How Do I Edit My Site's Template?

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Documentation >> Outline of How-To Docs >> How Do I Edit My Site's Template?

How-to: Editing Site Templates

A new Conversant site is set up with a standard template, one that's fairly dry and simple. The Conversant logo goes at the top left, the navigation is on the left, and everything else goes on the right.

This is not a limitation of Conversant! Your site can literally look however you want it to look!

The main Free-Conversant site is a regular Conversant site also, it just uses a different template.

What is a Template?

We've been using site templates for so long that sometimes we forget that not everyone knows what they are. A web site template is just an HTML file shell that contains the common elements that you want to appear on every page. That can include your navigation links, artwork, a search field, legal text... literally anything!

The main point about templates is that they don't contain anything specific to one page on your site. Instead they contain elements which apply to a group of pages, and placeholders for everything that's specific to any one page.

Read-only and editable templates

Conversant provides a set of read-only templates, and allows you to manage your own set of editable templates. You can use read-only templates (new sites use them by default) but you cannot edit them. However, you can duplicate a read-only template, and edit your copy.

Read-only templates always have "READONLY" in their name. User's editable templates cannot have "readonly" in their name (not case sensitive).

Template Types

Read-only and editable templates can be one of several types: "Full Page", "DG Message", "Bound Message", "Email Message", etc.

Full Page
Full page templates define the page as a whole. They're assumed to contain the <html> tags, the <head> tags, and so on (lets call them "Page Structure Tags"), or to contain macro calls that will insert them. These templates are used typically as site templates in the structure editor.
DG Messages
These templates are used to render DG messages. They're intended to be inserted into a Full Page template, so they shouldn't contain any Page Structure Tags. They're used in Default DG Preferences.
Bound Messages
These templates are used to render bound messages. They're intended to be inserted into a Full Page template, so they shouldn't contain any Page Structure Tags. They're used in Web Server Preferences.
Email Message
These templates are used to send DG messages by email. They're used in Email Interface Preferences.

Some customers may have more template types. If this is your case and if you're not sure which type a template should be, please ask the support team.

Conversant uses all these types of templates, but they're not interchangeable. So for each feature that allows you to select a template, Conversant will propose you only the templates whose type is appropriate.

Edit Your Templates

Editing your template is very easy to do.

First, you may want to know which template you're currently using. To do so, go the structure editor of your admin site.

http://www.free-conversant.com/mySiteName/admin/conversations/mySiteName/structure

Click on the Properties tab, and look at the "Template" menu. That's the default template of your site. If the template you want to edit is used only for a folder or for a file, navigate to this object, and look at its properties. If it's set from a preferences screen (like "Preferences->Default DG" or "Preferences->Web Server->Appearance"), go to this preference screen.

When you know the template's name, click on Templates in the left side navigation bar. That will take you to:

http://www.free-conversant.com/mySiteName/admin/conversations/mySiteName/templates

If the template you're using doesn't have "READONLY" in its name, it will be displayed in the Edit panel (the default one). Otherwise, it will be displayed in the Read-only panel.

To edit an editable template, just click on its name in the Edit panel (note that in new sites, the edit panel will just contain a message saying that the conversation doesn't have any editable templates).

To edit a read-only template, click on the Create tab. Select the read-only template to duplicate in the "Based On" menu, give your template a unique name that doesn't contain "readonly", and click on New Template. The read-only template you selected will then be duplicated, and displayed in edit mode.

If you'd prefer to create a new template from scratch, just type a name into the text field, keep the menu set to "None" and then click on the New Template button.

In edit mode, you're presented with three fields:

Description
Here, you can enter any comment you want. It will only be visible here, and is intended to help you organize your templates.
Type
New templates are created with the type of the template they're based on, or with the type set to "[undefined]". Set it to the type that applies to your template (see "Template Types" above).
Content
You edit (or create) the content of your template in this text area.

Ninety-nine percent of what you'll put in the Content text area is just regular HTML. However, there are some special features in Conversant that you can take advantage of, if you choose to. Anywhere in your template, including within any HTML tag, you can embed one of Conversant's simple macros, which will automatically be replaced when the template is rendered.

For the current list of simple macros, please see

http://www.free-conversant.com/support/docs/simplemacros

Important: Some template types are required to have some simple macro calls in them. For instance Full Page templates must contain a  macro call. So if you're not sure which macro calls are required, it's recommended to look at (or to duplicate) a read-only template of the type you need, and see what macro calls it uses. Then, refer to the Simple Macros Documentation to see what does each macro and which are required.

What about images?

You'll probably want to include images in your site's template, right? Well, the truth is that you don't have to do anything special to add an image to your template... just insert a standard <img> tag into the template. (The image can be anywhere, including an attachment to a message in your site, or it can live on another server somewhere else.)

If you'd like to use images that you've attached to messages, read about How To Use The Enclosure Macro.

Finally

Finally, be bold and creative! If you have a professional page design package, like DreamWeaver or GoLive, use it to design your site, and just insert the simple macros as placeholders when you're done.

Have fun with it! If you come up with anything exciting or particularly effective, or even just different, then please let us know (just leave a message here on the support site, or send us an email.

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