Template Customizer - Connections

Overview

The Template Customizer allows you to customize any supported template using an interactive point and click interface. The following covers the basic usage of the Template Customizer using the Default Entry Card template, one of the free templates included with Connections.

Important

The available options in the Template Customizer will vary depending on the template being customized.

Video Walkthrough

Starting the Template Customizer

To start the Template Customizer, go to the Templates admin page, locate the template you wish to customize and click the Customize button.

After you click the Customize button the page will reload with preview on the right and the Customizer on the left. The Customizer will initially open with the Display Panel open.

Important

Not all templates support the Template Customizer so the Customize button will only be available to those templates which support this feature.

Important

The directory home page must be set in order to use the Template Customizer.

Template Customizer Panels

The Template Customizer options are grouped into Panels. When the Template Customizer is initially loaded the Display Panel will be displayed. To view the other available Customizer Panels, click the back arrow button (<) in the upper left of the Customizer.

The following Customizer Panels are those available for the Default Entry Card template.

Global Options

The Global Option Customizer Panel options are available to all templates which support the Template Customizer. In this panel you will find the following options:

Character Index :: Show the character index at the top of the results list.
Character Index Repeat :: Repeat the character index at the beginning of each character group.
Current Character :: Show the current character at the beginning of each character group.

Tip

These options are the same as those found on the Settings admin page for the Character Index. Changing the options settings in the Template Customizer will also change the options settings on the Settings admin page.

Display

This panel allows you to disable or enable the display of data entered into your directory; for example, whether or not to display the address, phone number, categories, et cetera. Again, the options available are dependant on the template being customized.

Style

This panel will allow you to adjust the various style configuration options offered by the template. The options available are dependant on the template being customized. As an example, the Default Entry Car template allows you to configure the following attributes:

Border Width
Border Color
Border Radius

Image

This panel allows you to adjust image related settings such as setting the image type to be displayed along with its size.

Type :: Choose to display no image or either the Photo or Logo.
Width
Height
Crop Mode :: Several different crop modes are available.
Placeholder :: Choose whether or not an image placeholder is displayed if the selected image type does not exist.
Placeholder Text :: The text to display if no image is available.

Advanced

Many of the options under this panel are common among all templates which support the Template Customizer. There are many options here but they all work very similarly. The following covers how to use the Name Format, Address Format and Address Types options. The same instructions for these can be applied to the other available “Format” and “Type” options in this panel.

Name Format

The name shown will be the full name of the entry including the prefix, middle name and suffix. This option accepts only a few specific tokens. A token is a word wrapped with the % symbol, for example, %first% is a token.

The valid tokens are:

%prefix%
%first%
%middle%
%last%
%suffix%

If you would like to display just the first and last name, you would use:

%first% %last%.

Address Format

When processing the display of the address, Connections will scan for each token and replace it with the corresponding address segment. Each token should only be used once. You could use each token more than once, but that is not recommended.

The available tokens are:

%label%
%line1%
%line2%
%line3%
%city%
%state%
%zipcode%
%country%

The default address format is:

%label% %line1% %line2% %line3% %city%, %state% %zipcode% %country%

To remove the label and the country you would set these settings to:

%line1% %line2% %line3% %city%, %state% %zipcode%

To change the position of the zipcode you would change the settings to:

%label% %line1% %line2% %line3% %state%, %city% %zipcode% %country%

Display Address Types

The address field has the Type option when adding an address. The default choices are: Home, Work, School and Other. It is possible to limit the output to any combination of these address types regardless if an address is entered for an address type or not.

Examples:

Show only the home address type:

home

Show only the work address type:

work

Show both the home and school address types:

home, school

Saving Your Changes

To save your template customization, click the Save and Publish button.

Exiting the Template Customizer

To exit the Template Customizer, click the close button (×) in the upper left of the Customizer.