Miracom Design > Services > Template Driven Web Design

If you are running your web site on Apache Server Miracom Design can easily design a complete web site that is 100% template driven.

A template driven web site is a site that has one, maybe two files that contain a "template" for the look of a web site. Within this template is an area or areas that will change dynamically. (see image below)

The above template shows how areas are changed dynamically. For the MacOS Resources site (www.macosr.com or www.macosresources.com) there are two templates that control the whole site which consists of over 100 pages. One template, shown above, is for the major areas of the site. The second template, which is nearly identical, is for news.

As you can see from the above template there are four areas which change dynamically, and two others, not show above, which we'll explain just a little later.

The first area is the Title. The Title for the page is dynamically inserted into the above template so the page is given the appropriate title. This is important for people browsing the site and robots which index the site for search engines.

The second area is the Ad Banner. Advertising banners are dynamically inserted from an ad banner program. This allows MacOS Resources to charge for advertising space on the site.

The third area is the Survey Information. This allows MacOS Resources to run surveys on the site, making it more interactive for users.

The fourth, and last area show in the image above is the Body. This is where the "meat" of the page gets inserted. This is the area that changes the most. Every page has its own unique content which is displayed in this area.

The beautiful advantage to designing a web site that is template driven is that it becomes very easy to change the look of the whole site. It doesn't matter if you have 10 pages or 10,000 pages a complete site redesign can be accomplished in a matter of minutes or hours, not weeks or months.

Or, say you want to change the footer an all your pages. Wouldn't you rather update one or two files than updating every single page on your web site?

As we mentioned earlier there are two other areas that change with every page that aren't shown on the image above.

The MacOS Resources site's look, including logo and color scheme, changes based on the date. For example, if it is Christmas, the MacOS Resources logo changes and the color scheme changes to red and green. Or if it is Thanksgiving, the logo changes and the color scheme changes to a "fall" scheme. And this is all done automatically. You don't have to sit at your computer at midnight on Christmas Eve and change your site -- it just does it all by itself.

The other area that changes with every page that isn't shown in the image above are the "meta" tags. Meta tags can contain lots of information but one important funcion of meta tags is that they control how your website will appear on search engines. For example: you can insert different key words for different pages, as you should, to help your placement on search sites such as Yahoo and Excite.

So, if you currently have a web site and want to redesign it or, if you are new to the web and want to do it right the first time contact us.