This section of the tutorial and the next one are the keys to making a standard web site - the things that do the "dirty work". In the rendering process, the template gives your site a consistent look. The default template that was generated when you created your site was very simple. It just put the contents of the wp text on the page without any special formatting except for what was contained in the wp text itself. For the standard web site, you need a more detailed template to create the navigation menu, the page text and graphics, and the footer information at the bottom of the page.
Get the sample template
In my work web site, I am using a standard web site template which you can use as a starting point for your new site. I have created a Frontier fat page with the source for my work web site. Go to my site source page, do a "Save As" and save the file as HTML source. Next, get into Frontier and select the "File --> Open" command. Click "OK" on the dialog box to install this web site into your websites table in your Frontier root.
The sample web site table contains the template that you will use for your site. Open the sample web site table (myACWebSite), copy the #template outline, then paste it into your site table. A dialog box will appear asking if your wish to replace the existing #template outline or create a duplicate. Click on "replace". This will replace the default #template outline with the one from the sample web site table.
Now, let's look at the template briefly.
The navigation menu
The template uses the standard pageheader macro at the top of the outline. This generates the HTML code at the top of the page. Next, the site is laid out as a table with several subtables nested in cells of the overall table. There is one row of cells in the overall table. The first cell contains the navigation menu. It is set to a width of 120 pixels. The spacepixels macro (use the Jump command to spacepixels to look at it) inserts a gif of 120 pixels in length at the top of the cell. Centering and font tags are set, then the leftlinks macro is executed to build the text and links to each of the pages that are a part of the menu. Page 8 of this tutorial talks more about the leftlinks macro that you will be using in your site.
The spacer
The next cell in the main table has a width of 5 pixels, and uses the spacepixels macro to insert a gif of 5 pixels in length in the cell. This is to provide a small space between the menu on the left of the browser window and the main text of the page on the right side of the browser window.
The body and the footer
The next cell in the main table contains a table of its own. The table contains three rows of a single cell each. The first cell contains a call to the spacepixels macro to insert a 400 pixel gif at the top of the cell. Next, the title for the page is inserted, followed by a horizontal rule, then by the main text of the page (bodytext). The second cell of the new table contains a horizontal rule, with parameters added to change the appearance of the rule. Next, the frontierLogo macro is called to insert the "Site Scripted with Frontier" logo hotlinked to the Frontier 5 site. Next, there is a glossSub macro call to hotlink an Austin College logo to the Austin College home page (where I work). The Austin College logo is an image in the #images folder in the sample web site. The Frontier logo comes from the Scripting News web site, so it is not in the #images folder. The third cell contains date stamp information for the page, as well as contact and platform information. Finally, the cell and table tags are closed out, and the pagefooter macro is executed to generate the HTML code for the end of the page.
Template changes
Of course, you could change anything you like about this template, but there are several areas of the template that you should look at. In the third cell dealing with the bodytext tag, there is an entry displaying the title of the page. This picks up the string specified as the #title directive from each wp text and puts it at the top of the page text. You may want something different at the top of that part of the page. In the footer table cell, you might want to have some different logos, or no logos at all. Finally, you should change the footer information to match your site.
The above description of the standard web site template was taken from my Anatomy of My Web Site page.
You're almost done - go to the Tools Table Work page.
Page 1: Description of A Standard Web Site
Page 2: Organize Your Material
Page 3: Create Site Table
Page 4: Glossary Table Work
Page 5: nextPrev Table Work
Page 6: ftpSite Table Work
Page 7: Template Work
Page 8: Tools Table Work
Page 9: Build and Release!
Page 10: Wrap Up
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