template for one conference in a multi conference site

[Dragone]

Hi to all,
I have an OCS 2.1.0.1 installation with actually two conferences.
I have customized the css for each conference and all works
But I would like to change some graphical aspects of each conference which are not in the css.
For example I would like to move the links "home, about,login,search, announcement" in a column on the left of the page, like a menu, and add some links to some external pages.
I would like to transform the layout with all the navigation links on the left and the content of the page in the center, nothing on the right. But I would like to do this only for one conference, not for all the site.
If I change the template, my changes affects all the site.
How can I create a custom template for only one conference?
Thanks in advance for your help
Daniela

[mcrider]

Hi Daniela,

To achieve this, you'll have to do a bit of coding. I would begin by putting conditional comments around the navbar div in templates/common/header.tpl, such that the code only appears for the conference you want to have the navigation bar on top for (something like {if $currentConference->getConferenceId() == 1} ... {/if}).

To make a navigation bar appear for the left side of the page, you'll have to implement this as a block plugin. This is simple enough--Take a look at the 'Developed By' plugin, and just add a few more links (and make any other necessary changes so that the plugin registers as a unique plugin). Then, position it in setup step 4 (and remove anything from the right sidebar).

Let us know if you have any problems...

Cheers,
Matt

[Dragone]

Thanks!
But how can I do to use different template for different conferences?
Example:
conference A uses templates in the templates dir
conference B uses templates in another dir (not all the files, only, for example, the header.tpl or the footer.tpl)
So, where, in the code, can I say: "use my custom file header.tpl and not the common one"?
I think I can create a theme plugin with my custom css, and put my custom file header.tpl in that dir , but I don't know where, in the code, to say "use this header.tpl and not the common one"
Thanks again
Daniela

[hda.lib@cbs.dk]

We have similar problems. But since we plan to run a large number of conferences the "if-else" solution is not a very good idea. A better idea would be to make a kind of "override" system or ini settings, so that you could specify that conference xx should use template x and conference yy template y etc.
Also we would like in general to change a few things in the templates, but this will of course collide with the next upgrade. Is there a simple way to store your changes locally (in our case we want to remove some things in the blocks.tpl in /plugin/blocks/
But in general an override system would be a great thing to have so that you could create your own templates without bothering about upgrade problems - and if you further had a system (e.g. an ini setting so that you could specify which template should be used where - Ok, OK this is a development suggestion.....)

[mcrider]

Hi all,

Daniela, you'll have to do a full-text search across your OCS installation and replace all occurrences of {include file="common/header.tpl"} in any template file with something like

Code: Select all

{if $currentConference->getConferenceId() == 1}
     {include file="path/to/alternate/header.tpl"}
     {else} {include file="common/header.tpl"}
{/if}


However, the $currentConference variable isn't available in all those templates, so you would have to find an appropriate alternative (and some of the templates don't have to be modified)

hda.lib@cbs.dk, I understand your desire for greater modularity of templates (like how WordPress works), but that does make upgrading much more difficult. At this point, you would need to use some variant of logical switching. One method that comes to mind is to create separate template directories for each conference with the id of the conference as the directory name, and whenever a template file is included by another template file, attach the current conference id to the path, like

Code: Select all

 {include file="$conferenceId/common/header.tpl"}

.

At this point, whatever changes are made to the templates are going to cause collisions with the next upgrade. I think it would be great to allow for more customization of templates in the future, and it is indeed listed as a suggestion on the OJS roadmap (see http://lib-pkp.lib.sfu.ca/wiki/index.php/OJS), but it may be some time before we have this functionality.

Happy hacking,
Matt

[huu2008]

Hello,
Can anyone who has managed to customize for one conference in a multiple conferences share with me the idea?.
Thank you in advance

[tshore]

This feature is essential to my clients. In the past, I have always provided a new colour scheme and header graphics for each year's conference. I am about to embark on that task right now. I am not looking forward to this...

[jmacgreg]

Hi Trudy,

As Matt mentioned, this is a feature we've discussed, but it hasn't yet been implemented, and I'm guessing won't be in the near future. I have however posted a subset of the thread (and the part that you might find most helpful) as a feature request, which you can see here: http://pkp.sfu.ca/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=3996. Again, this probably won't make it in in the near future, but please take a look, CC yourself for further notifications on the request, and please add comments as you see fit.

Cheers,
James