customizing the design...

[supermaggel]

i dont understand the tiniest thing about customizing the design.
i am familliar with CSS/html/php etc etc, just not with CGI. why is it so difficult to style it

i read someone was able to split the design into separate folders (CSS files). can someone tell me how to do that? i can't find it anywhere... or if someone could mail it to me, a million thanks.

thanks,

Michael
[e-mail]


edit:

also, i cannot seem to download the GM file GM_templates. this doesnt make it easier

FTP program i use is coffeecup Free FTP. works awesome for all the other sites and stuff i maintain and work with....

[Carlos Phelps]

Michael,

I take it you would like to style the web side of your greymatter blog.

First you will need to get gm-template.cgi file into the same folder with gm.cgi. When you ftp the cgi files do it in text mode. If for any reason you want to look at or edit one of the cgi file use only a text editing program like Notepad++ (it's a free download).

When you get the gm-template.cgi in place, login into greymatter and goto Edit Templates. You will see the opition Edit Header,Footer and Sidebar Templates, select it. On the top of the next page you will see the Header Template. Remove the styles to a file. Save the file where you want it and add the link in the header template then save and rebuild your files.

Have fun.

[supermaggel]

thanks for your reply.

the transferring of the .cgi files now works, thanks.
the CSS stuff works too, but i want to integrate the greymatter weblog into an existing site. herefore i want to modify the HTML output, but i don't really understand how this works in greymatter.
anyone has experience in adding in html? (for the CSS to work, classes, id's and stuff).


thanks again,

michael

[Carlos Phelps]

Michael,

Greymatter uses templates to build the pages. In some of the template you will see tags like {{header}}, {{footer}}, {{sidebar}} and so on. When Greymatter see one of these tags it replaces it. So the header template you changed would be inserted where ever the {{header}} tag is found.

In the Docs on Greymatter you find a list of tags. You might want to copy and print the header, footer, and sidebar templates to make it easier to see.