OpenForum comes with a number of predefined templates that can be found from the /OpenForum/Styles page. The following notes are for those wishing to make changes to templates or create new ones.
There are three different template files that can be applied to an OpenForum page.
The pages content in sandwiched between the header and footer templates as is the edit-form template, when the page is displayed in edit mode.
OpenForum/Page holds the default header and footer. You can define headers and footers on any page. Alternatively you can link to a template somewhere else.
Within a page template, some standard OpenForum information can be inserted. These are inserted by placing tags in the template. A tag begins with an ampersand & and is terminated with a semicolon ;. So to insert the authors name into a template you would insert the tag &author;. The list of standard page tags is as follows:
The insert tag is a special case. It is followed by a reference to a WikiPage. When a page is updated the reference page's contents is pasted in.
We are going to dissect the page template for Vanilla Top as an example of how to create a page template. You will need to know a bit of HTML. You can view the finished result here
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The left of the page is to display a site menu. Again an insert tag is used, this time inserting the content from the page /OpenForum/LeftMenu
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Finally the top of the content box is defined. This consists of three images, top left, top and top right. The images are defined in the CSS style sheet for the page and referenced as styles on the table cell elements.
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