CMS template design

A template is the visual foundation for a content management system. It defines the appearance of the page to the visitor. The template controls the structure of the page, the colors, the menus, and where the different items of content appear. Without it, the page would be a plain text list with some randomly-placed images and so on, with no colors or structure.

Templates are also a fundamental part of the way CMS websites are different to flat sites (normal HTML sites with static pages): they help to enable the way a content management system isolates design and content. The template forms the structure of the page, the design; and whatever happens with the content is independent of this. You can change either and it doesn’t affect the other to any great degree. This is in contrast to standard websites.

The thing to remember about a template is that it simply makes your life easier; you don’t have to follow it slavishly if you don’t want to. All a template does is give you a framework: you can just leave it as-is, load your site content, and have a site up and running very quickly. Or, you can change just about everything to suit your own design, at the cost of greater time expenditure.

Colors, positions, layout, menus, modules – everything can be changed. Choose a template in the first place because you like something about it – maybe the rough layout, maybe the menu positions. After that, everything is alterable, especially the ‘appearance’ of anything. You can remove almost everything and have an empty page for a big art layout if you like – or just change some colors and graphics. The most useful thing in any template is probably the menu choice as it often determines how you will go forward.

With some CMS you can have a different template on every page. However, this facility wouldn’t normally be used, though a subtly different template version will often be used for different sections within a website. The most common uses for this are:

1. To maintain a site theme but introduce subtle changes for different categories.

2. For group websites where many different branches or departments want a distinct style in their section of the site.