custom templates - different colour schemes for each category

[houndour]

Hi,

I have been thrown in the deep end, and told I have to create templates in actinic. I have the html pages from the designers and I've had a brief look at Actinic.

I have one concern and all I need is a "yes it can be done" but I don't want to waste lots of time if it's going to be impossible.

The website has some categories, and then the lower pages with item description and prices for each category. I know I need to create a template for the category page and a template for the lower page. But the thing that concerns me is the way they've designed it is that each category has a different colour scheme.

So, just for example:
Cups - Blue
Glasses - Red
Plates - Yellow
Bowls - Pink
Cutlery - Green

So I'm guessing I'm going to need (in my case) 7 templates for the category page and 7 templates for the lower pages.

All I need to know, is this possible?

Sam

[cdicken]

Absolutely

It sounds like you are talking about 'Overall Layout Templates' which are the templates that provide the design that goes around main bulk content area on the page.

The default one is set in 'Design | Options | Layouts', but you can create alternative ones of these (i.e. in different colours), and select them for a section page in the 'Layout' tab of of the section details.

[I-CC]

Another method so long as the design is not changing from category to category is to use CUSTOMVAR properties instead of the color codes in the templates, so for example where it might say:

bgcolor="#CCCCCC" change it to bgcolor="CUSTOMVAR:MYCOLOUR"

Then, within Advanced | Custom Properties add the property MYCOLOUR.

Then, go into Design | Options and assign this new property with the #CCCCCC so that the design defaults to this colour.

Then, for each section where the colour needs to change to a different colour, change the custom property at that sections level to the new color code and it will then be reflected in all pages from that point onwards.

This way it saves on 7 such identical templates all bar for a color change...

Hope that helps.