Blogs: Guide and Usage 
Template Packages
How to modify your template
EasyExpat
01 August, 2005 18:33
In order to offer a blog service, EasyExpat has chosen pLog.
pLog uses a template system in order to clearly separate what is
content from what is the core code. Users can develop their own
templates and the
template rendering engine uses a simple syntax to change the aspect of
their site a little : Smarty.
A good starting point to learn about Smarty is their crash-course: http://smarty.php.net/crashcourse.php Or if you want more details, a very nice manual is also available: http://smarty.php.net/manual/en/
How templates work
As we said above, pLog uses Smarty to render the contents of your
journal. That means that you can easily change the way the site looks
like just by going to the Administration Interface of your journal (http://<yourname>.blogexpat.com/admin.php) and
selecting a new set of templates [Control Center->Blog to choose the template amongs a list). But, how does that work? How can we
develop our own set of templates?
In order to view the files making a template you need to go to Control Center->Blog Template Editor. Then you can copy the chosen template into your own one. You will then be able to modify this customized template.
Click on your new template to see the list of files you can modify, usually similar to:
- commentarticle.template
- commentform.template
- demosites.template
- error.template
- features.template
- footer.template
- header.template
- main.template
- post.template
- postandcomments.template
- posttrackbacks.template
- samplerss.template
- album.template
- albums.template
- resource.template
- searchresults.template
In bold are the 3 files that you are the most likely to modify,
regarding usually the colums and the posts in the middle of the page. You will find the explanation for meaning of the files here.
If you are looking for more help on EasyExpat's blogs, do not forget that we have a dedicated forum.
EasyExpat on 
