For example, see Figure 2. If you want all your folders to look alike, except for the color of the page background, you can create or install a top level Theme and then edit only the background color in each of the folders. However, all other settings continue to be defined from the top level. In Figure 2, all the text attributes are the same even though a different background color is defined. When you make a change to the text size or font, or some other parameter, all those other changes will be inherited down to all the inside folders since they haven't been specifically defined in those inside folders.

Fig 2

Or, (see Figure 3) you can assign a Theme to each of your top level folders, and have a completely different look and feel for each of them. In that case, anything you edit will appear only in the folder hierarchy inside that Theme.

Fig 3

Nested Themes

Sometimes you'll want to use one Theme inside another. Remember that all the settings from higher up will be inherited unless they're overridden by more local settings.

For example:

Used by itself, Theme B has the content cell undefined because it's the same as the page background, which is white. So the content cell background is white by default.

However, when you place the Theme B on a folder somewhere inside the Theme A, it will be beige because the specific outside wrapper settings has bled through to override the undefined content cell background color of Theme B. Since this isn't what you want, you'll need to specifically set the inside Theme's content cell color to white.

In most cases it won't be necessary to do anything special, but be aware you may need to be careful to specifically define some settings on the "inside" Theme that have bled through from the "outside" Theme.

ť Choosing a Theme with Theme Manager

Theme Manager allows you to choose the page wrapper, the material which wraps around the content area in the center of the page, and comes with some coordinated color definitions for page content. In the initial site setup process, you will be prompted to choose a Theme from a number of screenshot thumbnail graphics. If you click one of the screenshot thumbnails, a larger image will pop up, with annotations regarding that particular Theme. A ReadMe link will reveal more details. A number of color options are available for each Theme.

Along with the usual Theme choices, there is an option for "Empty Theme" and "Themes Off." "Empty Theme" turns on the page-wrapper, but all the settings are blank, so you can start with a clean slate to create your own Theme. "Themes Off" turns off themes so that you can use other methods of laying out your pages. If you choose this in the initial setup process, you will go instead to a page where you can choose buttons and a background color for your site.

When you go back to the Theme Manager after initial site setup, you will see two choices by the Install button: Start from scratch, and Attempt to preserve as many existing settings as possible. If you start from scratch, all your existing settings will be overwritten with those of the new Theme. If you have done work on the navigation column, multi-purpose colum, or top or bottom cells that you don't want to lose, you can attempt to preserve these settings if you wish.

Tip: to save your existing settings before making changes, (so you can go back to them if you wish), you can export a configuration file and reimport it later to restore your settings. See Sharing WCMS Settings below, for details.

After initial site setup, you can reach the top level Theme Manager's "Choose a Theme" form by going to the Control Panel > Theme Manager menu > Choose a Theme.

To reach the Theme Manager in a folder, first click on Edit Folder, and then you will see the Theme Manager menu.

Some User Items allow users to turn them off in their personal preferences.

Be sure to read the ReadMe links associated with the User Items you're considering.

After initial site setup, you can reach the top level User Item Manager's forms by going to the Control Panel > User Item Manager menu > Choose a Folder Item.

To reach the User Item Manager in a folder, first click on Edit Folder, and then you will see the User Item Manager menu.

ť Theme Cell Optional Item Menus

Themes have 5 editable table cells: Top cell, nav cell, content cell, multi-purpose cell, and bottom cell. All these except the content cell have an "optional items" menu where you can turn on various links and elements (a search blank, a user counter, a login link, etc.). To turn these on and off for each dell, use the "Optional Items" menus in each cell.

Extensions, Folder, and User Items sometimes need to place elements into the user interface in page wrapper areas controlled by the Theme. This is done by enabling Optional Items. A plugin may merely put itself into the popup Optional Item menu as a choice, or it may actually enable itself. For example, when you install the LiveX Extension, it automatically places itself in the top cell of the Theme by placing itself into the Top Cell Optional Item menu and selecting itself. If you would rather have the LiveX in the nav, multi-purpose, or bottom cell, you can go into the Edit Theme Settings menu and deselect it from the top cell, and select it in the cell in which you want it to appear.

If you change Themes after you've done this, and chosen "Start from scratch," you will need to go into the Edit Theme menu and manually reselect the Optional Items you want enabled. If you choose to attempt to preserve existing settings, these should be preserved.

Sysop can edit any fields with any contents, but the form processor will not let hosts without WCTL privileges edit any fields containing WCTL. The other fields will be changed as requested, but for fields containing WCTL, the value will not change and an error message will be shown.

Note: If, during your Theme editing, the items disappear entirely from the Optional Items menus, you can always go to the "Choose a..." menu and deselect the plugin, submit the form, then return to the menu and reselect it. This should replace any the missing Optional Items and reselect the default ones.

ť Editing WCMS Settings

All WCMS settings can be edited. For the top level, you can find the various settings under a popup menu in the control panel. Pop up the Theme Manager menu to find "Edit Theme Settings." Similarly, pop up the Component Manager menu to find edit options for the Top Level, Folder View, Message View, and Toolbar. The Extension Manager, Folder Item Manager, and User Item Manager menus each have an edit screen for each extension you have installed.

To find these menus for a folder, use the Edit Folder screen.

You can edit either the value there or the click a link to be taken to the edit screen at the location from which the value is inherited, if you want to edit all occurrences of that value in the hierarchy rather than that one local value.

When you get ready to submit the form, you have several options:

Set only unique values (values which differ from the inherited values)
If you are setting only one or two local values and want everything else to inherit (as in Figure 2 above), choose this option.
Set all values explicitly (set all local values to prevent inheritance from above for any of the settings)
If you have a whole separate Theme hierarchy defined at this (as in Figure 3 above) and you don't want values to inherit from above, choose this option.
Delete all local values to revert to the inherited values
If you want to clear out all the local values so everything inherits, choose this option.

Security permission checks are also applied to WCMS field edits.

For more information on WCMS inheritance, see the Inheritance section above.

Tip: If you want to remove or add the background "pinstripes," locate the /webx/html/plugins/bgs directory on your server. In that directory are a number of different background stripes and patterns you can use in customizing your Theme. To invoke one of these images for a background, fill in "/plugins/bgs/image.gif," for example, into one of the Theme background color fields.

ť Sharing or Backing Up Settings: export

You can share your settings with another site, or move them from your development site to your production site, by exporting them to create a wrapper.set file. You'll find the Export/backup form in the Theme Manager > edit theme settings page. If you want to export top-level settings, use the Export option in the menu right there in the control panel. If you want to export folder-level settings, go into the Edit Folder page for the folder, and use the Export menu there.

Once you're on the correct Export page, choose a filename. The usual naming convention is to use a ".set" file extension, but you can really name it anything you want. (If you're a developer creating Themes for distribution, please see the Developer WCMS SDK page for additional instructions.)

Click Export. A text file of Theme settings (all Theme, component, and other WCMS plugin settings) will appear in your Web Crossing server directory.

If you have images or custom templates which go with your Theme, be sure to send those along when you share the wrapper.set file and tell the recipient where they need to go.

ť Sharing or Restoring Settings: import

To Import the settings file on the other server, place the images and template files where they are supposed to go. You'll find the Import/restore form in the Theme Manager > edit theme settings page.

If you have a ".set" file (with or without associated images), you can use the Import menu option. Fill in the name of the ".set" file in the Import page at the level at which you want to assign those settings (top level vs. a folder), and Import the settings. After you do this, your "Choose a Theme" page will not show your Imported Theme, but it will be completely functional in every other regard. If you need to use this Theme in some other folder, you'll need to re-Import it there.

ť Installing More Choices

You can easily select, purchase, and automatically add more WCMS plugins to your site via our Plugin Server.

More information on this will be provided later in development.

ť Disabling Themes

If you don't want to use the WCMS, you don't have to. Customization can also be accomplished by placing HTML into the Banner and Footer fields in the Control Panel and choosing buttons from the control panel.

To turn off the Themes, simply go to Control Panel > Banner/footer page and turn Themes off.

If you change your mind later and decide you do want to use a Theme, turn it back on in the same location.

Even if you turn off Themes, you can still select and edit the other WCMS plugins from the WCMS Manager menus.

ť Localization Manager

Part or all of any Web Crossing site is localizable, meaning the user interface can be translated into as many languages as desired, or the site can remain in a single language, but you can edit the terminology as you wish. For example, if you're in Quebec, you could have a dual French/English site, and let users choose their language of choice at registration. Or if you have primarily English-speaking visitors, but want to change all the instances of the word "discussion" to "topic" instead, you can do that.

Adding a language - Choosing a default language - Removing a language
In the Localization Manager is a page where you can add a language, choose a default language, and remove languages. This step must be done in order to make the new languages available to users. First choose your language "code" - constructed from a two-letter ISO standards-based language prefix, an underscore, and an ISO-standards-based two-letter country code. The Add Language page has links to reference documents so you can construct the appropriate code. You also must fill in a "friendly" name for each language, which will appear in the user interface where a language choice is available.

You'll also want to use the Localization Manager to select an appropriate character set to be served as a meta tag on each page. Please note that the charset default is a sitewide setting, so select a character set which supports all the languages your site offers as options. If necessary you can override this for any given folder hierarchy within the system by setting a folder-level character set in the folder-level Localization Manager on the edit folder page.

There are two methods of editing language strings. You can translate the strings directly on the server with web forms, or work with a spreadsheet to do the editing or translation, and automatically convert your work into a template when you're finished

Editing Strings with the Spreadsheet Localizer
Using the spreadsheet localizer is a four-step process for each project you want to edit.

Using the Localizer2Text form, export the strings for the project you want to work on into a tab-delimited text file which can be read by a spreadsheet. The file will appear in your /webxTemplates directory.
Open the tab-delimited file in a spreadsheet and translate. The format is as follows:
First line: ignored - may contain any comments you wish
Second line: contains the word "variables" in column 1 and language codes in the remaining columns (e.g. "en_US").
Lines 3 and following contain the names of the internally used variables and the strings for each language. For example, the sendEmail string for English and French:
```
sendEmail	Send Email	envoyez l'email
```
Strings with embedded single or double quotes are fine. HTML may also be included in a string, however WCTL or WCJS may not be used.

At this stage you may add or remove localization strings (not recommended unless you are a developer), and add columns for additional languages. Before these languages are available to users, however, you must also add server support for them by using the Add Language page of the Localization Manager as described above.
Export the file from the spreadsheet again as a tab-delimited file. Place it back in the /webxTemplates directory.
Last, using the Localizer2Auto form, re-import the text file back into Web Crossing, which will automatically write the required template file. Reset the file cache to make the new strings available.

Editing Strings with Web Forms
The other method is to use the Edit Language Strings web form in the Localization Manager menu.

To Edit language strings using the web forms, first select the language to be edited, and then the project name. Default server files and plugins each have a language strings file. If you want to see, for example, just the strings in a given project with the word "discussions" in them, type that into the keywords blank. Without any keywords, the entire list of strings is returned, 100 to a page. Using the Next and Previous buttons, you can navigate through a project's list of strings as necessary.

When you've finished making your changes on a given page, you need to save the results. A temporary save saves the new strings in server memory for immediate use, and you can go check out the changes you just made. However, if the server is restarted, a plugin is turned on or off or another language change is made, or the file cache is reset, the changes will be lost. To permanently save strings, use the Permanent Save button to write your changes to the files. Permanent saves are not lost unless the template file itself is moved, renamed, or deleted. With either type of save, strings are immediately available; there is no need to reset the file cache to see them.

Localization and Buttons/Icons
If you want to translate the buttons and icons, you'll need to create an image directory inside /Images for each non-English language you want to support. For example, /Images/fr_CA/b1 for French Canadian /b1 buttons in French. These will be served to users who have a user.language preference of fr_CA, for French.

This allows you to easily keep track of your localized buttons. If an image directory or file is missing, the site default language buttons will be used instead.

Localization and Performance Tuning
Using localizable templates creates a slight decrease in performance. For most sites, the difference will be negligible. However, if you're running a large, busy site or one where peak performance is a critically-important issue, you will want to balance localization needs with performance needs.

Using the Localization and Performance Tuning page (found in the Localization Manager menu), you can:

Tune your site for peak performance
(Turns off all localization except for relatively infrequently-used macros from webxextn.tpl)
Tune your site for the most localization
(Turns on localization for nearly the entire user interface)
Compromise with partial localization
(Turns on localization for everything except the frequently-served message and folder pages)
Stick with the default settings
(All macros coming from webxextn.tpl are localizable; nothing else is)

If you have further localization requirements, such as language switching for guest users, translating discussion and folder descriptions and names of folders, discussions and chat rooms, you can install and enable the no-cost Superlocalization plugin. Use the Shop for Plugins link in your control panel.

Enabling "std" strings (WCMS developer menu)
If you are editing some macros you found in webxStd-local.tpl, the strings for those macros will be missing unless you either turn on "Enable 'std' strings" in the developer menu, or turn on "Optimize for localization" in the Localization and Performance Tuning page. Either of those actions loads the "std" strings project so macro from webxStd-local.tpl can be used.

If you need more information about localization or how the different settings impact performance, or what files are affected, see the Developer WCMS SDK page for details.

ť Restricting Access for Hosts

By default, all hosts and superhosts, as well as the sysop, have access to edit WCMS settings. If you want to restrict this for hosts, you can do that by editing a function which does additional access checking for hosts (not superhosts).

The default function looks like this:

// to check access to WCMS UI
%% function wcmsHostAccessCheck() {
	return "yes";
} %%

Copy this function and place it in webx.tpl, and edit it to provide the degree of restriction you require. To disallow all regular hosts, never return "yes." To allow only hosts who are members of a certain group, return yes only if they qualify - in the example below, as members of the wcmsEditors group. Please note that this does not create the group. You must do that manually, add members to it, and place any access controls on the group that you deem appropriate.

%% function wcmsHostAccessCheck() {
	if ( user && user.userIsMember( 'wcmsEditors' )) return "yes";
} %%

Web Crossing Customization Management Suite (WCMS) Sysop Documentation

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