Making a template

[NigelShaw]

Hi Everyone,

im a newbie...

i use a program called WYSIWYG webbuilder for my websites. in layman terms, could i create visually a site that i want to end up with and add the smarty items from a template to the page to be uploaded as a template? it seems straight forward enough i think and not everyone has photoshop to follow the tutorial.

my thought was,

create the basic template and copy over the navigation bars and top bar info to the html within the correct DIV sections to give the menus. in the webbuilder, i can split an image ( sort of the same as slicing ) to enable dynamic pages.

just wanted to check i was on the right track before i potentially start a worthless exercise..........


many thanks,


Nigel Shaw

[Mike-N-Tosh +]

Welcome to the forums Nigel,

Yes, you are on the right track. I personally tend to stay away from WYSIWYG editors myself when working with 68 Classifieds Templates, but that's just me.

The smarty codes are what bring in the content to the layout, so as long as you put those in your design you're good to go. The div's and such are mainly for the CSS calls. Depending on your experience level and how comfortable you are in working with CSS, you may or may not need to include or want those, however bear in mind that the template folder is actually a folder full of template files. There will be many calls to the CSS stylesheet deeper in those other template files.

You DO NOT need to have any of the other template files in your template folder. The script will always check the template folder that you have designated and if the template file that it needs is not there, it will automatically use the one in the default template folder. The only required template file is the main one, which is layout.tpl. All the other template files are used in the content portion of the layout.tpl file.

I always recommend that you duplicate the default template folder and call it whatever you want. That way you will always have a good original default folder. That way when things go wrong, you can always switch back to the default.

[seymourjames +]

Making a template is far from straightforward and especially so given the propensity of different browsers to do different things with the same code. What I can tell you is that it takes a considerable amount of time and expertise to produce a template of professional quality. We are not just talking a few days. You are much better off unless you are highly skilled in html/css in doing one of 3 things.

Buy a 68 classifieds template which has been tested and modify that to suit your needs (I would say that of course), modify the default template to suit your needs or lastly, purchase a regular xhtml template and adapt it (the most difficult).