Style Administration

This section provides an explanation of how GVC.SiteMaker template styles are administered. This process involves the creation and management of template styles, which control the layout and appearance of a site.

There are two types of administrators, System and Style. A System Administrator has access to all styles, can change their publication status, and determine the default style. Style Administrators are limited to creating new styles and making changes to existing styles for units they have been assigned and any of its child units.

Style Creation

A System or Style Administrator may create a style by clicking the 'Create New Style' link on the GVC.SiteMaker Manage Website Styles page. This displays the Create Website Style page. The StyleID entered must be unique from all the other styles created. The StyleID is used internally by the GVC.SiteMaker application, so there are certain restrictions on what characters may or may not be used.

The style Name must also be unique. This is displayed in the picklist for a user configuring a web-site to select. The picklist is filtered to list only those published styles that have been assigned to the same unit as the web-site. However, all web-sites are assigned the style designated as the 'default' when first created.

Style Management

A System or Style Administrator may manage a style by clicking the corresponding 'Configure' link for the desired style on the GVC.SiteMaker Manage Website Styles page. This displays the Create Website Style page. From this page the data entered when creating a style can be edited and changed. The HTML code file can be downloaded in order to edit it and then be re-uploaded to the GVC.SiteMaker system. Any web-sites that are using the updated style will automatically reflect the changes.

To see what an actual style looks like, you can enter a SiteID into the Preview text field and click the Preview button. A second browser window opens to display the web-site in the style being managed. In this manner, you can determine whether or not the style being managed is working properly. Some siteID's you may want to preview are 'example' and 'features'. The 'admin' web-site makes use of a variety of settings for database tables. The 'features' web-site is the siteID for the web-site you are currently viewing. This way you can be certain to know if your style template is effective in displaying a known web-site content.