canvey
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Sep 21, 2002, 3:26 AM
Post #2 of 4
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Re: [Salvage] Newbie, Needs help please
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Hi Salvage,
First of all FrontPage and items like AM do not agree - best bet, is if you use FP is to make your artman directory (or whatever you call it) a subweb, and then leave well alone with FP.
What I have done on my site is that I use FTP to control uploading of template changes, scripts etc. However I have a duplicate copy of the templates called artman-templates. This I then use with FP, working mainly in the HTML view, once I have made the required changed to the template, I will publish to my local hard drive, and then FTP up to the artman directory.
This way AM and FP are both happy working alongside each other.
You can alter any of the templates, but be aware that mostly these templates are not full pages as you might be expecting rather they are individual components of a page - therefore many templates will have more than one option on them, depending upon the results of searches etc., by the scripts. Even if you will never use some of the components in the template pages, leave them in there, they will not cause any issues with the running of AM. If you do not use certain parts like say Next & Previous on the index pages, you will need to rem these out, as removing them, will cause AM to complain about missing parts of the templates.
You can substitute DW for FP, but whatever you use check to see if the application is making any changes to the templates on its own - I have never had any problems with FP2002, but I would advise running a few tests, and always have a backup of the original templates.
I will run a FTP copy of my artman directory to my local hard disk prior to any updating of the templates, so that if I make a mistake using FP, I still have a copy of the unchanged file on my PC (remember I run a duplicate template set just for FP - so always have two copies of the templates)
I have a different template for each category - for the index, article, headlines, printer - now many of them are identical - but what this method allows me to do is to make small changes in say wording on the templates to fit them to the category in question. As most of the common sections like head, header & footer are pulled in via SSI's (I use .shtml as my file ending), I find it very easy to update using AM.
I am currently building a new section for my site, and as a test, I am using AM to generate all the various sections - AM will supply two or three sections of each page, and all my main page has is two or three links to the various AM pages - meaning that I can quickly update the pages - as can anyone I give the rights to access those categories on AM. The beauty of the templates means that 90% of this new section is not even news related - yet AM can handle the pages - even the naviagtion for the sub-section is AM generated.
Hope some of the above is of benefit.
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