What are Templates? 

Give your site a structure and style that suits user needs. Your templates support the way you want people to interact with content and make everything consistent.

For sections and content types, you can add and save a layout and arrangement of widgets. This means, whenever you create a new section or content type, you simply select the template you want to use and everything will appear and work as you expect.

If you do not create templates for content types, changes you make to widgets in the default template will be made to every news item, page, policy, etc. that has the default template. We recommend you avoid this by creating your own templates.

Roles in Templates

There is one role with the permissions to create templates:

• Webmaster

Accessing Templates

1. Go to Administration in the workbar

2. Find the ‘Structure’ category and the heading ‘Templates’

3. Select the appropriate section or content type template

Creating Templates

Before you start creating templates, we recommend you have the information you want to display in mind.

Perhaps you’re setting up a news template and like the BBC layout. Or perhaps, you’re setting up a section template and know exactly where you want your navigation to be; your introductory paragraph, your image, and the related links.

If so, great, this will speed up the process and give you clarity and confidence while creating your templates. Remember, you can create multiple templates, just make sure each template has a clear and obvious title for publishers.

1. Select the content type to create a template for

2. Select ‘Add’

3. Add a clear and obvious ‘Administrative title’ and select ‘Save’

4. Select the ‘Layout’ tab

5. Chose the required width and select ‘Invotra’ from the category dropdown

6. Select your chosen layout

7. In the following layout screen, select ‘Save’. The ‘Content’ screen will appear next.

8. Locate your layout regions beneath the heading, ‘Substitutions’. Each grey box is a widget that can be moved and styled.

To move widgets:

9. Select and hold the grey bar containing the widget’s name

10. A multi-directional arrow will appear, hold your selection and drag into the appropriate region.

To delete unnecessary or unwanted widgets:

11. Select the cog icon in the top right corner of each widget

12. Select ‘Remove’ from the dropdown menu

13. Select ‘OK’ in the pop-up window

To add new widgets:

14. Select the cog icon in the top left corner of each region

15. Select ‘Add content’

 

16. Search for the widget you want to add

17. Configure your widget

18. Select ‘Continue’ and ‘Finish’

19. Move your widget to the appropriate position

20. Repeat until you are satisfied with your template

21. Select ‘Save’

You will see the following message:

When you are creating a template, we recommend you save an early version and open up a new tab with a section or content type that is adopting your template.

Continue to make changes to your template, saving it after each change, before refreshing your section or content type. This will give you a realtime example of how your template works using live content.

Choosing Templates

When you have created and saved your templates, you can select them every time you create or edit a section or content type.

For content types:

1. Go to your content type, select ‘Options’ and ‘Edit current’

2. Scroll down to ‘Template’ dropdown, select your template and ‘Save’

For sections:

1. Create or go to your section

2. Scroll down to ‘Template’ dropdown

3. Select your template and ‘Save’

Note that for sections, you may have to ‘Reset’ the template before you can choose a new one.

Unlike content types, templates in sections remain independent of each other. So if five separate sections have template X and you make changes using the In Place Editor to one of those sections, those changes will only appear in that section.

 

Suggested links

• Widgets