Adding Editable Regions

Adding Editable Regions

Once you've saved the .dwt file, you will want to open it and define any regions you want to be editable. Regions on the page that you don't specifically mark as editable will be locked and can't be changed by anyone working on pages made from your templatehey, that's the whole point!

To add an editable region:

1.	Open the template document.
2.	Select the element to make editable, for example <div> , <img> , or <td> , with the tag selector in the document window. or Select the text to make editable. This choice is most useful when the text is within a div. Selecting the entire layer, rather than just the text within it, makes everything about the div editable, including its position. You probably don't want your users being able to change anything other than the text, so just select that text and it will be the only editable part of the div.
3.	Choose Editable Region from the Templates pop-up menu in the Common category of the Insert Bar ( Figure 13.3 ). Figure 13.3. Use the pop-up menu for the Template icon in the Common category of the Insert Bar to designate editable regions in the template. or Choose Insert > Template Objects > Editable Region. The New Editable Region dialog appears ( Figure 13.4 ). Figure 13.4. A short, descriptive name is best for a template region. Don't use spaces in the name ; instead, use the underscore character, as shown.
4.	Type a name for the region.
5.	Click OK.
6.	The editable region will be outlined in green in the document window. A tab at the upper left of the region displays the region name ( Figure 13.5 ). Figure 13.5. In the document window, the editable region is indicated with a visible tab giving the region name.
7.	(Optional) Delete the text that was in the region and replace it with some general instruction regarding the region, for example, "This region is for main content." If you don't do this, it's okayanyone making a page from the template can replace the text later.

Tips

• You can make an entire table editable, or the table header, a table row, or individual cells within a table. But you can't put a table column or multiple noncontiguous table cells in a single editable region.

• Don't use special characters in region names : no ampersands (&), single quote marks ('), double quote marks ("), or angle brackets (<) and (>).

• Page titles are editable by default on pages that are created from templates.