Templates

This extensions allows your client to create pages according to predefined templates. And when I say pages, I mean actual Symphony pages!

Setup

1. Create a section, and add a 'templates'-field to it.
2. Create a datasource which uses the section as source, and filter the template field on {$current-page-id}. This datasource is used for the page content.
3. Create one or more pages which you want to use as template. Add (at least) the newly created datasources to it, and give the page the type template.

Now, when you create a new entry in the section, the 'templates'-field allows you to set a page title, parent and template. When the entry is created, the chosen template is copied, including all it's references to datasources, events and parameters.

In the publish page, the user has the possibility to change to order of the pages.

Migration

If you have an already existing website which stores page content in a section (with the pages field for example), you can easily migrate that installation to the templates concept by checking 'migration mode' in the section editor.

This allows you to link your entries to templates & pages without overwriting the actual XSL-files. This way you can link your entries to pages and templates without having to create a new section and change a lot of stuff. It still requires you to make your templates and asign them to the entries though...

Notes

• If you want a page to hide from the parent-picker when creating an entry, you can add the type template_hide to it. This can be used for hidden or system pages for example.
• The template is copied. So if you make changes to the core template, these do not reflect on the already created pages. Some manually copy-pasting (or re-saving) is required here.
• The template is resaved each time you save the entry. So if you make changes to the pages XSL, re-saving the entry will overwrite the XSL with the templates XSL.
• If you save your template pages as 'Template : Name of my template', the 'Template : '-part gets filtered out in the publish page. This makes it easier to keep your template templates organised.