CMS Made Simple Forums

I'm considering buying a commercial design template for my site - they are now as low as $20! What I get this way is 2-3 HTML pages (homepage, subpage with side column and subpage without side column) and CSS files.

How do I re-design my site starting with the above?

Thanks,
Igor

If that is of some help, this is design I intend to purchase:
http://www.4templates.com/view/search=4 ... 1/AX0338RD

In the "Documentation" section of this site, there is a User Handbook.

This section should answer most of your questions:
http://wiki.cmsmadesimple.org/index.php/User_Handbook/Getting_Started/Designer

Michel

Table-free layouts without intricate layouts are fairly straightforward to convert. The one you're looking at doesn't look too bad; provided the menus are already in an unordered list and only use images for backgrounds (i.e. not the menu text itself).

1. Take your new template html; plug in the {tags} found in a CMSMS default template
  a. replace the default 'filler' stuff in the new template with the {tags}, such as replacing the stylesheet references with {stylesheet}, metadata lines with {metadata}, replacing the whatever text with {sitename} - {title} and so forth.
  b. at a minimum, you need a {menu} (or {cms_module module='MenuManager'} ) call and a {content} block.
  c. You can leave some of the secondary filler text (sidebars, footers, etc) in the template until you've go an idea of what you want to put where, and how you'll do it (menu, news, image, content block, global content, hard-coded content, etc).
  d. Don't mess with anything in your new template other than what the {tags} replace.. don't inadvertently delete a or you could have a fit trying to figure out why the layout is broken.
  e. add your newly created template to CMSMS as a new template
2. Take the CSS from the new template design and add new stylesheet(s) in CMSMS; associate them with the template you just added.
3. Set a page to use your new template.
4. If the new template design included images; upload them to a directory underneath ./uploads/images and change the CSS and/or template HTML to reflect the actual path used.
5. Give 'er a test drive.
6. See the CMSMS Wiki documentation for more info.

The above can take just a matter of minutes; what takes time, and may cause you to lose some hair, is getting menus working 'just right' (the complicated ones can be a bugger; simple ones are, well.. simple to do, using minimal_menu.tpl for a menu template). Also on the 'to do' list would be adding CMSMS specific styles, such as for the breadcrumbs, News module or other addons.

The "Web Developer" toolbar extension for Firefox is a near-MUST HAVE tool for tweaking the CSS. Open your CMSMS site, with new template running, in a new window, activate the "edit CSS" function and have-at-it. Copy-and-paste what you come up with there, into the CMSMS stylesheet using the other browser window that's got your admin panel in it. (don't use Firefox's TABS for this; use two different browser windows). The "HTML Validator" extension is also pretty handy, allows you to check your code locally without going to W3 or some other web site.

http://wiki.cmsmadesimple.org/index.php ... _Tutorials

video 1

Thanks people, I have read / watched everything mentioned (rtfm, I know) and I'm getting more and more confident I'll manage somehow 

Best regards,
Igor