Question

Q: Hi all,
Could someone help me out in the customization of TWiki pages?

Q: I have TWiki up and running well.

R: Congratulations! The last time you wrote you were having difficulty with this. I have some thoughts of trying to write TWiki installatiion instructions that are simplified. Perhaps you will have some suggestions on where you had trouble? I will let you know when I have something for you to look at.

Q: The problem is that of customization. I am trying to create "customized TWiki Web pages" for my company. But I seem to be missing some thing in the templates. I am able to create new Web pages but the new ("customized") pages also contain the regular topics (TWiki.Main, TWiki,Know and Test) on them. What I want is to have (site-level) web pages which have templates & Web Preferences of my owm and the TWiki.Main to contain the regular templates. How is it normally done?

R: The regular topics (TWiki.Main, TWiki,Know and Test) come from the template, IIRC. I think you need to go and find the template(s) and look at them. They are in a subdirectory under your twiki installation named templates.

Q: Also,Could someone give me simple stuff like to how to go about creating new templates et al?

R: (Since I am a newbie, others will hopefully chip in to clarify or correct anything I've missed.) Go find the templates and look at them. Look at the view template. Search for the variable %TEXT% -- basically it "contains" all the "custom" content of your page -- everything else on the template (ignoring the category table and attachments for the moment), is HTML "code" to control the look and feel of the page.

Experiment with making changes.

If you want different templates for different webs, create subdirectories below templates named the same as your webs. (If you have a Web named "Pavan", create a subdirectory under templates named "Pavan".) Put customized templates for the Pavan web in this directory, using the same template names as found in templates. TWiki will look for templates in this directory before templates (for the Pavan web).

There is also a way to provide different templates for each page (topic). I haven't done this yet, and somebody else may jump in with those instructions, but my suggestion is to start with this, and then move on.

Q: Thanks & Regards, Pavan

R: Hope this helps!

PS: Why don't you fill in the TWiki version and so forth below, that might affect some of the answers that you need.

• TWiki version:
• Web server:
• Server OS:

-- RandyKramer - 17 Jul 2001

Answer

It seems to me that some of the TWiki philosophy has been ignored Randy, the question seems to be geared to what we would qualify as "obvious" for any long-time TWiki user (so obvious that it is easy to miss!!!).

Pavan, to customize your pages you probably want to read some of the TWiki history, and probably even check out some of the more formal wikies (in the sense that no pages can be created without a referring topic). It seems to me that you are looking into the templates to customize your web pages, but the templates are just to customize the look of your web pages. The actual content is just in twiki topics, as any other page. The only thing you want to change from the templates is the apearance and positioning of the elements in the page.

So if you still see the same topics like WebHome and the like, it is because you haven't edited these pages in the TWiki itself. And on the links and tables inside the page, these are defined in yet other TWiki topics, like WebPreferences, TWikiPreferences, and TWikiWebs.

-- EdgarBrown - 17 Jul 2001

Edgar,

Thanks for chipping in! You're right, he's probably more interested in changing content than changing templates.

Out of curiosity, what TWiki philosophy are you referring to?

-- RandyKramer - 29 Jul 2001

I was just refering to the basic wiki idea which is the one that gave birth to the Wiki:WardCunningham Wiki, and is also expressed in the WikiCulture, and even some of it in WelcomeGuest. Or basically the idea that it's a live environment, and not a web-creation program.

-- EdgarBrown - 30 Jul 2001

Edgar,

Thanks!

-- RandyKramer - 31 Jul 2001