how to convert html template to joomla template?

Question

I have a html template that has multiple pages like home, about us,contact,services,... and I want to convert it to a joomla template.I spent a lot of time for searching a good tutorial in google like this:

http://www.learning.asarayan.com/education-website-design/joomla-training2/334-convert-html-to-joomla-template

but non of them can answer my question: how can I convert ALL pages of html to joomla??I mean that I can convert one page for example home to joomla and define its position but what about other pages? can anybody introduce me a COMPLETE tutorial???

sorry for my poor english

thanQ

Answer 1

You may start with tutorial posted at below address

http://www.tobacamp.com/tutorial/5-easy-steps-converting-html-template-to-joomla-template/

Answer 2

There is no automatic converter or out of the box solution for this, neither any tutorial to help you. The best way to sort out the issue is by duplicating the template with the help of Artisteer. You can just recreate the template design and feel with Artisteer. Download link: www.artisteer.com/?p=downloads

Answer 3

You need to change your mindset from that for a static template to that for a dynamic template.

In joomla templates there is a base layout called index.php as you know. But that is very skeletal usually, is just defines some locations on a page, includes your css and javascript that is common to all of your pages. This gives your site a common look and feel and ensures a good user experience.

For your css for the individual pages you would normally just include that in the template.css file or similar.

Within the index file you will see places that say jdoc:inlcude. These are the places that actually include the layouts that provide detailed html for specific blocks on the page, typically there will be one component jdoc (there cannot be more than one) and many modules and module ones as well as some others.

The html for these documents is found in the components/com_componentname/view/viewname/tmpl folders.

To override the core layouts you use the template override system by placing same named files in the html folder of your template. You can look at the included templates to see how this works. There is pretty good documentation of this on the joomla documentation site. http://docs.joomla.org/How_to_override_the_output_from_the_Joomla!_core will get you started.

Also this may be a point of confusion. In a CMS you strive to separate content from presentation. So if you enter the core information in the cms, ie enter the contact information in com_contact, and enter most of your current content into individual articles you will start to see how it actually works. I would usually recommend first entering all of your static content into the appropriate places, then work on making the rendered pages look exactly the way you want them to.