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Themes, Languages and Smarty Templates
In this article, we will be going into more detail on how the Third Light product is rebranded. This article is aimed at system administrators and web developers.
Third Light IMS sites are designed with great flexibility in mind, by ensuring that all of the pages can be rebranded or edited to suit your preferences. Customisations such as changing colours, logos and text are very popular, while it is also possible to make layout changes to create a completely customised interface.
The different customisations available are listed below.
- Themes (basic): A complete set of branding, including logo, colour and templates grouped together. Themes are easy to create from the Configuration -> Manage Themes menu, and different Themes can be assigned to different users and folders.
- Languages (intermediate): A set of words and phrases which are combined with Themes to allow translations and simplifying minor text changes. Languages are controlled from the Configuration -> Manage Languages menu, and can be varied from one user to another.
- Smarty Templates (advanced): Low-level HTML code which provides very fine control over the look and feel of IMS. Accessed from a secondary panel in the Configuration -> Manage Themes menu.
Special Considerations When Using Smarty Templates
Each page has its own template (.tpl) file. For example, the logout page has a template, logout.tpl, which can be edited to adjust that page.
When a Smarty Template customisation is made, this 'locks out' that page of your IMS site so that your changes are preserved, even if the main Third Light product version of that template is updated later. This behaviour is deliberately cautious, to avoid a situation where your changes could otherwise be overwritten.
When a file in the Smarty Templates is 'locked out' it will not be changed during upgrades, which can mean that new features are not visible on your site. To help you decide whether a customisation is worth this trade-off, here are some guidance notes.
The different customisations that can be made without 'locking out' changes are as follows:
- Logo change - adjusting the logo is the most popular rebranding choice and does not require any code editing.
- Colour changes - changes to the main colour palette can be made without editing code (see screenshot).
- Language and text changes - the complete set of words and phrases used in the IMS user interface can be adjusted without editing any code.
- Multiple languages - IMS supports more than one translation and Themes can be quickly transformed into other languages without editing code.
The following changes involve 'locking out' any future changes, and should be approached more cautiously. They are Smarty Template (.tpl) changes.
- Stylesheets and header/footer changes - changing the stylesheets or headers involves just a few files and has a dramatic effect. However, future changes to the modified files will be 'locked out' by your changes.
- Editing individual templates - if a template (tpl) file is edited, that file is 'locked out' from future changes.
Minor And Major Versions
Between minor versions (eg. 5.1 to 5.2) we ensure that the changes are transparently compatible with existing Themes, but sometimes we will announce that a new Theme will be required to see a new feature. We only do this when a new feature involves extensive updates and the changes cannot be included in a backwards-compatible or optional way.
Between major version updates like 5.0 to 6.0 we only guarantee compatibility with the last major version, and a new Theme is advisable to receive the full benefit of the update. For specific notes, it is recommended that you subscribe to our bi-monthly newsletters.
Added Tue, 24 Aug 2010 15:00:00 +0100