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Blog Templates

Customize your site's UThink blog with the Web templates. All three versions of the templates* will eventually be coded for the blogs—so far the 2.6.4 column design is the first one availalbe.

* The horizontal navigation has not been working consistently across browsers for the blogs. At this time, the blog templates do not include the horizontal navigation.

dividing line.

Using the templates in the blogs

Follow these step-by-step instructions to set up and use the templates in a UThink blog.

First Step: Download the html and css files

Download—Download the blog templates. The downloads include all the style sheets and images you need for the templates.

Linking to assets—You have two choices in linking to assets (style sheet, images, searchfield javascript, and .htc file) with your blog:

  1. Status quo: This is the easiest solution. Leave the links to the style sheets and other assets 'as is.' The html for the blog templates has absolute URL links to a directory on the eCommunication Standards server. You can leave the links to these assets as they are when you set up your blog. If you want to modify style sheets, you should create your own, put it on your own server, and add a link to it in the blog templates.
  2. Change the links: This solution is a bit more complicated. You will need to put all the assets on your server and change all the links. This means setting up directories for the images, css, htc, and js files on your server and changing all the links to those assets in both the html and css files in the blog templates. For example, the link in the html to the template style sheet would need to change from:
    http://www.webdepot.umn.edu/blog_assets/css/template.css
    to: http://www.yourURL/your_directory_name/template.css

Note: Style sheets and images should not be uploaded to the blog—background images don't work using this scenario.

Moveable Type javascript—The link to the mt.js file MUST BE updated in the template code to connect to that file on your blog. In the "entry.html" and "comment_preview.html," you must change the link to the mt.js to your own blog site's URL. This is the link that needs to be updated:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://blog.lib.umn.edu/yourBlogUsername/yourBlogName/mt.js"></script>

If you don't know your site's URL, you should publish your blog, copy the URL of your main index page, and replace the highlighted section of the code (shown above) with your blog's URL.

Blog template page.Second Step: Start a new blog

Start a new blog using the "Classic Blog" template set on UThink. Save your blog settings and click on "Design" in the horizontal navigation. The blog pages that need to be modified with the new code are in three sections in the Design area: Index Templates, Archive Templates, and System Templates. See the larger version of the image on the right to see where each page is in the blog structure.

Copy and replace—Open each blog template html doc on your harddrive and copy the source code from the template over the code for each of the corresponding pages in the blog. Be sure to hit "Save" at the bottom of the screen each time you paste your code into the blogs.

Widgets—The right column of the templates uses the "3-column layout-Primary Sidebar" in the Widget section under "Design." Here you can determine which widgets you'd like to use for your blog. Commonly used widgets include "Search," "Category Archives," "Recent Entries," "Current Author Monthly Archives," and "Syndication."

Publish and test—Once you've copied and pasted all 9 layouts into the blog and edited the right column widget, you should save and publish your site to test it.

Blog template usage restrictions

As with University Web sites, the blog templates cannot be used for or by students or student organizations, or for personal sites. See the Publishing Information on the WWW policy for details or contact University Relations if you have questions.

Download blog templates

The 2.6.4 blog template is available for download. The other two template layouts are in the process of being coded.

Examples of blog templates

The two screen shots of the templates in the blogs below will give you an idea of how your blog can look. As with the Web templates, the blog backgrounds and colors can be customized to suit your needs.

The following links open new windows:

2.6.4 column home page

2.6.4 column secondary page

Template users in UThink Blogs

Please send us links to your blogs when you use the templates and we'll post them here.

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