Layman Solutions Ltd

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You can install CMS Made Simple with numerous default templates (you choose this during the installation process). These are packed with many of the useful features CMS Made Simple has to offer, and will give you a head start when creating your own web sites.

The tags that are unique to templates in CMS Made Simple are described on the page CMSMS tags in the templates (see menu to the left). To view a few of the default pages, click here.

Changing the style of Default Templates

Many of the templates and style sheets have smarty comments throughout them to help you find where to change the look of them.

Two kinds of navigation are used in these templates. For each there is a menu template in the Menu Manager.

CSSMenu is a dropdown menu using only CSS, although for Internet Explorer 6 some JavaScript has to be used. Two of the default page templates are using CSSMenu for navigation, one with the menu horizontally at the top and the other with the menu vertically to the left.
The other navigation type is what we call Simple Navigation. That is just an unordered list that gets its style and appearance from the style sheets (CSS). Also here one page template is using a horizontal simple navigation and the other a vertical menu.

The menu tag in each template is used like this: {menu template='cssmenu.tpl'}, where the cssmenu.tpl is the name of the Menu Manager template. If you make a custom menu template you don't need to use the .tpl on the end.
More parameters can be added to this code. For example, to start a menu from the second level, collapse the children pages until the parent is clicked etc. Read more about that in the Menu Manager Help in the Admin Panel.

Further Information

For more information on any of the above, please do not hesitate to contact us.
For illustrated step-by-step instructions, on creating and editting templates and menu templates, please read our Layman's Terms Instructions Document.