. All too often on sites you need to make a change to lots of different pages – maybe changing the font or the background color, and you really don't want to have to do each one individually.

The solution to this is a property called 'inheritance'.  In neatComponents all the styles, settings and permissions (ie everything set in a page's Behavior Editor) can be inherited. This means that if you set the value for one of these settings at the top level of the site tree, they will cascade down and be applied to all the child pages in the site.

Naturally, there are occasions when you want a page to be different, and setting the value on the behaviour Editor for a specific page will override any value it would have inherit from above.

So, when styling a site, or setting permissions for pages, always think about how many pages will be affected, and try to work as high up the site tree as you can. That way you'll avoid repetition. What's more should you need to change the site later on, you'll only need to make the change in that one place.

You can learn more about inheritance in neatComponents.