Advice for re-design

[Sylvia Nicosia]

We are in the process of moving to OmniUpdate with a brand new site.   We are working on incorporating  include files for headers, footer, menus, etc. for modularity, and setting up the templates. If anyone has gone through this, any advice is welcome, or share stories that helped you overcome this task.  Thanks!

 

Sylvia Nicosia

Alumni/Web Manager

Farmingdale State College

[Justin Gatewood]

I've got OU templates setup with include files (using SSI and the .shtml extension on my pages).

 

I used the <!--#include virtual="<include-filename-here>" --> statement to pull in my include files in the XHTML (functional).

 

To also show the include in the OU Campus "Preview", I use <!-- com.omniupdate.div label="header" path="<include-file-path-here>" --><!--#include virtual="<include-filename-here>" --><!-- /com.omniupdate.div --> (you would modify this to specify the particular include you were using).  Meaning, you would need to change the 'label' attribute to match the include.  Notice that I've got the include statement between omniupdate tags with only a 'label' and a 'path', so you could just use the bold item above to both include your file in the resulting web page, and display the include in the OU Campus "Preview' as well.

 

Example:  I use the following labels for my template's includes -- 'leftnav', 'rightnav', 'header' & 'footer'

 

Hope that wasn't confusing!

 

Let me know if I can be of further assistance.

Justin

[Sylvia Nicosia]

Thank you Justin, I really appreciate it.  This is very useful information because it points us to the right direction.  Once you get the template from OU, you do this to call whatever file you want to include on your page.  We are in the pre-OU template phase, meaning we are designing and applying functionality to the pages that will be sent to OU for the creation of templates.  Your information confirms how we should approach this phase by having pages named and containing only info such as for the left navigation, header, footer, content, etc. so eventually for example only one 'header' file exists and is the same file that will be called over and over.

 

Sylvia

[eBarinvon]

XSLT is a good thing! ;)

 

Long live the pcf! LOL!

[Justin Gatewood]

The templates I have I setup myself (just using the layout I had put together, and inserting the include calls where necessary for repeatable content sections).

 

Setting up templates was surprisingly simple.

 

I had held off for a few years in setting them up, because I had this concept stuck in my head that it HAD to be complicated. (I was wrong..hehe)

 

The day I decided to actually do some reading and figure out how to set up the templates from the existing website's layout(s), I was able to create three functional templates (main site, athletics site, community education site) within a single hour's time.

[Sylvia Nicosia]

So far the include files we have on all templates are the header and footer, and eventually a left side nav.  For the include files, is it any preference to just have the information in plain text, or have it in additional div's?

[Justin Gatewood]

I have the include files setup as divs within the stylesheet.

 

Example, the leftnav include in our stylesheet is the "nav" attribute in CSS, so the include file itself is the opening <div id="nav"> including everything down to the closing </div> (and all the links, etc. in between)

 

Within that div in the leftnav include, I've placed <!-- com.omniupdate.div --> tags around the list items (but not around the <ul> portion, as I have a separate 'ul' class that I don't want editors removing by accident). 

 

So, to wrap it up, I use the <div> of the include area (header/footer/leftnav) as the content of the include file, then I call it into the page using: <!--#include virtual="<filename>" -->.  The result is a web page with the ".shtml" extension (which I've configured my web server to parse as text/html in the mime.types file [Apache web server], so as not to have the page display as code but to render as a web page.)

 

Hope this helps.

[Sylvia Nicosia]

It helps greatly, thank you.  Then all I have to do is call the CSS file from the .shtml page for the nav file.  This can also help with reusing the leftnav tag where  'nav'  is included with different navs like 'index-nav', 'academics-nav', etc. in addition of 'nav' to take advantage of modularity.