If you have read any tutorial on templates you will have seen the way this
works. Consider a simple page layout with a header, left-hand navigation bar
and a central area for the page content. A site like this might have the
following template files:
works. Consider a simple page layout with a header, left-hand navigation bar
and a central area for the page content. A site like this might have the
following template files:
<!-- main.htm -->
<html>
<head><title>Example</title></head>
<body>
<table><tr><td>{HEADER}</td></tr>
<tr><td>{LEFTNAV}</td><td>{CONTENT}</td></tr>
</table>
</body></html>
<!-- header.htm -->
<img src="sitelogo.jpg">
<!-- leftnav.htm -->
<br><a href="foo">Foo</a>
<br><a href="bar">Bar</a>
You can see how the page is going to be built from these elements. The main
template controls the layout of the page, and the header and leftnav templates
control the common elements. The identifiers in braces {} act as placeholders
and get substituted by the template code. The key benefit is that the graphic
designers can edit these files as they see fit, adding fonts, colours and
graphics, or perhaps completely altering the layout of the page. They can edit
these files using normal HTML editing tools, even visual ones, because the files
are straight HTML (or HTML fragments) with no PHP code.
template controls the layout of the page, and the header and leftnav templates
control the common elements. The identifiers in braces {} act as placeholders
and get substituted by the template code. The key benefit is that the graphic
designers can edit these files as they see fit, adding fonts, colours and
graphics, or perhaps completely altering the layout of the page. They can edit
these files using normal HTML editing tools, even visual ones, because the files
are straight HTML (or HTML fragments) with no PHP code.
