Templates
Overview
The Web-Empowered Church has developed several sets of templates, with varying layouts and color schemes to help get you started.
A template is a set of files and settings that define the overall appearance of your website and the way visitors navigate to change to different pages on the website. Templates ensure a common look and feel across the website, which is important to excellent web design because it provides a consistent user experience.
Once a template is defined, you can create new pages with varying content and the pages will keep a consistent overall appearance. In addition, the navigation for the website (such as pop down menus, or links along the top or bottom or side) will automatically adjust as you add and remove pages. Templates set the following aspects of your website:
- Size and placement of everything on the page such as the top heading graphic, columns, navigation, main content, side bars, search box, and copyright notice
- Appearance of visual elements such as colors, lines, borders, media, and graphics
- Text style (font, spacing, layout) for elements such as titles, paragraphs, tables, and lists
- Navigation method such as pop down menus, side links, and breadcrumbs. Breadcrumbs show the page path from the home page to the current page.
An important additional feature of templates is that you can change them. For example, you can change colors, navigation, or layouts in the template, and when you do, the entire website will automatically adjust to the changes you made. This can give a fresh new look to your website and can be done at any time. One note of caution, new templates should be compatible with previous templates to avoid a lot of rework such as moving content to new places on a new template. Your old content will not be lost, but it may not display correctly. So please prepare to do some adjusting if changes to the old template are significant.
You can view each of the available WEC Templates on the WEC Demonstration Website. It includes a Template Selector to enable you to view each template in operation on a newly installed WEC Starter Package. Note: In order to enable you to view the website using any possible template, the response time for displaying pages on this website is somewhat slower.
WEC Template User's Manual
This document provides instructions for installing and modifying WEC Templates.
Developer Information
WEC Template Developer's Manual
This document provides instructions for developing WEC Templates.
From the TYPO3 Website
These documents, from the TYPO3 website, provide information on modifying and developing templates
- Futuristic Template Building Document
- Modern Template Building Document (Part 1)
- Modern Template Building Document (Part 2)
- Modern Template Building Videos
From Marlies Cohen
Marlies Cohen, a TYPO3 specialist, developed some helpful documentation.
From Mediatech
This content management system design solutions company has developed and published tutorials on TYPO3 templates.
User Downloads
WEC TYPO3 Templates
A subset of the WEC TYPO3 templates comes pre-installed in the latest WEC Starter Package. Templates can be downloaded individually from the WEC Template Repository. Captured screenshots of the templates can be viewed in the WEC Template Repository as well.
