Theme Management

You can begin working with the Xanthia interface by examining the existing prebuilt themes. Browse to your site's Administration page, and click the Xanthia link near the bottom of the table. Initially, all of the Xanthia themes included with PostNuke are inactive. You need to add them into the system.

Click the Add Theme link for each theme until you have activated all of the Xanthia themes. You then have a table in which each theme includes a set of management options, as shown in Figure 10.3.

Figure 10.3. Managing your Xanthia themes.

Configuring Xanthia

Select the Configure Xanthia option above the table. The Configuration page has 10 options that apply to your site regardless of which Xanthia theme you select (see Figure 10.4). These options are explained in the following list.

Figure 10.4. Changing Xanthia configuration settings.

Use Visual Block Editor Turning this option on displays small tag markers at the top-right of each zone on your live pages. You can click a tag marker to generate a pop-up that has complete customization options. The markers are only visible to administrators.
Use Short URLs This feature converts the normally lengthy page uniform resource locators (URLs) into short URLs, which are also generally preferred with search engines. This feature requires an Apache .htaccess file in your site root. It defines how Apache should use its mod_rewrite function to dynamically shorten URLs. If you do not already have a file, Xanthia includes different versions for you. See the Troubleshooting section at the end of this chapter for more information.

Note

Your web server needs to be capable of rewriting URLs for the Use Short URLs option to function. Apache includes this ability as mod_rewrite . IIS can acquire this feature through third-party add-ons, such as ISAPI_Rewrite (www.isapirewrite.com). Consult your server's documentation to determine what features it supports and how to enable them. At this time, Xanthia only includes support for Apache .htaccess .
Extension to Use for Short URLs Type the extension you want to use for the shortened URLs here. This field is ignored if you are not using short URLs. The extension must correspond with your .htaccess file. Xanthia includes file versions for .htm , .html , and . phtml extensions. The code in the .htaccess files is identical, except that all references to filenames use the respective extension for that file.
Enable Caching Caching generates local copies of the database-generated pages. These pages can be served from the file system faster than making entirely new database calls, and your site might see a significant speed improvement by enabling caching.
Modules to Exclude from Caching If there are specific modules you do not want cached, enter their names in this field. The names should be delimited by commas. This field is ignored if you are not using caching.
Check for Updated Version of Templates This check is important if you have caching turned on and are making regular changes to your template files. It increases overhead slightly, but makes it more likely that your changes are picked up immediately for display.
Force Templates Recompilation Recompile automatically rebuilds your templates, but enabling this option in effect disables caching.
Length of Time to Cache Pages This field should contain the amount of time you want to cache pages before pulling updated copies from the database. The setting is made in total seconds, and the default amount is 3600 (one hour ). This field is ignored if you are not using caching.
Store Templates in Database Templates must be stored in the database for online editing to work. This option is primarily disabled only when working on a theme to speed up page compilation.
Use Trimwhitespace Output Filter Trimwhitespace removes whitespace characters from page code and slightly reduces load time. It does not remove linefeeds.

Theme Actions

The actions available from the Xanthia theme table control the interface between each theme and the PostNuke system. Edit Theme allows you to make changes to a theme using the Xanthia web interface.

Remove Theme does not delete a theme; the theme is disabled, as all the Xanthia themes were when your site was first installed.

Reload Templates manually updates the templates stored in the database. This option must be clicked for changes to become visible, unless you have checked Force Reload in the Xanthia configuration.

You can Generate the Config Cache to export all the current settings for colors, zones, and block locations to the file system to reduce database calls. After you have completed changes to a template, this option should be selected to improve load performance.

View Theme opens a new window using the /index.php?theme=[ClickedThemeName] preview link. This is handy for previewing themes before changing site settings. The feature is essential for the theme development process.

View the Credits of a given theme to see a little about who made the interface you are using.

Changing Themes

Changing a theme is no more complicated in PostNuke 0.75 than in previous versions. Return to your Site Settings page and change the Default Theme for Your Site drop-down list box.

As stated on that page, inactive Xanthia themes are not available in the list. Activate a theme from the Xanthia Administration page.

Obtaining Themes

Additional themes are easy to add with PostNuke. Place all theme files within their root theme folder in the /themes/ directory. For example, a theme called pnCoolTheme would have a path like this:

/themes/pnCoolTheme/

Non-Xanthia themes such as ExtraLite are immediately available from the Site Settings page. You need to activate any new Xanthia themes before they become available in the Settings form.

The following list details a few links to larger sites with multiple PostNuke themes. Some of the following sites are commercial and charge for some of their themes.