What involved, where to start

[Abul Kashem]

I am very keen to develop custom template for my directory.
But I am not sure where to start as I dont know what involved.

I have enough time and little programming knowledge, learning will not be a bar for me.

Looking for your guidance....

Thanks a lot

[sdawkins]

In most of my templates I sometimes start with one of the downloaded templates and a design of what I want to use. Then I go piece by piece in header, index, footer tpl. (fix the others later). It takes time, but gets there.

Here are two custom ones I am doing
http://www.momapproved.org
http://www.nhdirectory.net

And this one that is up to nearly 3000 links
http://www.findtoplinks.com

And in my signature, fan club, coupon-sites and bestpetdirectory (converted for esyn from phld by WTM) are also different.

[Sai_dallas]

http://www.momapproved.org/news.php

Gave an error (I now you are still working on it)


.

[WTM]

http://www.momapproved.org/news.php

Gave an error (I now you are still working on it)


.

News functionality has to be enabled from the admin panel - that's it.

[sdawkins]

Thanks, all those links will be removed as I won't be using them. Been just working on the template first.

[Vincent Wright]

to Abul Kashem

Here is how we do it.

First, design the page in Photoshop. Then prepare elements like rounded corners, colors, etc.

After that do it like sdawkins suggests. Do it bit by bit: start with header and footer. Change background color, add your logo, modify menus (change colors, change background color, probably change item shape, e.g. if it's square you can add rounded corners, and vice versa).

Then start changing specific pages. I would recommend to first look at link-display.tpl and view-link.tpl -- these control how listings and link details are displayed.