Working 'Smarter' with Templates
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Managing hundreds or even thousands of individual pieces of web content is difficult in itself, but when you add the necessity to format all of this content and keep it light on its feet for site redesigns, make it accessible for searching, and loosely coupled for restructuring, the task becomes all but impossible. It is only through a template system that we begin to feel the content choke hold loosen ever so slightly.
How Templates Work
Template systems allow us to separate the application and presentation aspects of our websites. When many developers hear the word “template” they imagine a set of rigid, dry wire frames that are designed to steal their creativity and mute their expressive ability. I fully understand this perspective as I have seen great template systems fail by being deployed in this way. The good news is that when templates are structured with some imagination, they can offer the desperately needed structure and consistency without hamstringing your design and development process.
Most template-powered web pages have two basic parts – the php script that the visitor calls with their browser, and the html page that the php script loads and displays. The programmer sets up the code to populate the necessary variables, structures, recordsets, etc. in the php script, and the designer simply consumes them using special variable “placeholders” in the html template file. This means that the designer needs no coding skills and the coder needs no designing skills.
This works out nicely, as this seems to be the case in many of the development environments I have seen. I was recently involved in a website build where the programmers of the site were onsite while the designers were a time zone away. The amazing thing is that all communications were handled with instant messaging and email. Everyone got to focus on what they did best, and there was very little overlap between programming and design. This exemplifies the power of the template engine. Using templates simply makes sense, but with so many template systems out there, how do you know which is best?
Next: Selecting a Template Engine >>
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