Easy to convert to Joomla 1.5


Author Message
Stacey Reiman

Posted: 1/4/2009
Quote message 

Converting the exported HTML to Joomla is not hard at all - takes maybe 30 minutes of your time. I only use 3 positions - a position above the content for banners, etc called advert - plus the main content and a left hand sidebar. While the menu isn't working quite right yet - that should be an easy fix, just haven't looked into it. You can see my Artisteer designed Joomla 1.5 site here:

http://www.instaspanish.com

Here is roughly what I did

1- export your Artisteer Design to HTML
2- Open that in the new Dreamweaver CS4 - a truly awesome upgrade, - you can download the free trial from Adobe
3- In Dreamweaver you can see the site visually, not just in code - so look at the LIVE VIEW then delete everything but the design.
4 - add in your Joomla header php stuff and info - then add the
<jdoc:include type="component" />
type tags where you need them
5- take an existing template folder that you aren't using and copy this stuff there so you have all the files you need like params.ini and the templateDetails.xml - you can adjust the xml if you want

I still had to customize some missing CSS stuff - the button field doesn't work right, I had to adjust that to reflect a .button class instead of what Artisteer produces.

Here is my index.php file so you get the idea of how an Joomla/Artisteer template should look - I took out my menu stuff, but you get the idea. I'm sure this can be improved but it was a great way to get the new design on my Joomla site quickly! Ah also please note I added some code to stop Joomla from loading the big javascript file I don't need.

Oops looks like I can't add that code here - it converts it in a weird way - but I uploaded it to my server - you can access it here:
http://www.instaspanish.com/dev/artisteer.txt