Editing the template

Download the template zip.  The template is built using PHP includes pages which 'call' the header, top menu, right hand side panel and footer as well as the main content for each page.  I've also made a Getting Started PDF that you can read off line. 

If you are running Windows XP you will be able to unzip the zip files by right clicking on the zipfile and using the Windows Unzip facility.  Otherwise download 7Zip, a free zip utility.  To read the PDFs you will need Adobe Reader, also free.

Download Uniform Server so you can view your site in your regular web-browser as you edit it, and Filezilla to ftp the edited version up to your site.

We suggest you sit down and plan your web site so that you know how many pages you want to have, what to call those pages and how they relate to one another.  For a large site, for example the Galen's Garden site itself, the site is designed using a kind of family tree with pages in folders or even subfolders for ease of use.

For a site where all the main pages are in the main folder, and where you do not want to edit the header image or the styling, the guidelines are as follows:

Open up template.php in your chosen html editor and save it as the name of your first page.  For example index.php, about.php or sitemap.php.  Do this for each of your chosen pages.

For each of those pages, create a page for the content in the text folder by opening up text.html and saving it as index.html etc as above.

Open up each php page in turn and edit the following in the html.

A.  FIND

<!-- #######CHANGE text.php to the NAME OF the FILE from your text folder that you want to include, for example text/index.php -->
<script language="php">
include "text/text.html";>
</script></div>

CHANGE text.html to the name of the corresponding html page in your text folder, for example index.html

B.  FIND

<!--- EDITING the Description and Keywords metatags and your page title below helps your search engine rankings-->

<meta name="Description" content="*" />

<meta name="Keywords" content="*" />

<title>*</title>

AND add your description, keywords and title in place of the * sign so they look like this

<meta name="Description" content="This is the description of my page and includes the keywords I am using most often in my text" />

<meta name="Keywords" content="most important keyword or phrase, keyword1, keyword 2, key phrase 1, keyphrase2" />

<title>My most important keyword page</title>

C. FIND

<!--- Text below this line appears on the page - Header starts below this line -->
<div id="top">
<div id="header">
<div class="superHeader">
<span>*</span> </div>


AND add your tag line in place of the * sign in the <span> * </span> line so it looks like this.

<span>tagline with my most important keyword</span>

Editing the includes pages

Now you need to make the header and top menu relevant to your site.

Go to the includes folder and open head.html.

Type in your header title and subtitle

<p> class="headerTitle">*</p>
<p class="headerSubTitle">*</p>

<p class="headerTitle">Web Site Title</p>
<p class="headerSubTitle"> Your web site sub-title</p>

Editing the top menu bar

Go to the includes folder and open topmenu.html.

Edit the links so that they reflect the pages on your site.

<a href="index.php">Home</a> |<br /> <a href="about.php">Editing</a> |<br /> <a href="anotherpage.php">Another Page</a>

If you want to link to an external site then use the full url, for example http://www.galensgarden.co.uk/index.php

Edit the footer

Go to the includes folder and open foot.html.

Change the copyright name to your own.  There is a link to sitemap.php in the footer which you can remove if you don't want to give visitors a site map for your site.

Edit the right hand side panel

The right hand side panel is right.html in the includes folder and itself includes three short pages called 1.html, 2.html, and 3.html

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="php">
include "includes/1.html";
</SCRIPT>

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="php">
include "includes/2.html";
</SCRIPT>

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="php">
include "includes/3.html";
</SCRIPT>

You can edit the pages called 1.html, 2.html, and 3.html themselves.  You can also give them user friendly names instead, such as emailme.html, address.html, or advert.html, as long as the name of the html page matches the name of the includes page in right.html

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="php">
include "includes/emailme.html";
</SCRIPT>

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="php">
include "includes/address.html";
</SCRIPT>

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="php">
include "includes/advert.html";
</SCRIPT>

You can delete the pages in the template or add more as long as the name of the html pages is the same as an actual html page in your includes folder.