The first step is to design your template on paper. When designing the template, you need to lay out where important areas of the interface will be and what they'll look like. These areas include the page title, navigation and content areas. You may require more areas, depending on the needs of your site.
After the template is designed, write a prototype HTML page for the template. Insert placeholder text in the places where the text may change from page to page. Below is a simple layout and the corresponding code:
| ||||
<html>
<head>
<title>Page Title</title>
</head>
<body>
<table cellpadding="6" cellspacing="0" border="0">
<tr>
<td colspan="2" bgcolor="#aaaaff">
<big><b>Page Title</b></big>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" bgcolor="#aaaaff" nowrap>
Nav 1<br>
Nav 2<br>
Nav 3
</td>
<td valign="top" bgcolor="white">
Content goes here.
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>
This thread is for discussions of Creating a Template.
I thought this tutorial was very helpful. I was able to development many new ideas with this simple way of creating templates.
Thanks,
Lewis