Guide 00 · Developer docs

Core dna for site builders

Read this guide first. Core dna is hosted, so there is nothing to install; your repository holds only templates and front-end assets; and a new kind of page starts in the admin, with a layout. In half a day, from what the platform is to a page you built, deployed and rendered in Smarty or Twig.

L0
Unit 03 · Your first page, end to end

Start with a placeholder template

Your first page, end to end Page 15 of 28 Updated

The first page of a site, built in the order the platform needs, and its first step: a placeholder template at the path the layout will name, committed and deployed. Then what a wrong template path looks like in each engine.

Who this is for. A theme developer making a site's first page type, on the development environment, before building anything real. By the end of this unit you will have created an Article layout with three areas, a page that uses it, and a template that renders it, in the order every later page type will follow.

The whole path

  1. Deploy a placeholder template at the path the layout will use: this page.
  2. Create the layout in the admin, pointing at that file.
  3. Add the areas, the fields editors will fill in.
  4. Create and publish a page that uses the layout.
  5. Render the areas in the real template.

The file comes first for a practical reason: the admin can point a layout only at a template that is already on the server. The design of the page type still starts with the layout, its areas and their names, as Development starts with a layout explains; the placeholder only gives the layout something to point at. Keep Nothing changed: the four checks open for when a step does not show up.

Create the placeholder

Page templates conventionally live under templates/pages/pages/. Create templates/pages/pages/article.html with enough markup to recognise it, extending the site's own base template. The base template's path and its block name vary from site to site; use the ones your site's other page templates use.

Template code templates/pages/pages/article.html 
{extends 'includes/frontend/base-template.html'}
{block 'content'}
  <main>
    <h1>{$page->getName()|escape}</h1>
    <p>Article layout works.</p>
  </main>
{/block}
{% extends 'includes/frontend/base-template.html' %}
{% block content %}
  <main>
    <h1>{{ page.getName()|e }}</h1>
    <p>Article layout works.</p>
  </main>
{% endblock %}

Commit and deploy it

Commit the template, and push the branch the development environment follows (Deploying a change). The file will not answer at any URL, because templates are never served; the check that it arrived is the next step, where it appears in the layout form's list of templates.

Go deeper
GuideTemplate resolution order How-toCreate your first layout and template, from the admin to the repo FAQA record shows the wrong template How-toSet up a base template and extend it

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