More on New Page Types

March 5, 2006

Hey first off, I’m trying a post through the WordPress dashboard widget. I know this works… the novelty is just cool and frankly, I don’t like the browser page. I’ll have to try the post-through-email solution also.

Okay so new page type support in iWeb. This is a cool deal, but I have yet to test what happens if you don’t have a page type for every template you have in your collection…

So the solution is quite simple if you follow the structure of the TemplatesInfo.plist file. It’s just a list of key information about your template collection – what the names of the page types are (i.e. Welcome, About Me), what the file names are for each templates’s page types, and the sort order that the theme selector window should use to display them to you.

Now after seeing the structure of this file, logically one would think, “Hum… okay so as long as THIS file controls what’s defined, then if I add a new page type here, and then add entries for that page type for every template I own, then this should work.” And indeed it does. But the question I have yet to answer is whether everything will still work if you don’t actually have the files to match what you say you have.

Here’s what I mean by that. If I add a new page type, let’s call it Blank Page (which is what I did). I enter the new page type and I also enter the place in the list where I’d like it to appear. Now, I also create a new section for Blank Page where all the template files are listed and I create an entry for Baby, and Kids, and Modern and so on. In each of those entries, I list the file names for the new page type – i.e. Baby Blank Page.webtemplate.

So if you’re following me so far, then you now realize that I better actually HAVE a file called Baby Blank Page.webtemplate or perhaps iWeb will get confused. I’m betting that iWeb will toss me an error stating that the file cannot be found, so you don’t want too many missing files or you’ll be closing errors every time you open iWeb.

However, does the file actually have to have the right XML in it? Can it have the right name but just be empty? Hum… I have to test all these theories. I’ll go do that now.

This could be a great advantage for lots of people who either need new page layouts or who really, really prefer blank pages. However, if the effort it takes to enable its use is too great, then it’s likely that not many people will take advantage of the opportunity.

TBD!