Export Design Guide

What is an export?

Exports are a set of files that are created when a finished template is downloaded via the download tab in the Cool Template editor. They can be customized to support your own web site software or CMS (Content Management System).

Exports are defined via export text files. The Edit Export page allows you to edit, create and delete the actual export files. These text files can be edited via our web site using a nice editor.

Export Files

To create an export you will need to create text files that will control the export and be included within the downloaded zip files. For instance, the Wordpress exporter creates several .php files that are required for a Wordpress theme.

Each file may or may not be included in the export. By default they are flagged to be included. To not have them included in the download, click on the "Exclude from Download" link next to the file on the Edit Export page.

If a file has a .preview extension and a file of the same name exists without the .preview extension, then the .preview file will be used only when the design is being edited on Cool Template and the file without the .preview extension will be used when the users download the theme.

Inherited Files

Exports inherit all the export files from the default plain html export. All inherited files can be overridden by creating another file with the same filename.

Most of the inherited files are part files that are not included in the export and are instead used to create chunks of the pages. For instance, the Menu.html.preview file is used to generate the menu chunk of the pages.

You probably do not need to create a new style.css file, since it will be inherited. You will only need to create whatever .php or other files that are needed to integrate into the content management system.

Export File Format

The template format is fairly self explanatory.

Each variable is encoded within dollar signs ($). At run time the encoded tag will be replaced by the actual value from the design.

        $Design.Background$

If you need to actually produce a dollar sign in your code, you will need to use backslash to escape it. \$ will be transformed into $.

Simple if statements are available using the following format:

        $if(Design.IsPreview)$   This is a preview.   $endif$
        $if(Design.IsPreview)$   This is a preview.   $else$   This is not a preview.   $endif$
        $if(!Design.IsPreview)$   This is not a preview.   $endif$