Change look
Whether right at the beginning or after all pages are finished – at some point you will think about how your website should look like. CMSimple_XH makes it relatively easy for you: Change the visual impression of the entire website or individual pages “at the push of a button”.
Templates
CMSimple_XH uses templates to display the pages. These templates consist of a number of folders, files, images, etc., which are grouped in a folder with an individual template name. The templates can influence many factors, for example the position of page elements (headers, sidebars, footer, content), font sizes and colors, lists, tables and more. At delivery, CMSimple_XH already contains some example templates. These can be activated relatively easily for the entire CMS or for individual pages.
Choose template
→ → → Site : Template :
Under this setting, you select the desired template, which will then be effective for the entire website.
→ → [Select page] → Tab: Page → Page template :
Under this setting, you select the desired template, which will then be effective only for the selected page.
Add a new template
Maybe the provided example templates don't meet your needs? There are a lot of CMSimple_XH templates available, most of them provided for free by other users. The decentralized structure of our open source community means that sometimes you have to search for them a bit.
An in any case current offer of templates, you can find on our homepage in the Template repository.
Searching with a search engine for “CMSimple_XH” templates also helps.
If you have found something suitable, you will usually be offered a ZIP archive for download. Download this ZIP to your computer and unpack it afterwards. In any case, the archive contains at least one folder that contains the template. (Sometimes you have to read the template description first).
With an FTP program, you now load this folder into your CMSimple_XH installation and there into the folder templates/. Then activate the new template as described above.
Modify an existing template
Most of the templates offered allow you to customize them to your own needs with little effort. For minor changes, such as color specifications or font sizes, a little knowledge about CSS is enough. For layout changes, at least some knowledge about HTML is required, and sometimes PHP knowledge is necessary. In any case, you should inform yourself about the structure of CMSimple_XH templates, which you can do in the developer section under Templates.
Glossary
Admin menu
The Admin menu is the control center of the system. All CMS actions are controlled via this menu. It appears only in the backend, that is, only when you are logged in to the system.
CMS
CMS = Content Management System
A CMS is a software system that allows you to edit websites in the browser.
CSS
CSS = Cascading Style Sheets
A formatting language for HTML web pages. The goal here is to separate content from appearance.
FTP
FTP = File Transfer Protocol
Data transfer protocol in networks that is used to upload and download data to and from the server. In addition, various operations are possible with FTP, such as creating, deleting and renaming directories and files, as well as assigning read and write permissions. To use FTP, you need an FTP program, also called an FTP client.
PHP
PHP = Hypertext Preprocessor, originally Personal Home Page Tools
PHP is a scripting language commonly used to create dynamic websites.
Templates
Templates are design patterns for websites that behave like masks. They determine the place where elements appear and influence their appearance.
ZIP
The ZIP file format allows lossless compression of files incl. entire directories. The reduced file sizes are well suited for archiving or online data transfer (upload/download).