designguide building about page
Suppose you need to add a page to your website. This section will illustrate a number of different ways to do that using Melody.
Topics taught in this section:
- The difference between an index template and a page.
- An introduction to archive mappings, specifically page archive mappings.
- How to modularize your website to share common elements easily between multiple templates and pages.
For those familiar with creating as index template to publish your website's homepage, it will would be a relatively straight forward process to use an index template to also publish an about page for you website. The process would go something like this:
- Navigate to Templates from the Design Menu.
- Click Create Index Template.
- Enter in the name of and the HTML for your page in the spaces provided.
- Click Save and Publish.
There, you have a page. In fact, the steps above was at one point the most commonly used approach to pages for most Movable Type users.
In Melody however, as in more recent versions of Movable Type, there is a far quicker and more flexible way to achieve the same result: Page Templates.
A page template provides the designer and users with the following advantages:
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Designers can define the default look and feel, or "chrome" for every page on the website.
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Melody users do not have to be encumbered with having to know HTML, CSS or the Melody Templating Language. All they have to do is enter the content for the page.
To put it another way, pages produced by page templates are nice because they are simple. A user need only select the "Page" menu item from the Create menu and they can be publishing a new page for their website in seconds. However, in their simplicity, they do lack certain capabilities index templates have. To help you better understand these differences and make a more informed decision with regards to what will be right for you, read the following differences carefully:
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The content entered for a page cannot contain any Melody template code and are thus relatively static.
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Users are free to use a rich text, or WYSIWYG editor when creating pages. They cannot use such an editor when editing index templates.
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More?
Let's assume though that you have weighed your options and have decided that using a page template is best for you at this point. Let's learn how to add a page template to your website now.
Setting Up a Page Template
Before you can create pages, your theme must first define a page template and an archive mapping for that template. Here is how you would do that:
- Navigate to Templates from the Design Menu.
- Under the Archive Templates table, click Create Archive Template: Page.
- Enter the information and HTML about your page template in the space provided. Click Save.
- Once the page has been saved, expand the Template Options area just above the save buttons
- Click "Create Archive Mapping" and select
folder-path/page-basename.htmlfrom the Path pull-down menu.
With the page template and archive mapping in place, you can now publish pages to your website with ease.
- Prev: Building Your First Website and Blog
- Next: Simplifying Your Website Using Template Modules
- Table of Contents: Building Websites with Melody, a Guide for Designers
Category: Guide
Tags: design guide, page creation
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- Author: Byrne Reese
- Edited by: Violet Bliss Dietz