It has been an ongoing request from a variety of users to have access to the templates of their online magazine. To date, this feature has only been available to custom installations of Press Publisher. With a custom installation, come a price. As such, the free versions would not have access.
This has changed! Now all users of the system have access to the templates and CSS style sheet that make up their system. This is not a trivial feature though and can’t really be modified by a novice user. A user who wishes to modify their system will be required to have an excellent understanding of HTML and CSS.
The template system we use is Smarty. Smarty is a template engine that uses a propriety coding language, similar to PHP to generate the content on the page. The Smarty code is intermixed with HTML to generate the pages. What a user will have access to is each of the individual pages that comprise their magazine.
To start, there is a Header, Sidebar, Footer and Stylesheet. For most users this will make up the vast majority of adjustments and provides the “outer shell” of the website. However, if you want to go further, you can modify each of the templates individually as well.
In the ends, this allows any user to allow their in-house or personal web designer to make adjustments to their site, instead of us
Just keep in mind, we know the system as well as anyone and can most likely make the change faster and more reliably. None-the-less, the ball is now in your court.
One of the main reasons for us to release the integrated user templates, was to standardize the templates and provide users with greater flexibility over their design; for both free and paid versions of Press Publisher. Once that was complete, we have started down the road of developing free templates to our users. We still over customized options for a design, but we are working hard to offer a variety of free templates.
At the present time, there are 10 and that number will grow by at least one per week. To see the templates in action, go to www.presspublisher.us (our demonstration site) and select the “Styles” drop-down menu to select and see the alternate styles. By default you will get the “Default” template. If you want another one, just email us after you sign up.
