Wrapping the "center section" of a tiki page
I am familiar with how to disable the "header", "left", "right" and "footer" sections of a "tiki" page.
Is there a "general php" file or files (not the .tpl templates) for the center section of the various tiki features, e.g., for the "articles" files, 'blog" files, etc. so that I can readily wrap the said "general php" file for each tiki type page with my own "pageheader" and "pagefooter" that are unique templates for the various directoriess and subdirectories of my website?
Rationale:
(1) The individual page layouts of the various major directories and subdirectories of my website do not follow the permutations/variations of the "header", "left", "right" and "footer" sections of tiki. Further, I already use the same templates for my own "pageheader" and "pagefooter" for other existing non-wiki programs, e.g., a more sophisticated multi-category calendar, photogallery, links directory, forum, etc.
Thus, I want to centralize the modules included in the said "pageheader" and "pagefooter" of my website that will then be used not only for my tiki pages, but for all the other non-tiki pages. It will be easier to edit a single centralized folder of modules — instead of creating the same modules again in the tiki site, using "smarty" format for the templates.
(2) The tiki pages, especially the "Articles" would be the backbone of the various directories and subdirectories of my website. However, I do not want to present to visitors the "Articles", "Featured Links", dynamically changing "Ephemerides", "Quotes", "images, etc., in the order that they appear, as arranged in the tiki directories.
What I want the visitors to see mainly would usually be combinations of many of these features — all in one page or related pages. I have yet to learn the "templating feature" of tiki, so that I can prepare dynamic pages that are created directly from the database stored files instead of the existing static files I have currently. This will be my focus the next few months.
(3) I do not want to disable modules or features of the tiki already created, because they are useful for some my other sections, e.g., the Admin pages, "register", "log in/log out", "submissions", etc. More on this, in a separate post, on how I may include the existing modules into my %22php formatted script%22 rather than the smarty script used in tiki.
(4) There is another more practical reason. I tried incorporating my modules in the "smarty" scripted format of the ".tpl" templates of a very simple links-directory program that I am currently using. It worked but what I found was that the smarty templated pages was almost 10x slower than my own version where I simply wrapped the page with the same modules (with my own pageheader/pagefooter) but using simple "include" PHP commands.
I am not sure if I made any errors in the smarty scripting, but part of it maybe was because my "pageheader/pagefooter php" files were just straightforward include PHP commands, with no conditional statements.
I browsed briefly at the tikiwiki templates,and at these stage, I was just overwhelmed with the complexity conditional statements of the ".tpl" templates, incorporating other templates, etc. I did not encounter this difficulty with the few programs I have incorporated in my website at this stage. One used templating but with the more common PHP scripting that I am slightly familiar with.
Tikiwiki has more than 3,200 files and at least 350 pages of manual (and more additional files for the recent versions) there are just so many templates, modules, etc. for me to become familiar with that may require me too much time to learn, since I have no programming background — specially the "smarty" script used in the templates.
I understand the elegant features of smarty scripting but it will slow my adoption of "wiki" concept as the main component for my website — if I got bogged down by trying to map the various templates in relation to the php files, associated with these templates.
As I begin get more familiar with the tiki templates, and how they relate to each other, I will eventually adjust to the smarty templates and adopt them in the layout and architecture of my website.
cgc0202