Denver Colorado Blog

Tips for Creating Aeonity Templates

Introduction
As some of you may have noticed, I created a new template for my Free Aeonity Blog. Well given how much work it took I found a few tips and tricks that can help everyone on the community to figure out our crazy template system!

Always Backup
Make sure you backup your current template, especially if you like it and you have modified it recently. I usually open notepad and copy/paste everything into that and save it to my desktop as template_bup-date.txt This way I will always have that version incase everything gets messed up beyond belief. Also that version of the template can help you figure out the coding scheme for ETS (Easy Template System) which is what Aeonity currently uses.

Design First, Implement Later
Since Aeontiy does not have a "testing" center for templates the best way to go about designing a new template is to actually design it first. Get everything exactly how you want it and make sure it works in the browsers you use most (Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera etc). Once the template is done in full html without any of Aeonity's template coding structure then you can start implementing. But do not implement until you have everything how you want it. I would use real life examples as the text and subject material etc. This will give you a good feel for what the template will look like.

Implementing the New Template
Now that you have the design completed how you want it, the time to implement the new template design is now. Open up the backup file we created of your current/old template. Note the very top, {mask:main}, and the bottom {/mask} as those are key. Without that Aeonity will not accept the template. I generally start with the navigation as that is easily and generally static. So take the navigation portions and insert the links and code in them. It should be generic and easy. Next I code in the blog portion. This will be looped for however many blogs you display on your page, so remember that. Insert the {body}, {subject}, {date}, {mood}, {custom_text} where you put them on your template inside the {mask:blog} {/mask} portions.

Finally I code the comments. This part can be tricky with the add comment portion. The add comment portion will only show up when a user clicks on the actual blog. To do this the {set} is used and as stated before their should be an example on the current template. To get the add comment form the way you want there are a few different choices. You can create it on your own and not use the {add_comment_block} Aeonity provides or you can style the add comment section using the classes that Aeonity's default code has in place (view source on your current blog for that code). This should allow full custom ability for the comment block.

Ending Notes
Now that you know the tips and tricks hopefully it will be less frustrating to attempt to create a new template for Aeonity. In the future at some point we will be creating a whole templating section on Aeonity, where you can create templates and test them without disrupting your current blog. Unfortunately that is quite a task and it does not look to be done in the future but is of high priority as we want to move to the new Web 2.0 interfaces. To do that we need templateors and we want them to be able to template in ease. Questions about templates, features etc, for now use the contact form until a FAQ has been generated for you. Thanks!

On that note if you need help converting an already designed template shoot me an email at frost [-at-] aeonity [-dot-] com. I will not design any templates but am more than happy to help implement them.