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Integrating Non-Dreamweaver Templates
Although the term templates has a very specific meaning in Dreamweaver, it's a bit more general in Contribute. In addition to supporting Dreamweaver templateswhich have locked and editable regions and are updateableContribute also has the capability to create pages from non-Dreamweaver templates. Non-Dreamweaver templates resemble cookie-cutter molds in that they provide a copy of a basic static Web page without any of the Dreamweaver template's special features.Contribute includes a great number of these non-Dreamweaver templates found under the Starter Web Pages category of the New Page dialog box. The Starter Web Pages group is organized by themes. The Basic Pages theme includes more than 60 CSS-styled pages for common content, such as résumés, meeting notes, and calendars. All the other themesBusiness, Community, Online Catalog/Store, Personal and Professional Servicesare composed of about 40 different sites, each of which includes five or more professionally designed pages. These sites are intended to be used as complete starter sites for small businesses, so they probably cannot integrate into your own designs. However, the Basic Pages theme includes numerous useful pages, simply designed. In this lesson, you'll learn how to integrate content from the Basic Pages theme into your own Dreamweaver template.In the previous exercises in this chapter, you always created a template in Dreamweaver and published it to Contribute. This exercise takes a slightly different tack and begins by creating a new page (a calendar) in Contribute and then bringing it into Dreamweaver for integration.A preliminary step is necessary to ensure the smooth integration of a non-Dreamweaver template into a standard Dreamweaver template. All the pages in the Basic Pages theme use an external CSS file. Normally, these files are stored in the same folder as the newly created page. In this sample site, however, all CSS files are stored in a folder called css in the site root. Almost all CSS management is typically handled in Dreamweaver, so you probably won't have assigned a file storage location for .css files in Contribute at this pointthat's your first task.
| 1. | In Contribute, choose Edit > Administer Websites > Design_Deploy. When the Administer Website dialog box opens, make sure that the Administrator role is chosen and select Edit Role Settings.If you're following the lessons in this book in order, you'll remember having previously set up some file locations in Lesson 5. As in that lesson, you're choosing to modify the Administrator role for demonstration purposes only. In the real world, you could modify any other role, such as Writer. |
| 2. | Click the File Placement category. Click Add to open the enhanced File Placement Rule dialog box. Enter .css in the File Type Extensions box. Select the "Specific folder on your website" option and click Choose. Navigate to the css folder; open that folder and click Select "css". When you're done, click OK once to close the File Placement Rule dialog box, click OK again to close the Edit "Administrator" Settings dialog box, and then click Close to end the Administer Website session.Now when the CSS file is stored on the site through Contribute, it will automatically be saved in the CSS folder. |
| 3. | Designers just starting out with templates are often frustrated because they don't understand the limits for applying them. There are two keys to integrating a standard page and a template. First, the standard page should be pure body content without logos, navigation bars, or page footers; any of these nonbody types of elements are certain to be superfluous and need to be deleted. Second, the template used should have an editable region designed to hold the expected content. Again, this is design-time work, and a single editable region is not out of place here.Applying a template to an existing page is a two-part process. The first part, actually applying the template, can be as simple as drag-and-drop. The second partdesignating where content on the page should appear in the templateis a bit more work, but Dreamweaver has a special interface designed to handle the chore: the Inconsistent Region Names dialog box. |
| 6. | With the newly imported calendar page displayed in Dreamweaver, select the Templates category of the Assets panel. Drag the template named general onto the calendar page and release it. When the Inconsistent Region Names dialog box opens, select the Document body entry. From the "Move content to new region" list, choose mainContent. Next, choose the Document head entry and select head from the drop-down list. Click OK when you're ready. The template is now applied to the content, and the calendar fits nicely on the page; even the CSS file attached to the calendar is incorporated. The new calendar page is ready to be put back online.Keep in mind that the page was originally sent from Contribute to Dreamweaver for editing. The procedure for publishing the revised page is therefore different from the normal Put or check-in of files. In this situation, you simply save the file in Dreamweaver and then publish it in Contribute. |
| 7. | In Dreamweaver, choose File > Save and then select File > Close. Switch to Contribute and click Publish. If you receive a warning about unlinked files, click OK to acknowledge it.You may have noticed that before you published the page in Contribute, several other options were available. You could reopen the page for editing in Contribute, or send it back to Dreamweaver. |
