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Northern Illinois University

Web Presence Project

Web Presence Project > Templates Configurations > Changing Templates on an Existing Page

Changing Templates on an Existing Page

When you apply a different templates to an existing page that already contains some content, the content is lost because the names of the editable regions change.

Here is the process you need to use to switch templates without losing your content:

Open Notepad (Go to Start > Run and type "notepad").
In WebCRMA, "Check Out" your webpage and click "Edit," and then change to the HTML view.
Copy and paste the content from each editable region in CRMA into the Notepad document.

Note: You do not need to copy the code from the "doctitle," "metatags," or "breadcrumbs" regions because those regions never change.
In WebCRMA, choose the new template you want to use.
Copy and paste the code from the Notepad document into the appropriate editable regions in WebCRMA.

Note: If you are moving content from an original template that used <DIV> tags to style the page, you should omit the <DIV tags> when you paste the content into the editable regions of the new templates.

For example, say you have a page that uses the "main_NoBreadCrumbs.dwt" template to configure the layout with a bowed banner photo and a right feature column using a <DIV id=divleft400> and a <DIV id=divFeatures> tag. You need to delete those tags as well as their closing tags (</DIV>) when you paste the content into the editable regions of your new "main_ Feature_Column_NoBreadCrumbs.dwt" template. The code for the bowed photo goes in the "TopContent" region, the code for the content from the "divleft400" goes into the "MainContent" region, and the code for the "divFeature" content goes in the "Feature" region.

The Web Team can provide training on this process. Contact us at webteam@niu.edu for assistance.

Template Conversion Information

Page Configuration	DIV Tags Used With Three Original Templates	Corresponding New Template (does not require use of DIV tags)
2 Columns	<DIV id=divLeftCol50>, <DIV id=divRightCol50>	"2_Columns" or "2_Columns_NoBreadCrumbs"
3 Columns	<DIV class=div3Columns>, <DIV class=divColumn1>, <DIV class=divColumn2>, <DIV class=divColumn3>	"3_Columns" or "3_Columns_NoBreadCrumbs"
Feature Column	<DIV id=divleft400>, <DIV id=divFeatures>	"Feature_Column" or "Feature_Column_NoBreadCrumbs.dwt"
Tan Feature Column	<DIV id=divleft430>, <DIV id=divRightCol>	"WithRightColumn" or "WithRightColumn_NoBreadCrumbs"