Templates

Creating and Editing Templates

Managing Templates

In the design manager, the templates tab displays a list of templates matching the current filter (if applied) in a tabular format, with pagination. Each row of the table represents a single template. The columns of the table shows summary information about each template, and provides some ability to interact with it.

A drop-down providing the ability to switch between pages of templates that match the current filter will appear if more than one page of templates match the current filter. An options menu exists providing the ability to adjust the current filter, or to create a new template (depending upon permissions). The filter dialogue allows filtering the displayed templates by a number of criteria, as well as changing the page limit, and sorting of displayed templates.

Table Columns

• Id: This displays the unique numeric id for the template. Clicking on the link in this column will bring up the edit template form. Hovering over the link will display a tooltip with further information about the template.
• Name:
  This displays a unique textual name for the template. Clicking on the link in this column will bring up the edit template form. Hovering over the link will display a tooltip with further information about the template.
• Type:
  This displays the template type. Hovering over the type name will display a tooltip with further information about the template type.
• Design:
  This column displays the design(s) that this template is associated with (if any). If the template is associated with multiple designs a tooltip will display a list of the first few designs that this template is associated with.
• Default:
  This column displays an icon indicating if the template is the default for its type.
• Actions:
  Depending upon user privileges there will be one or more icons displayed in this column to perform various actions on, or with the template:
  
• Edit - Display a form to edit the contents and attributes of the template.
• Copy - Display a form to allow copying the selected template to a new name. For convenience a default new name will be provided.
• Delete - Display a form to allow deleting the selected template. Extra confirmation is required for this action as no checks are possible to see if the template is in use by any page, or recursively by any other template.
• Multiselect:
  This column (depending upon permissions) will display a checkbox allowing the selection of multiple templates to perform actions on all of them simultaneously.

Bulk Actions

This is a dropdown with options (currently only delete) to perform on multiple templates at one time. Use extreme caution when performing bulk actions as doing so could severely effect a working website.

Editing Templates

The edit template form is a complex form that allows management of all of the attributes of a template. For convenience, the form is divided into numerous tabs.

This form supports the "dirtyform" functionality to reduce the chances of accidentally losing unsaved changes. Users will be notified if attempting to navigate away from this page if the template has not been saved.

This form locks the selected template so that other authorized editors will not have the ability to edit the template at the same time. This prevents somebody else from accidentally overwriting changes of another editor.

• Name:
  This text string uniquely identifies the template. The system will generate an error when saving the template if the name is already used on another template.
• Template Content:
  This text area displays the actual smarty template. If a syntax highlighter module is installed, and enabled, and the user has enabled it in his settings, then it will be enabled in this area to provide advanced editing capabilities.
• Description:
  This text area provides the ability to describe the purpose of the templates, and notes that may be useful to editors in the future.
• Designs:
  Depending upon permission levels, this tab will allow associating the template with zero or more designs.
• Advanced:
  This tab displays fields that allow specifying the template category, its type, and whether it is the default template for the type. This tab is only available with the appropriate permissions.
• Permissions:
  If the user account is the owner of the template, or has the "Modify Templates" permissions this tab will allow changing the ownership of the template, and/or specifying additional editors.
• Set All Pages:
  Users with the "Modify Templates" permission will see a button which will allow setting all content pages to use this template.