addedValues Plugin

Templates

If you are going to be building a database, odds are you are going to be presenting data in a number of ways. If you are running a multilingual site, you cannot avoid the issue. You are going to be dealing with multiple templates. The two basic Manila templates will be insufficient.

You have a number of options to choose from. They do require you use manilaFixer.

1. you can assign a template attribute.
2. you can use the auxiliary template management provided by manilaFixer.

The first method requires you to:

1. define a variable with the attribute Set templates = true. Always do this first We suggest you work with a predefined list, particularly if many editors are going to be dealing with the site content.
2. each template has to be defined. Or else the page will render to the default manila template. This template must be defined through manilaFixer: select Templates, give a name to a template, add it, then edit it. Include HTML, CSS or js as required.
   When creating or editing a template manilaFixer will do a number of checks to make sure it does not include errors.
3. each message must have a value corresponding to the predefined list of the template-setting variable.

• make it a hidden variable
• let the editor decide (picks from list)
• decide based on the site structure. Which brings us to the next method...

Proper practice implies having a good ordering of your stories and pictures. Outliners are the perfect analogy here. You can define paths which nest pages according to their meanings (continent/country/region/province/city). By using the site structure, you can attribute once a template (say to country) and all the nested pages will inherit that attribute. & you can stop worrying about assigning a template value...

To run the auxiliary templates in this mode, you need to

1. Follow points 1 and 2 above.
2. Enable auxiliary templates = true (only for this method)
3. you can also assign a template by default when creating a new story. A note of caution though... Make sure that you have defined a default value in the form that includes the template-designing variable identical to what you are doing with the auxiliary template.
4. Then you can use siteStructure to assign an attribute 'template' to a story or category...

Words of Caution: Yours truly likes to use the HTML non-breaking space command in templates. If you do to, be aware that you cannot use such a technique with auxiliaryTemplates from manilaFixer as the template data is rendered thus & n b s p ; become a space in the template then when the browser renders it, no matter how many spaces you have in there, it will sum it up into one blank. This means the following special characters of HTML are unusable: ensp; emsp; thinsp; zwnj; zwj; lrm; rlm;

You'll have to use transparent gifs instead.

Very important Hint: When building a template, in the header section, make sure that your title tag opens with a capital 'T', as such: <Title>... or you'll get messy things at the top of your rendered page...
a Manila gotcha..