From working with other CMS like Joomla, Drupal and WordPress I’m used to have a certain logic to my template. Assuming a basic three column layout (left sidebar, main content, right sidebar) this is one approach which I will continue to refine in a later article – to only show an area if there is actual published content in this assigned to it.

So, consequently, you don’t have to manually assign a different layout to pages, post, articles, … but only fill the areas with content and the template will automatically adapt.

This snippet will only wrap an area if there is a published content element assigned to it.

temp.LEFTCONTENT < styles.content.getLeft
temp.LEFTCONTENT.stdWrap {
	wrap = <div id="left"> |</div>
	required = 1
}
 
temp.MAINCONTENT < styles.content.get
temp.MAINCONTENT.stdWrap {
	wrap = <div id="main"> | </div>
	required = 1
}
 
temp.RIGHTCONTENT < styles.content.getRight
temp.RIGHTCONTENT.stdWrap {
	wrap = <div id="right"> | </div>
	required = 1
}

Assign the temp objects to available subparts in your HTML template file.

page.10 = TEMPLATE
page.10 {
 
	workOnSubpart = document
 
	subparts.leftcontent < temp.LEFTCONTENT
	subparts.maincontent < temp.MAINCONTENT
	subparts.rightcontent < temp.RIGHTCONTENT
 
}

More on styling these resulting areas soon …