Templates

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Templates help simplify the construction of a wiki article by automatically formatting the content of the template into complex table layouts that would be very difficult to create and maintain using standard wiki markup tags. The templates work well to organize products with their descriptions.

The easiest way to create a template is by using the Template Wizard. The Template Wizard provides a user interface that allows the user to specify the attributes of the template. The Wizard will then construct the wiki markup required, so the user doesn't need to understand all of the specific wiki markup syntax for the template. The Template Wizard can be started by clicking on the Template Wizard toolbar button, which looks like this:

To edit an existing template in the Rich Text editor, simply edit the content of the template as with any other text. To delete a template, right mouse click (control + click for Mac users) on the template and click Delete Template from option menu.

Types of Templates

Product templates are designed to display products or product information in a table format. However, they are not limited to only displaying product information. Examples of the templates are shown at the bottom of this article.

  • Vertical Product Template consists of a title, image and a description area. It is intended to display information about a single product.
  • Horizontal Product Template consists of a title, from one to five individual product areas that display an image and short description.

Borderless templates can be selected for specialize cases, where no borders are shown and transparent backgrounds are required. These work great on directory pages.

Adding and Removing Items

To add items to horizontal templates, right-mouse click (control+click on Mac) on the template and select "Add Item" from the pop-up menu (a maximum of five items can be added to a horizontal template).

Similarly, ]to remove items from horizontal templates, right-mouse click on the item to remove and select the "Remove Item" menu option.

Images

Getting an image to fill a template is as easy as searching for a product image through the crawler and adding it to the template. External images are supported, but we prefer you use images from our search. There are several different properties that control how Images are managed in templates. Below are the properties supported on ShopWiki:

  • URL (Required) -- Full URL to the image. URL must begin with http://
  • Search Link -- If a search term is specified, the image will be linked to perform a ShopWiki product search. Omitting this property will cause the image to not be hyperlinked. Note: The Search field in the Template wizard serves as both a keyword search for selecting the image AND as the product search term for hyperlinking the caption. If you want to link the caption to a different search than the one you are using to find the best possible image, change the search link after you have added the image. Don't forget to write a caption.
  • Width -- By default all images are thumbnailed to a consistent size. A specific thumbnail size can be specified, or the actual image size can be used.
  • Caption (Optional) -- A short caption can be added under the image. If the image has a search term, the caption will be hyperlinked to that term. If you do not want the caption to be linked, remove the search term form the bar. This will not remove the image.

To change an image in the rich text editor, right-mouse click (control+click on a Mac) on the image and select "Image Properties" to get back to the pop-up menu.

Description

The description for the product/item can contain any of the supported wiki markup tags to improve the formatting. Common markup used in descriptions would be bolding, centering and hyperlinking part of the copy.  For more information on the standard wiki markup, see the Wiki Markup article.

Template Properties

The Template Properties menu in the Rich Text Editor allows you to change the width and border of a specific template. Right click (control+click on Macs) on the template you want to modify and choose "Template Properties" from the drop-down menu. Here you can easily change the width, which should always be in a percent, and the border, which is always a number (0 denotes a borderless template).

Wiki Markup Templates

The wiki markup syntax for templates is specified below. This is only  needed if creating or modifying the templates using the wiki plain text editor. Modifying the templates using the rich text editor is managed entirely by the rich text editor and the template wizard dialog.  Each parameter of the template begins with a vertical bar character (|) located on a new line.  Parameters can be ordered in any way.

Format for Vertical Product Template
{{ ProductLayout
|Layout=Vertical
|Title=Insert Title Here
|Image=Image reference (see below for exact syntax)
|Description=
Description goes here
}}

Format for Horizontal Product Template
{{ ProductLayout
|Layout=Horizontal
|Title=Insert Title Here
|Image1=Image1 reference (see below for exact syntax)
|Description1=
Description1 goes here
|Image2=Optional Image2 reference (see below for exact syntax)
|Description2=
Optional Description2 goes here
}}

Note: Only Image1 and Description1 item keywords are required. The template will support up to five items in the horizontal template. The parameter names for items 2-5 are simply the term Image or Description followed by the item number.

Format of Image reference

The image reference that is specified for the Image parameter can include additional attributes.
Image syntax: url,width,srch=search,caption=caption string where:
url = URL to the image. URL must begin with http://
width = Optional parameter that specifies the size in pixels that the image will be scaled to. If the image is smaller than the specified size, an extra space will be added to the image to fit the requested size.  Width values are expressed as 100px (for a 100x100 image).  px must be appended to the size. If you do not specify a size, the default 150px size will be used.
search string = Optional parameter that specifies the product search to perform when the image is clicked.
caption = Optional parameter that specifies a caption to be displayed below the image.

Borderless Templates

Borderless templates can be selected for specialized cases where no borders are shown and transparent backgrounds are required. There are two ways to create a borderless template.

  • The easy way is to check the "Borderless" button in the lower left corner of the Template Wizard.
  • To manually set the template to borderless after it has been created, go to the Plain Text Editor and insert the following line between the |Layout= line and the |Title= line: |Border=0.
  • If you set the template to borderless and decide you'd actually prefer a border, do the opposite; go into the Plain Text Editor and simply delete |Border=0.

Template Samples

Types of Juicers (Horizontal Layout)

Citrus Juicers 

  • Electric citrus juicers work pretty much the same way as old-fashioned reamer-style juicers.
  • Less expensive than most other juicers.
  • Only useful with citrus fruits.

Centrifugal Juicers 

  • Chops and spins produce, extracting juice using the laws of physics.

Juice Extractor/Masticator 

  • Mash produce to a paste, which is pushed through a screen.
  • Yield the most juice for a given amount of produce.
  • Tend to be expensive.

Cool Mist Humidifiers (Vertical Layout)
  • Cool mist humidifiers put out a cool spray through a wick.
    • Pros
      • Cleaning: The tanks need to be cleaned often, at most, every week, and at least once a season (depending on model size). However, they are easier to clean than their warm mist counterparts since most can usually be put into the dishwasher.
      • Coverage: These humidifiers can produce for a much larger area, up to 2500 square feet, thus reducing the need to run it for longer periods of time, and therefore reducing time and money dedicated to cleaning.
    • Cons
      • Noise level: They are often much noisier than the warm mist humidifiers.
      • Maintenance: Costs are higher because the wick filters need to be replaced often.

Wiki 101 | Wiki World

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