The first actual php call is to **tpl_metaheaders**, which encompasses CSS and JavaScript **required** and provided by DokuWiki, as well as anything gathered from style.ini. Additionally, this call is required before most other functions will work.
Next is **tpl_pagetitle**, which (optionally) pulls the first heading to use as the page title. It is shown below with a reference to the title of your wiki((This is the reason for $conf in this case.)):
<?php tpl_pagetitle()?> - <?php echo hsc($conf['title'])?>
Once you're ready to display, you'll need the following **div** tag so that your page works correctly with plugins that use stylesheets.
You'll need all of the utility buttons to really make your wiki functional. Here are all of the buttons provided by the default template --- let's put them in a **table**, above the content:
Now consider yourself in the content area of your page. First you'll need a call to the error display function, **html_msgarea**. This is what allows you to see configuration errors in DokuWiki whenever you have one, or lets you see the results of **do=check** whenever you add that to the end of a URL on your site.
Some odds and ends are "bread crumbs" and "you are here" links. You can add them anywhere in the content area, in any order, and they are totally optional and up to your discretion. If you're developing a template for general use, you'll want to support both so your end users can choose.
The climax of the whole process is displaying the content of the page; it's just one call, and it's used for all actions --- viewing, editing, index navigation, searching, and any page with a form.
Nearing the end of the content section, you can add information about when the page was last modified and who did it:
-
And finally, you **need** this function to ensure that meta data is properly created for your pages:
=== Altogether now... ===
We have a small sample, workable main.php for a template, and it looks like this:
<?php tpl_pagetitle()?> - <?php echo hsc($conf['title'])?>
-
You now have all of the buttons, as well as the search field, and this is about everything you need to develop a template.
==== Look and Feel ====
FIXME
An explanation of styles for:
* Normal Viewing
* Editing
* Index Navigation (Or what might typically be called "site map" navigation)
* Searching
* Form type pages such as registration, profile, administration, configuration, etc.
Should go here, as they all require stylesheet information.
===== Avoiding problems =====
Here are a few problems template developers run into and how to avoid them:
* Don't put JavaScript commands in the **body** tag of a page, this includes **onLoad** and others.
Although breaking this rule doesn't affect FireFox at all, Internet Explorer (even IE 7) will have JavaScript errors due to the JavaScript required for page editing, and this can result in pages that won't display correctly, and you will find the editing bar will be missing when you need it.
An alternative to **onLoad** is to place script tags right before the closing body tag, and there is another script call or two (?) FIXME that you can use to attach your own JavaScript.
FIXME
* Turn off "Compact CSS and JavaScript files" while developing a template.
Some template developers experience problems with DokuWiki cacheing CSS and JS files due to this option being on, although this has been hard to pinpoint. To be safe, turn this off temporarily.
* Use "forced refreshing" after you make changes to CSS files. (You can accomplish this by holding down shift-control-alt and hitting the refresh button in your browser.)
This is not due to how DokuWiki works, but how current browsers cache files. All current generation browsers appear to cache stylesheets even when new versions are available, so you will need to do this.
===== Source =====
The source of the **__default__ main.php** can be found [[xref>lib/tpl/default/main.php.source|here]].