Book Image

Building Websites with Microsoft Content Management Server

Book Image

Building Websites with Microsoft Content Management Server

Overview of this book

Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 is a dynamic web publishing system with which you can build websites quickly and cost-efficiently. MCMS provides the administration, authoring, and data management functionality, and you provide the website interface, logic, and workflow. Once your website is up and running, your content contributors can add and edit content on their own, without the need to work with developers or the IT department. First time developers of Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 face a relatively steep learning curve. Not only are they expected to be conversant in the Microsoft .NET Framework, they are also required to be familiar with the concepts of MCMS 2002. Many beginners to MCMS start out by looking at the example site that ships with the product; tweaking it, dissecting it and turning it inside out using the obscure code comments as markers. However, when it comes to starting their own website from scratch, many are baffled ? where do they begin? This book exists to answer that question; teaching the essential concepts of MCMS 2002 in a clear, straightforward and practical manner. Containing answers to some of the most asked questions in developer newsgroups, this book is a treasure trove of tricks and tips for solving the problems faced by MCMS developers. This is a unique resource focused exclusively on the needs of developers using MCMS. It doesn?t waste time and pages on user or administrator level information that is well covered in other documentation. It?s a distillation of practical experience that developers need to get results, fast. The authors carefully structured example project complements and extends the knowledge gained from an initial look at the examples that ship with MCMS.
Table of Contents (28 chapters)
Building Websites with Microsoft Content Management Server
Credits
About the Authors
Introduction

Something About Templates


Templates predetermine the layout, design, and behavior of a page.

You can use a single template to create multiple pages that share the same design elements. In our TropicalGreen website, we will have a template called Plant. There are thousands of species of plants in the tropics. Each plant’s web page will use the Plant template and so although the content for each plant’s page is different, the look and feel will be the same because they share the same template. And if you decide to remove the plant’s picture from each and every single web page, all you have to do is to amend that single template and thousands of plant postings are updated.

In MCMS, templates are made up of:

  • MCMS template files on the web server

  • Template gallery items in the CMS repository

Each template file is linked to a related template gallery item.

MCMS Template Files

MCMS template files dictate the overall look and feel of the web pages, how the content is positioned, the colors and fonts used...