MontCoSkin Reference Guide
From MontCo MediaWiki
The County uses DSF as an internet content management tool. However, like any other CMS, it has limitations which are sometimes more easily bypassed than compensated.
To maintain a consistent look and feel, a PHP based "Skin" has been developed to allow open source development to occur in a manner that has a User Interface (UI) consistent with the County look and feel.
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MontCoSkin
MontCoSkin is a collection of code and scripts that creates the look and feel of the Montgomery County website. It can be run on any server that has PHP enabled, and allows developers to insert their HTML and code into the "sandbox" area - thus reducing the necessary development time to the application - not the interface.
How can I get MontCoSkin?
You can obtain the source code for this from here:
You can also obtain the most current version using SVN. However, you will have to have an approved digital certificate for this access.
Installation Instructions
You will need to install the skin software by unzipping the source into the "skins" subdirectory of your destination document root. For example, if your document root was C:\Inetpub\wwwroot, you would install it into C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\skins.
Your directory should look something like this:
Assuming the directory access privileges are acceptable, it should be ready to use.
Included in the release (in the skins directory), is a file called TemplatePage.php. This file is the template for all pages using this template - and you may want to copy it into your document root directory (or not).
If you have copied the file into your document root, you could test it by:
http://www.yourdomain.com/YourDocRoot/TemplatePage.php
Using the Template
In its most basic form, the template is extremely simple, you would place your html/code, whatever in the sandbox area. Note the template has already included the line for putting a title at the top of the sandbox (something generally desired), which is the line in the sandbox starting and ending with <DIV> . . . </DIV>.
You could use any editor you want (Frontpage, PhpED, Zend . . .) and just copy the HTML/Code in the "body" segment into the sandbox area.
<?php
$templ_title = "Montgomery County";
$skinUI = "/MontCo";
$SectionUI="";
$templ_keywords = "Montgomery County, Application";
require_once($SectionUI."skins".$skinUI."/BeforeSandBox.inc");
?>
<!-- Sandbox Template - Content Area-->
<DIV><SPAN class=pageHeadline><?php echo $templ_title;?></SPAN></DIV>
<!-- End of Sandbox - Content Area -->
<?php
require_once($SectionUI."skins".$skinUI."/AfterSandBox.inc");
?>
Advanced Template Usage
There are several features of the template including:
- Menu/Navigation Customization
- Turn On/Off Search Bar
- Using an existing (common) MontCoSkins installation remotely
- User Authentication/Validation
The documentation for these features can be found in MontCoSkin Advanced Reference Guide.
