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Visitors to your site only see your pages! They never see a component (by itself) or a template. Nevertheless, they are what give your site a consistent look and feel and make your site look professional. They also can save you hours of editing.

Suppose you have a site of 25 pages and want to change the logo image on the header of each page. Without components, you would have to edit all 25 pages. With components, you update your header component and you are done!

Suppose your template consists of a header and a footer and you want to add a navigational sidebar on all pages on your site. Without templates, you would have to edit all 25 pages (not an easy task). With templates, you add the sidebar to the template and your are done!

A component is a reusable page part.

• The two most common components you will create is a header and a footer.
• Menus and sidebars are two other common uses for components.
• As a general rule, if you have something you want to display on more than one page, create it as a component.
• When you build your templates, you will layout your components to provide a framework for your pages.
• You do not have to use components. However, we strongly urge you to use this feature.

Click here to view the Component Manager from which you add, edit, delete, and preview your components.

A template is like a page except it has no content. It contains the layout of your page.

• The template lays out the header, footer and any sidebars that are common on all the pages.
• You add a placeholder on the template to indicate where the page content goes. Although you can add as many placeholders as you want on a template, ordinarily each template will contain only one placeholder.
• Although you only need one template, you can have more than one. For example, you can create a template without sidebars and another template with sidebars. When you create a page, you select the template that most fits the content you are going to add to the page.
• You do not have to use templates. However, we strongly urge you to use this feature.

Click here to view the Template Manager from which you add, edit, delete, and preview your templates.

A page is a combination of text, images and links to other pages.

• All pages should contain 3 sections: header, body content, and a footer. The header and footer should be alike on all the pages to give your site a common look and feel.
• Pages can also have sidebars on the left and/or right side. Many sites use the left sidebar for navigational links to the other pages on the site.
• DbSmartConfig uses templates to enforce a common look and feel on all the pages on your site.
• When you add a new page, you will typically specify a template to base your page on. You then add the content in the various placeholders.
• When you are finished modifying a page, you publish it so visitors can see your changes.
• You can preview pages exactly as they will look to a visitor before you publish it.

Click here to view the Page Manager from which you add, edit, delete, preview and publish your pages.