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WCTL
Server-side Scripting
WCTL
and Web Crossing Templates
Introduction
Standard Templates and standard.tpl
A Simple Template Customization
Troubleshooting
Resources
Next Section
Macros
and Templates
In the
previous section, you learned
about processing forms using macros.
By now
you should have a good feel as to what scripts and macros are,
and some idea of tasks you can accomplish by using them.
One of
the nice things about Web Crossing is that the entire user interface
(with the exception of the sysop Control Panel) are just macros
that you can customize. There is a macro for user login, a macro
for registering as a new user, a macro for setting user preferences,
a macro for how a folder or discussion looks and for how messages
are presented - macros for all the user features of Web Crossing.
This
means that you can customize all the features of Web Crossing
completely, by replacing the standard macros with your own customized
versions. And remember - since WCTL is a full-fledged programming
language, you can customize not just the appearance of your Web
Crossing site, but also the basic way it operates. This gives
you enormous power and flexibility in building your online community.
Web Crossing
refers to those macros that represent part of the standard user
interface as a template; thus the name Web Crossing Template
Language (WCTL).
At last
count (as of January 7, 2000) there are
94 standard templates that take care of entire Web Crossing pages,
or components of pages. As new features are added to Web Crossing
the number of templates also increases.
Standard
Templates and standard.tpl
All the
standard templates are built-in to your Web Crossing server. Even
if you do not have a webx.tpl file, as explained in the
section on macros, your Web
Crossing server will run just fine, because it will always default
to the built-in templates.
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Note:
Actually, there is one exception to this. There is a file
in your Web Crossing folder called webxextn.tpl that
contains special templates with updated features and fixes
in it. You should not customize this file, or remove it
from your Web Crossing folder. The templates in webxextn.tpl
work even when you have WCTL templates turned off in the
Control Panel.
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There
is a file in your Web Crossing folder with the name standard.tpl.
This file contains what is essentially a mirror-image of all the
default templates contained inside Web Crossing. You can copy
templates out of standard.tpl, use them as a base for your
own customization, and then add them to your webx.tpl file
to have them take effect.
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Note:
It is a common mistake for beginners to modify templates
inside standard.tpl itself and then wonder why none
of the changes they made seem to take effect. Remember,
standard.tpl just contains sample templates for your
reference. The standard.tpl file itself is not actually
used by Web Crossing in any way whatsoever. Your customized
templates must be inside the webx.tpl file (directly,
or referenced with an Include statement) in order to take
effect.
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You will
find a complete listing of all the standard templates, by category
and also in alphabetical order, in the online
sysop reference manual.
A
Simple Template Customization
Let's
try our first customization with a small and very straightforward
template - the noNewMessages macro. This template displays
the page that is shown when you click on the Check Messages
button and there are no new messages to read. The Web Crossing
built-in template for this will produce a page that looks like
figure 1.
Figure
1 - the standard noNewMessages page
We can
override this default page and make our own customized version.
Let's be wild and crazy and (1) change the text, (2) personalize
the page by adding the user's name, (3) throw in the current date
and time and (4) add a splash of color just for fun, like in figure
2.
Figure
2 - our customized noNewMessages page
If you
open up standard.tpl, you will see that the standard noNewMessages
template (the one that creates the page shown in figure 1)
is just the following short macro:
%% macro noNewMesssages %%<HTML><HEAD><!-- Page produced by %% programName %%(r)/%% platform
%%-%% version %% (%% programPromo %%) for %% siteLicensee
%%--><!-- User interface (c)Copyright 1995-2000 by Web
Crossing, Inc. All rights reserved.--><title>%% siteTitle %% - Read Subscriptions</title></HEAD><body %% background %%>%% preparedFor %%%% banner
%%<h1>New Subscription Messages</h1><p>There are no new messages.<p>When you want to check again for anything
new, just click the<tt>Check Subscriptions</tt> button below.<p><a href="%% urlBase %%38@%% certificate
%%@%% location %%"><img alt=" Read Subscriptions " border=0
src="%% siteImages %%/chksubs.gif" %% pictSizeButton %%></a>%%nop%%%% if !site._extn_noBookmarks %%-
<a href="%% urlBase %%bookmarks@%% certificate
%%@%% message_location %%"><img alt=" Message Center
" border=0 src="%% siteImages%%/bookmark.gif" %% pictSizeButton
%%></a>%%nop%%
%% endif %%%% setPath %%<a href="%% urlBase %%14@%% certificate
%%@%% location %%"><img alt=" OK " border=0 src="%%
siteImages %%/ok.gif" %% pictSizeButton %%></a><p><hr>To check your subscriptions for new items, you can
save a bookmark to this page.Then you can just open this bookmark, supply your
login information, and the serverwill immediately look to see if you have anything
new to read.%% footer %%</BODY></HTML>%% endmacro %%
Most
templates follow much the same syntactical pattern, so if you
get used to this one you will be able to understand the basic
format for most of the standard templates. Even before we understand
what all the new WCTL means, you can see that all you need do
is modify the embedded HTML to achieve a certain degree of customization.
Why don't we try that first so you can get a quick feeling for
how easy it is to make changes in templates. Then we will go back
an look through the various WCTL commands that are part of this
template.
Follow
these steps to customize the noNewMessages template:
(1)
Create a file called nonewmessages.tpl and place the following
modified noNewMessages macro in the file. The changed parts
are highlighted in red.
%% macro noNewMesssages %%<HTML><HEAD><!-- Page produced by %% programName %%(r)/%% platform
%%-%% version %% (%% programPromo %%) for %% siteLicensee
%%--><!-- User interface (c)Copyright 1995-2000 by Web
Crossing, Inc. All rights reserved.--><title>%% siteTitle %% - Read Subscriptions</title></HEAD><body %% background %%>%% preparedFor %%%% banner
%%<h1>New Subscription Messages
check for %% user.userName %% </h1><p>It is currently %%
date %% at %% time %%. Sorry, but there are no new messages.<p>When you want to check again for anything
new, just click the<tt>Check Subscriptions</tt> button below.<p><a href="%% urlBase %%38@%% certificate
%%@%% location %%"><img alt=" Read Subscriptions " border=0
src="%% siteImages %%/chksubs.gif" %% pictSizeButton %%></a>%%nop%%%% if !site._extn_noBookmarks %%-
<a href="%% urlBase %%bookmarks@%% certificate
%%@%% message_location %%"><img alt=" Message Center
" border=0 src="%% siteImages%%/bookmark.gif" %% pictSizeButton
%%></a>%%nop%%
%% endif %%%% setPath %%<a href="%% urlBase %%14@%% certificate
%%@%% location %%"><img alt=" OK " border=0 src="%%
siteImages %%/ok.gif" %% pictSizeButton %%></a><p><hr><TABLE BGCOLOR="#FFFF00"><TR><TD>To
check your subscriptions for new items, you can save a bookmark
to this page. Then you can just open this bookmark, supply
your login information, and the serverwill immediately look to see
if you have anything new to read.</TD></TR></TABLE>%% footer %%</BODY></HTML>%% endmacro %%
All we
changed here was the addition of %% user.userName %% to
show the current user's name, and %% date %% and %%
time %% to display the current time. Also, we placed the bottom
text inside a table with a garish background color.
(2)
Move nonewmessages.tpl over to your webx folder
and modify webx.tpl to include the following line:
<!--#Include File="nonewmessages.tpl"-->
For a
review of how to do this, refer to the section
on macros.
(3)
Finally reset your file cache at the bottom of the Control Panel
and check for messages! If you have no new messages, the new,
customized noNewMessages page should appear, as in figure 2.
All the
specific WCTL commands used are explained in detail in the online
sysop reference manual. For convenience, let's go through
them here as well so you can get a better feel for the components
that make up a page.
- programName
- The name of the program itself - Web Crossing
- platform
- Mac OS, Windows or Unix
- version
- the version number of your Web Crossing server
- programPromo
- a URL leading you back to your distributor so you can
buy more license upgrades! (^_^)
- siteLicensee
- the licensee of the Web Crossing server
- siteTitle
- the title you set for your conference in the Control Panel
- background
- the background color or pattern you set in the Control Panel
- banner
- the site banner you set in the Control Panel
- urlBase
- used in building internal URLs. For example /cgi-bin/webx?
- 38@
- the command
code for checking subscription lists
- certificate
- the current user's certificate, used for keeping track of
users while accessing
- location
- the unique ID of the current location
- siteImages
- the location of your Web Crossing Images folder
- pictSizeButton
- a string (like "WIDTH=68 HEIGHT=30") that shows the size of
your button
- nop
- no operation - can be used to suppress linebreaks in the output
(Neither of us use it much ourselves)
- site._extn_noBookmarks
- a flag that is true if there are no bookmarks (think double-negative)
The next
section will explain how to create your own custom variables
to add information about users or objects within Web Crossing.
Troubleshooting
I tried
this example, but my no new messages page still looks the same.
- Make
sure you have templates turned on (at the bottom of the Control
Panel). Also make sure that nonewmessages.tpl
is inside the webx folder and that you changed webx.tpl
to include it.
Resources
Web Crossing
FAQ:
Sysop
docs:
WCTL
Concept Reference Page
Web
Crossing Tech Support Forum
Developer
Center
WebX
Harbor
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