Creating Templates

The key to any "Powered by ciSUITE:" website is the creation of templates.

Pages created by yourself or your content administrators within your website are based on these templates.

Due to the design-centric nature of the ciSUITE: Content Engine, templates are based on your own designs - taken directly from Dreamweaver or any other HTML page design software.

... you can even take an existing "flat" HTML website and wrap the ciSUITE: CMS around it in just a few minutes (depending on the number of pages, of course).

Creating or editing a template is extremely simple, and very similar to creating a standard "flat" web page:

1. Upload any images and supporting files, such as stylesheets needed to display your page design (using FTP).
2. Copy/paste the HTML source code for your template.
3. Choose parts of the source code (images, text etc) that you wish to allow an administator to edit (this usually includes the page title, headings, body copy, and content images).
• Mark these parts using our supplied tags to create "Assets". This can also be done directly in Dreamweaver (before you copy/paste the HTML source code) using our supplied "Asset tag Snippets".
  
4. Save the template.

To check your handywork, go to the ciSUITE: admin system (the system your content administrator will be using to manage content), and either create a new page using the template ... or, if you are updating a template, edit an existing page that uses this template.

Edit the assets of this page to check that everything functions as you designed it.

... And best of all:  You do not need to do any programming in order to create the administration pages ... they make themselves!