Customization

Overview
Templates Customizations
Example Template File
MS FrontPage Important Notes

The software is totally pure html template based system. This means that the program uses an regular html files for formatting its output. These templates are just html files that can be edited from the admin center and using the built in editor or using any other text or html WYSIWYG editor like MS FrontPage.

Language Variables:
Because the system is multi language capable, the program uses a language variables inside the templates instead of using the actual text. Each language variable refers to some text in the language files.

The language variables are inserted inside the templates between "[[" and "]]" as follows:

[[language_variable_name]]

At the program run time, the system will replace the language variables by its text values. This way, the same template is used to display any number of languages.

Language variables and text are kept inside the language files. Each language has its own directory under the "data/language" directory. below is few lines of a langue file shows how these files are build.

create_account~==~Create Account
edit_profile~==~Edit Profile
registration~==~Registration
search_home_bar~==~Main
browse_categories~==~Categories
account_manager~==~Manage Account

Each line is a language variable and its value separated by "~==~" and must be on one single line. These files can easily edited from the administration center or using any text editor. Language files has the extension ".pm" and must be edited and transferred in ASCII mode not binary mode.

Classes:
Since the system is template driven, the program uses a special plug ins or place holders inside the templates.

The general format for the classes is:

<!--CLASS::Class_Name-->

Where "Class_Name" is  a unique name for each class. Some classes are general and can be used inside any template, like the "Header" class. Some classes are specific to certain functions and therefore only available for specific templates.

At the program run time, the system will replace the "<!--CLASS::Class_Name-->" by code generated for this specific function name. This way the program can place the code generated inside the templates anywhere you place these classes. This allows you full control over the program output and customization.

In the above template code example, the classes are colored in red, language variables are colored in blue, and other program plug ins are colored in green.

Templates can be edited using any WYSIWYG editor like MS FrontPage or else. MS FrontPage has specific issue that affects some templates. This problem is specific to MS frontPage. It replaces all "<" letter by "&lt;" and all ">" lette by "&gt;". As you can see from the above template code, the program uses classes and special plug ins between the comments like <!--CLASS::xx-->, so MS FrontPage changes these to &lt;!--CLASS::xx--&gt;. There are two very easy solutions. The first is to configure MS FrontPage not to change the code:

From Tools->Page Options->Click the "HTML Source" tab->Select the radio button "Preserve existing HTML".

The other solution is, after you finish editing in MS FrontPage, replace all the "&lt;" by "<" and all the "&gt;" by ">". You can do this from the Edit->Replace menu.