4.1 Introducing Templates

First, let me introduce the 'template' concept. Suppose you're working for a guitar amplifiers manufacturer and you need to collect information on all your products. You pick up a sheet of paper (of course you'd use recycled paper, wouldn't you?) and write down information about a model called, let's say, 'Wing'.

Wing

Now, you and your colleagues have to create similar data sheets for all other models; you can simply show them the one you've just created and they'll replace your information with the ones belonging to their models.

But you can make your colleagues' work easier if you generalize your data sheet replacing information belonging to the particular amplifier you've analyzed with general labels:

<amplifier name>

This is not an amplifier data sheet, but a 'template'. It doesn't refer to any particular amplifier yet, but everybody can use it as a model to create her or his data sheets simply replacing template's general definitions with the information referring to a given amplifier.

The same concept can be applied to web sites. A site is made by a number of pages, usually characterized by a common 'look and feel' in order to provide a better user experience. So, instead of creating many similar pages, you can work on a single generic template. Every page will be created by replacing template labels with particular contents.

An example is G-Cows' site (http://www.g-cows.org/). Every page has the same structure: an header on the top of the page with a link to an accessible version of the site, a navigation bar right under this header, a secondary navigation bar on the left and so on.

Please note that for each page the currently selected section and subsection are highlighted, that the site has two versions differing in layout but build upon the same contents and that it's a multilingual site with cross links among different layouts and different languages. The template technique allows much more complexity than you may think at first!