Domino Blog - editing default theme and tag library

The Lotus Notes Domino Blog template works out of the box, and provides all that is needed to get started with blogging using a "default theme":



You can however edit the look and feel however you choose, and either use a free theme that is used for say Wordpress (see here and here to see how) , or use your organizations branding.

To edit the theme is currently a manual effort, however can be done within the application and so no part of the template design needs to be changed. To edit your theme you need to go to "Advanced > HTML Templates".



HTML Templates

HTML Templates control the look and feel of every part of your website. They consist of "page" templates and "item" templates. The page templates control the layout of each individual page (e.g the homepage), and the item templates control how each line of content appears (this could be each entry on the home page, the search results, or each comment in a comments list). You can see a list of the default "page" templates below to give you an idea of what they are used for.



From the default templates created, you can see that they contain a mixture of html and "tags". These tags tell the system to insert data or functionality in the position you have positioned them in the html. A full list of tags and their use is attached to this document.

You can edit the default templates or add new ones, however you need to tell the system which ones to use. This can be done within the advanced section, view "Configuration" under action "Wizards > Site HTML Templates".





The different templates you see listed here are used for the following:

Template	Use
Site Page	Controls the layout of the homepage
Site Item	Controls how each line of content is displayed on the homepage
Document Page	Controls the layout of any document that is displayed full page (without comments)
Inline Comments Page	Controls the layout of any document that is displayed full page (with inline comments)
Inline Comments Item	Controls how each comment is formatted within the comments list within documents
Add Comment	Uses a "block template" and controls the layout of the add comment form within documents that have inline comments
Archive Page	Controls the layout of any archive page (could be content by month, category, tag)
Archive Item	Controls the formatting of each item displayed in the archive list
Search Page	Controls the layout of the search results page
Search Item	Controls the formatting of each item displayed in the search results (restricted tags available for this template - see tag list for supported tags)

You will also notice that we have "block templates". These are used to break our "page" templates down into manageable and reusable blocks. So for example in the default theme was have "banner" and "HTMLTop" and these contain the html for those parts of the html page.

They are then inserted into our html templates using the syntax <$ DXTemplateBlock Name="Banner" $> (remove the spaces before and after $). This was if we have a change to make we can make it once rather than for every page template.

Adding Images

Image can be uploaded within the view "Resources > Images". See below for how to refer to them in your html templates.

Default CSS

The default theme uses css that is stored within the template design. This is referred to in the "HTMLTop" block template and so can easily be changed to point to a different css file. By default, the site also points to a css file within the application which is stored under "Advanced > Resources > Style sheets" as "global.css". This file is empty, but so you can avoid changing the template design you can "override" css in this document. Alternatively just remove the link to the default css in the HTMLTop html and put all your css in "global.css".

To change where the system looks for this "global.css" stylesheet (or turn it off), you need to edit field "Style sheet - Screen" within the configuration document (view "configuration"), tabs "Site Settings > Advanced" section "Global Site Settings".

Referring to images or css within your template html

Each html page is loaded with a base href of "database.nsf/dx/". So you need to write your code to work from that point.

So images are stored in the database using "/dx/image.gif/$file/image.gif" so you only need to use src="image.gif/$file/image.gif".

Style sheets are accessed via the view "css" so they get the correct content type so they are referenced "../css/stylesheet.css".

Any files in the template are referenced "../image.gif".

If you reference images within your css, then you need to break out of that "css" view by using "../dx/image.gif/$file/image.gif".

Configuration Document

Any strings or settings that are not in the html templates are stored within one master "configuration document". This is accessed via "Advanced > Configuration".

Translation

Web sites are easily translated into other languages by editing strings in the configuration document, and editing the HTML templates. There are also some system strings like month names stored within the template itself. These can be edited within Script Libraries "LanguageNotes" and "LanguageGlobal" (although unsupported).

Further Information

Further information can be found at www.stevecastledine.com (tag "blog template") and/or within Notes help under "Lotus Notes > Web Logs".

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