DotAdmin User Guide

The Template System

The Template Zone.

The dotAdmin template system provides separation of content from presentation, allowing site authors with no knowledge of HTML essentially to "fill in the gaps" in web pages designed by a third party. It also provides a means to automate the generation of navigational elements; a menu can be provided with presentation information and a list of pages to link to, and the menu builds itself.

The templates themselves usually consist of normal HTML, and contain special instructions to be interpreted by the template system when the page is delivered to a visitor.

Templates are stored within the Templates zone of the dotAdmin system, which contains child zones for each distinct type of template which can be created. Each of these zones contains icons for creating new templates, as well as editing and deleting existing ones.

Note: If you try to delete a template which is currently in use, you will be warned by the system.

Below is a brief summary of each template type and their roles within the dotAdmin system:

Email

Email templates are used to format newsletters sent to mailing list subscribers.

See the Page and Email Templates page for more information.

Fragment

Fragment templates are an organisational tool and a way to re-use chunks of HTML. Fragments can be included in any other kind of template by inserting a fragment placeholder.

Because Fragments can be used as components for any other kind of template, there is no specific further information about Fragment templates. They can behave in the same way as any of the other template types.

Nav

Nav templates control the display of any menus which are automatically generated by the dotAdmin system

See the Nav Templates page for more information.

Page

As the name suggests; Page templates are responsible for the overall look-and-feel of the website. Page templates usually contain placeholders for the output from other template types - such as menus and fragments.

See the Page and Email Templates page for more information.

Process

dotAdmin subsystems such as the shopping cart, search, and user login/logout all require their own unique templates. Templates for systems such as these are found in the Process folder.

See the Process Templates section for more information.

Product

Product templates are inserted into Page templates to display information about products in the store. Product templates, in turn, contain Sale Unit templates.

See the Product and Sale Unit Templates page for more information.

Sale Unit

Sale Unit templates are used to display information about individual saleable items. These templates display prices for these items and links to add them to the shopping cart.

See the Product and Sale Unit Templates page for more information.