Web Designer change template possible

[spudmachine]

Hi pcguy,
Sorry for the slow reply. I'm suffering from PC problems at the moment

I think Boy is correct - I haven't tried starting with one template and swapping to another, but I can't think how that would work with XWD.

You can change all the colours at once in a theme of course.

Sounds like a very useful feature actually! And I believe it's something that CSS would be very good for. Also I think it's something that Frontpage can do.

How many pages are in your "Template A" website? If it's not too many then maybe it's easiest to just copy all the content from one to the other.

Alternatively a series of "paste attributes" might also work - I guess it depends on the specific page designs.

My solution sounds very low tech, but by the time you work out a fancier solution maybe it might be quicker

Cheers,
Geoff

[pcguy]

In the template A site there would be about 15-20 pages. Business sites grow stale after a while and need to be refreshed with new layout etc. Really would like to use XWD as it has some amazing features but I want to try to make sure I know the shortcomings of a product up front and that the clients needs are going to be satisfied. The last thing I want to do is to spend weeks on a site only to run head long in a brick wall. I have been down that road too many times.

[ss-kalm]

....Business sites grow stale after a while and need to be refreshed with new layout etc......

As far as I know there isn't a single product out there that can change your whole layout with the press of a button.

[pcguy]

Not exactly looking for a one button push operation but if the client does not like the design or layout of either a redesign or wants the site refreshed I do not want to have to start from square one and redo everything from the ground up. Rearranging some elements after changing to a different template can be expected.

Until one uses a clients data on a template it is hard to determine whether in fact the two are suitable for each other. It appears that with XWD that one uses the inital page as guide for the subsequent pages and if I do carefully layout this page that down the road I will have problems with changes to subsequent pages in the site.

I am also looking at alternatives like Wordpress, Squarespace or even Joomla and am trying to discover major pitfalls in each application to reduce surprises down the road.

[jinker]

EZGenerator can change the overall look at a click of a button but doesn't have the flexibility of XWD. You can change elements by clicking say a graphic on a banner, and then importing a new file into the site but positioning the graphic where you want isn't an option.
I use various webdesign packages and I am quickly becoming a fan of XWD.
Its powerful, has some of the best templates I've ever seen and the flexibility is immense. Now where do I get my fiver

Jinker

[bexvlad]

I'm with you, PCguy. I really miss not being able to just pick a style (h1, h2, p etc) so that in the future I can change the headline font, say, throughout the site with a simple change to the css.

This also makes for consistency in design, no 12pt text on one page and 11pt on another (unless you really mean to do so, in which case you would create a new style 'smallp' or something like that.

[GregWallis]

As far as I know there isn't a single product out there that can change your whole layout with the press of a button.

Joomla

And this is probably a better bet for anyone designing large sites as ,IMO, WD is targeted at the smaller site. A template based CMS solution (like Joomla) is a no-brainer for large sites. (There are various Joomla template managers, like Artisteer, that work very well, and are so easy to use, and where the graphics could be generated from within Xara/WD as required.)

[covoxer]

Originally Posted by ss-kalm
As far as I know there isn't a single product out there that can change your whole layout with the press of a button.

Joomla

Joomla is not a designing tool.

[GregWallis]

True, but it allows a designed template to change the whole site instantly; that was my point. As above, I stated that the graphics could be made in Xara/WD, the template made in (for example) Artisteer (SO easily), and then changed instantly in Joomla.

[covoxer]

Yes, of course, but I presume that ss-kalm was talking about designer tools.