CMS Made Simple Forums

Hello, I've just downloaded this software and I'm hoping someone can help me out. I have an exisiting website design made in Dreamweaver that I want to use, but I can't figure out how to make it work with this CMS.

Can someone tell me how to do this? Thank you!

Hello and Welcome to CMSMS...

Most often you will take a static page and copy/paste it into a new template... HTH...

Go to Layout » Templates, click "Add New Template", hilite all you see (unless you want the XHTML part in the top, recommended) paste yours in, note the default {sitename}, {metadata}, {stylesheet}, {title}, {menu}, {content} tags...

Remove/Delete the static menu and replace it with the {menu} tag (if you know which default menu style you want then add the template call, i.e. {menu template='cssmenu.tpl'} menu CSS will/may be attached later)...

In the content area replace existing content with the default {content} tag, you must have at least one default content tag...

If you have more than one content area, remove existing content and add second {content block='secondcontent'} tag...

Add any more content tags you need, say for a side bar with news etc. (all content blocks need a unique name)...

click Submit...

Add new style sheet (CSS), go to Layout » Stylesheets click "Add a Stylesheet" name it then copy/paste your existing CSS/stylesheet...

  click Submit...

Go back to Templates, across from yours click the little orange CSS icon to attach style sheets in the drop down find yours click it then click Add a Stylesheet button add any other CSS you may need such as a menu stylesheet...

Now it's ready to use, when adding/editing page/s a drop down for selecting templates lets you choose yours, this is just the basics, you will need to change some styles i.e. the menu will/may need some styling changes...

This is what you see as a default Layout » Templates » Add New Template...

    This is Very important as is the next line...


{sitename} - {title}
{metadata}  This is highly recommended, useful for adding meta tags, base href=, and such...
{stylesheet}  This is a must so you can attach stylesheets...





  {sitename}  The name of the site DUH ...





  {menu}  This is where you get the wonderful dynamically generated menu, my favorite part of using this system no more editing every page just to add one more page to the menus...





  {title}  The title of the page, taken from the Content Edit page mode Title:
  {content}  Must have, will show up in page edit mode as Content: even if you don't add it






Note: There is a wonderful Flash video of how to convert a template to a CMSMS template here: http://cmsmadesimple.org/uploads/media/ ... colate.htm

More info... http://wiki.cmsmadesimple.org/index.php/User_Handbook

Thank you so much for the reply. I'm going to give that a try right now.

I've got one more question while I'm here because I'm sure I'll be asking it anyway when I'm done.

I have a horizontal menu on my design right under the header image. This menu is made up of individual images for each menu link. How can I work this into the cms?

I hope I'm being clear, if not pelase let me know. I can send you a link to my test site I attempted to set up with Joomla so you can see the menu I'm talking about. (I failed with Joomla because I couldn't get this menu section to work)

Depends on if it's an Image Map menu or just image rollover effects...

More samples... http://multiintech.com/ look in Image Map Menus...

Allright, I got it up and running with my design. However I can't seem to get the stysheet to take effect. I created a new one in the admin panel and pasted my stylesheet info into it. But it's not working.

Also how do I get rid of that "test page" at the top?

Here's a link to the test page, you can see what i mean now about the menu navigation. Each dog picture should be an individual menu link with the text in the brown area. They are not rollovers.

Can you let me know how to make that work please?

http://www.petstyleswebdesign.com/cms/

I'm still having trouble with the menu. I hate to be a pest and bump this up in less than a day, but it's really bugging me. If anyone has time, I'd appreciate any suggestions.

It took about 2 hours to change this...

http://www.multiintech.com/Templates/in ... wnews.html

Into this...

http://www.multiintech.com/Templates/in ... /pets.html

Great! How do I do it? Without the rollovers.
Can I just copy the source code of that page and paste it into a new template?
I'm not sure how to make the menu rollover-less though.

Thank you!

I'm not sure how to make the menu rollover-less though.

I'm not sure what you mean by this?...

It's just the image in the background with the menu over it, if you mean not have any changes, no color change or underline when hovered then just have it the same as the a ...

I meant without the drop down menu. I'm sorry, I know this is probably a silly question but I'm not very technical.

I copied and pasted the code into another template, which can now be seen on that link I posted. Where's the header and menu images in the code? I don't see them....I'll need to change the image addresses to the ones I have so I won't be using yours.

Thanks again for being so paitent with me. 

I managed to figure out that the image locations where in the stylesheet. So I've got that working, I think. I'm still trying to fiure out how to get rid of the drop down menu.

Of course, in the process I came cross another problem. I tried adding a content page and got this error:

The requested URL /keyword.php was not found on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

I searched the forums but couldn't seem to find anything telling me what to do about this keyword.php file I seem to be missing.

Go back to my page and right click the word Theme and save as...

Then go to http://themes.cmsmadesimple.org/using_t ... .html  and read the last part about .xml files...

  enjoy 

....and now I feel stupid. Where's this "theme" I should be right clicking on...and why am I saving it? I already have the theme don't I?

I want to use what I have already if I can. Can't I just get rid of the drop down menu on that? is saving this file going to help me with that keyword.php file I'm missing?

I'm so lost. 

I still can't get rid of the drop down menu, and I can't add my own content pages since I'm missing that keyword.php file.
I'm assuming I have to add content pages before making my own menu.

I did find the template you were tlaking about on your site and i downloaded it. But I don't know how to make my images work with it. I'm sorry to keep bothering you about this.

If you read the instructions on the themes page it tells you how to install an .xml file for templates once you do this it will be available to use it with your pages, the images will work because they come with it...

That .xml file is a complete template, unlike the one you tried to get from my site which is more like using a hand coded HTML page it has no calls in it for the menu that's why it still has my page names in the menu, please just install it and all will be ok...