Whizzy Templates
A template contains all the HTML that is fixed for every page: typically the header, footer, main menu etc. It can include the CSS, or a link to one or more external style sheets. It most respects it is an ordinary HTML file. A template can have any filename but saving the template with a file extension of '.htm' will make it easier to edit with Dreamweaver or another editor that recognises and highlights HTML syntax.
What makes a template different from an ordinary HTML page is the
presence of Whizzy Placeholders.
To turn any HTML file into a template replace the parts that can change
with a placeholder. Common place holders are used to denote the
document title and the main page content.
A very simple template could look like this:
<html>
<head>
<title>{HERE_TAG:title}</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="site.css" />
</head>
<body>
<h1>{HERE_TAG:title}</h1>
{HERE_TAG:body}
</body>
</html>
In fact, that is similar to the "emergency template" that Whizzy uses if
the template file is missing.
When Whizzy shows a page, it replaces the placeholders with the
relevant content from the page file.
So, {HERE_TAG:title} will be replaced
by the page title, {HERE_TAG:body}
will be replaced by the page body (main content), and so on.
This makes it very simple to make a template from an existing web page you have designed yourself, or to adapt a ready made template from a template site on the web.
