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How to set my news archive as my StartPage ?

In order to set up your current months archive to be your start page, You've had to edit file "data_inc.php" manually. Replace the $startpage variable code with this one :

you shouldn't do this via admin configuration panel, it won't work, do it manually with your "data_inc.php" configuration file. After you're using this variable's, your startpage will be pointed to the current months news archive automatically.

Themes and Skins

We have include some templates theme and skins to be used in this version. More skins will be available soon for download or just create by your self based on default themes. Remember that you have to create a blank file named as same as your skin folder names and make sure you put that file under directory "templates/themes/".

The Skins Template

This section briefly explains which files are used by the skin, and how you can edit them.

The template skin uses two kind of files:

1. a PHP - HTML Files : consists of html templates in php files.
2. central.css: CSS stylesheet that defines the page style. Colors, layout etc. are defined in this file
3. ph03y3nk.gif (optional): The small logo (mine) with hyperlink that appears in the templates design (that would be appreciate if you leave this unchanged, as link exchange)

The CSS file central.css contains extra information about how pages are built up by the default skins and templates. Basically, it comes down to three containers: 1.header & footer looks,  2.body contents looks and 3.navigation link.

To edit the central.css file, you'll need a simple texteditor that does not add extra data, like Notepad (comes with windows),emacs or TextPad. Do not use WordPad, Word, OpenOffice Writer, ... since those add extra markup data.

HTML and CSS

When editing templates, you'll need at least some basic knowledge about HTML and CSS. This section provides some pointers to online tutorials and references:

• W3Schools: online web building tutorials (HTML, XHTML, CSS)
• Western Civilization , CSS Shark : Very nice CSS guide & tutorial
• CSS Panic Guide : links to various CSS resources
• Webmonkey: HTML Basics
• Webmonkey: Stylesheets
• Dive Into Accessibility : Online book, not really about HTML, but about accessibility and how to make your site more accessible.

If you're not understand HTML at all, start learn by now. Its easy scripting language and you can master it before a year, if you learn every day :).

What's allowed/disallowed ?

JAF CMS - ...just another flat file CMS has some built-in rules :

• Do not put any files other than your content page in directory "data/" and "news/" or the directory crawler script will create automatic navigation links on it.
• HTML tags are allowed (use your WYSIWYG editor and add any code you want)
• while you were in admin editor mode, if you want to put image you can use absolute URL path
  
  (eq: "http://www.URL.com/image_directory/image_file.gif"), or
  
  Relative URL path started at your webroot directory as base folder/directory
  
  (eq: "./image_directory/image_file.gif") --- if you're using this method don't be worried if you images didn't show up on editor page!!!

As for now, that's all the rules and parameters hardwired into the code.