Design Enhancements Released
Aug
5
Written by:
8/5/2012
SiteWizard LLC is proud to announce several new enhancements to the Skin Designer and template system. These new features provide a great deal of flexibility in the design of your SiteWizard CMS website.
New Design Features:
- Logo Position (Skin Designer) - Choose whether your logo and Login/Register buttons are inside the main page or above (outside) the page. While this sounds like a minor change, it opens up several new design scenarios. Some design examples are shown below.
- Icon Color (Skin Designer) - When you move your logo outside of the page, you can choose whether your Login/Register buttons are Dark or Light. These neutral colored icons can blend or contrast with any background.
- New Panes (Layout) - Three new panes have been added to the template layout system: OuterTopPane, OuterTopLeftPane and OuterTopRightPane. These panes can be used to insert content above (outside) the main page. By adding modules to these panes, you can insert a custom header or place widgets (ex: Language Translator or Social Bookmarks) separate from the main content area.
Design Examples:
Example 1. Original Header:
Let's start by looking at the original header style. Before these changes were implemented, the logo and Login/Register icons were always placed inside the white page area. Even though the logo could be changed, the header area could not be altered in any other way.
Example 2. Logo Outside Header:
The new Logo Position option in the Skin Designer allows you to move your logo and Login/Register buttons above (outside) the page. This provides a nice professional blending effect with the background image.
Important - This technique only works well when your logo image is a transparent PNG file. JPG format does not support transparency at all. GIF has limited transparency support but generally does not produce good results. If you do not have the software or technical skill to create a transparent PNG file, SiteWizard can convert your logo for a small fee. You may
contact support for more details.
Example 3. Custom Header Inside Page:
Because the Login/Register buttons can be moved outside of the page, it is now possible to create your own custom graphic and insert it into the header area. To reproduce the following effect, disable your logo through the Skin Designer, then insert your custom graphic into ImagePane01.
Example 4. Custom Header Outside Page:
Another interesting variation is to place a custom header graphic above (outside) the page. To reproduce the following effect, disable your logo through the Skin Designer, then insert your custom graphic into OuterTopPane.
We hope that you enjoy these new design features. SiteWizard continuously strives to provide our customers with the best products and services. Please let us know if we can assist you in any way.