Modifying the templates

Changing Colors

Any changes you want to make to colors on your template can be made in the 2004web.css file. As you play with them, you may discover that it's very easy to make the templates ugly quickly. We'll be developing color palettes for folks who'd like them, so be sure and check back often on the webmasters site

Changing the Header

Page title and Deparment Name - see Using the templates.

Colors

ANYTHING YOU WANT (or use the defaults).

If you want the header background color to be pink, open "2004web.css" in the library folder and change

.headersolid {background-color: #3f3f72;}
to
.headersolid {background-color: pink;}

If you want the stripe to be gray, change

.headerline {background-color: #cc6600;}
to

.headerline {background-color: gray;}

Want to include a photograph in the header? - see Using the templates.

Navigation bar, Sidebar and Footer

To add a sidebar, to some pages and not others,

1. save a copy of template.dwt and name it "sidebar.dwt."
2. save a copy of 2004web.css and name it "sidebar.css"
3. change the link in line 38 from "2004web.css" to sidebar.css
4. in sidebar.css change the sidebar color from #FFFFFF to the background color of your choice.
5. Make a new page from the template sidebar.dwt.

You can also change the navigation bar (called ".leftbar") and footer (called ".footer") colors in the same file.

2004print.css

The print style sheet is set-up so that the navigation bar and the breadcrumb row disappear when you print any page in your site. If you prefer that they print, simply delete lines 7 and 32 in the 2004print.css file.

Weird Code Issues

Avoid Word Wrap in Dreamweaver

It will break the javascript in the campus search box.

Questions, comments or ideas for 2005 templates?

Credits

Many thanks to Amy Young and John Barclay who gave up their personal time to come up with excellent ideas for improving last year's templates and for catching bugs before the release.