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Tags: themes   smarty   templates

Themes and Templates

Themes and Templates determine how your pages look. A consistent look and feel to all your pages help establish the style and character of your site, as well as build your identity.

Themes provide you with:
A) positioning of the containers for content (header, footer, columns, module content, and block positions)
B) styling of the individual HTML elements

Templates provide:
A) position and layout within the containers defined in the theme
B) any specific styling necessary for the content placed in the container

This is for a few reasons (a technical discussion) -
1) the theme doesn't know what type of content will be placed in it, nor should it
2) the styling should be controlled by the theme, so it is consistent throughout the site
3) only the module knows what content it will present, so it should handle the details of the inner layout

Additional resources: Theming Your Church Website

Elements of the Default Theme

Smarty Tags

Last modified on 2010/9/12 by Steve