Design a template

Templates provide the framework for the pages on your website. Because of the time, research, and detail involved to design templates, we recommend that you base new pages on existing templates rather than creating new templates. However, you can edit a template to fit the needs of a web page, or you can copy a template to make adjustments as necessary.

Warning: We strongly recommend that you limit supervisor rights for this section to a select group of users. General users should not access templates. Any change can affect multiple web pages. We recommend that only users knowledgeable in all areas of website design and the program perform tasks in this section.

1. To get started:

  1. From Site explorer, select Pages & templates.

  2. Pages & templates appears.

  3. Select a template and choose Click here to edit this template.

  4. The template design screen appears.

2. Add parts to the editable panes that the template inherits from the layout.

3. To add a part to an empty pane:

  1. Select the pane button.

  2. If a part exists in the pane, click the Page part button.

  3. A menu appears.

  4. If thePage part button displays an hourglass, the part is in the content approval workflow.

  5. To add a part, select Insert part. The Select a Part screen appears.

    • You can search for parts by folder, part type, name, or site.

  6. To create a part, select New part. The New Part screen appears.

  7. To create a new Formatted Text and Images part, select Add Formatted Text & Images.

• To edit a part:

• Select Editand the Edit Part screen appears.

• To move a part within a pane, select Move up or Move down.

• To enable links in a Menu part, click Enable navigation. This allows you to click links in the menu and access the page design screen to those pages.

• To remove a part, select Cut. The program saves the part to the clipboard. To place it in another pane, select Paste.

Warning: You can cut and paste a part from one pane to another, but if your session times out, the program clears the clipboard. When you reopen the program, you can no longer paste the part.

• Administrator Step: To edit the style sheet, select Edit style sheet.

Note: To view how the template appears to different website users, select a role in the View As field and choose View.

Note: You can preview the template as visitors see it on desktop browsers or mobile devices.

Note: To display the page as it appeared on a particular date, enter the date in the on date field and choose View.

4. To edit the template's layout or style sheets:

  1. SelectEdit layouts & CSS.

  2. You can access the layouts and style sheets for desktop browsers and mobile devices.

    • Style sheets are listed in the cascading hierarchy that you define in style sheets.

    • To see and manage your style sheets, select Manage style sheets.

  3. When you edit a layout, you change it for all the web pages that use it. To create a unique layout for a template, you can copy an existing layout.

    • For more information, see Layouts.

  4. When you edit a style sheet, you change it for all layouts, templates, and web pages that use it.

    • For more information about style sheets, see Style Sheets.

  5. To see your style sheets, click Merge style sheets.

    • From this screen, you can also edit the template's properties, copy the template into a new one, and delete the template.

  6. To hide Page part buttons on the template design screen, select Show/hide part markers.

  7. The program automatically saves your changes. To return to Pages & templates, click Return.

5. To delete the template, select Delete.

6. You can restore it from the Deleted folder on the Folders tab.

7. The program automatically saves your changes. To return to Pages & templates, select Return.