Three ways to make your own templates

A. Start with one of our templates and modify/expand it.

1.  Change the background color, text color, background patters, or navigation arrows. (See the handout "Customizing Templates").

2. Add more pictures or sounds.
Copy the line that says <img src="xxx.jpg"> (or whatever the graphic file name) and paste it in to the right, separating the two with a <p>. Edit the second tag to match the name of the second picture.  For example:

<img src="xxx.jpg"> <p> <img src="yyy.jpg">

(Take out the <p> if you'd rather have the pictures side-by-side rather than one above the other).

3. Add different text sections and new specialty pages.
Separate paragraphs with a <p>.  See "HTML Reference Table" for more information.

4. See the handout "NoteTab" for an easier way to make changes across all the pages of a multi-page template.
  
B. Start with any Web page that you like.

1.  Select View => Source to view the HTML code for that page. Copy and Paste it into a text editor so you can change it.

2. Replace all the content-specific text with placeholder text.

3. Devise a naming scheme for graphics and sounds and replace all the graphics and sound file names with sequential names (such as p1a, p1b, s1, etc).

4. Duplicate (Select All, Copy, New, Paste) that page's HTML code for all the required pages in your template and re-name and graphic and sound links for that page (such as,  p2a, p2b, s2, etc).  When you save the files, change the extension to ".htm" extension, not "txt" or ".doc".  

5. Add navigation arrows, similar to the ones in our templates, so users can easily move between that pages of the template.  The easiest way to do this is to Copy and Paste the HTML code at the top of the template pages and Paste it in.  Also copy the arrow graphic files (bb.gif, bh.gif, bf.gif) to your new template folder.

C. Start from scratch and design a template with a Web editor.

Some template ideas: yearbook, student portfolio, cook book, story book, photo album, baby book, diary, sports/physical fitness record book, "About Me" book.
(c) Tom O'Haver (toh@umd.edu), Last updated, April 2006