Confluence Docs 3.0 : Customising Layouts This page last changed on Apr 16, 2009 by jlargman.
| If you modify the look and feel of Confluence by following these instructions, you will need to update your customisations when upgrading Confluence. The more dramatic the customisations are, the harder it will be to reapply your changes when upgrading. Please take this into account before proceeding with your customisation.
You can customise the layout of your Confluence instance by editing the 'decorators' that define the look and feel of the site. You need to have System Administrator permissions in order to perform this function. Confluence is built on top of the open source SiteMesh library, a web-page layout system. Read more on the SiteMesh website. To edit the layout of Confluence, you will need to modify these decorator files. A decorator file is a .vmd file and is written in a very simple programming language called Velocity. You can learn more from the Velocity User Guide. Once you are familiar with Velocity, you can edit the decorator files to personalise the appearance of Confluence.
| You can customise the layouts for a particular space or for the whole site. This page tells you how to customise layouts for the site as a whole. To customise the layouts for a space, use the 'Layout' menu on the 'Space Admin' page. When you upgrade Confluence, you must reapply your custom layouts to the newly installed default layouts.
The decorator files are grouped into: Site layouts : These are used to define the controls that surround each page in the site. For example, the header and the footer. Content layouts : These control the appearance of content such as pages and news items: they don't change the way the pages themselves are displayed, but allow you to alter the way the surrounding comments or attachments are displayed. Export Layouts: These control the appearance of spaces and pages when they are exported to HTML. If you are using Confluence to generate a static website, for example, you will need to modify these layouts. ### Editing a site decorator file Go to the Confluence 'Administration Console'. To do this: Open the 'Browse' menu and select 'Confluence Admin'. The 'Administration Console' view will open. Select 'Layouts' under 'Look and Feel' in the left-hand navigation panel. The decorators are grouped under Site, Content and Group layouts. Click 'View Default' to view the vmd file. Click 'Create Custom' to edit the default vmd file. This will open up the vmd file in edit mode. Make changes and click 'Update'. If something goes wrong : Click 'Reset Default' to revert to the original layouts. ### Using Velocity macros When editing Custom Decorator Templates, there are a number of macros available to define complex or variable parts of the page such as menus and breadcrumbs. You may insert these macros anywhere in your templates. More information on Working With Decorator Macros. ### For advanced users The `velocity` directory is at the front of Confluence's velocity template search path. As such, you can override any of Confluence's velocity templates by placing an identically named file in the right place. While we don't recommend you do this unless you know exactly what you're doing, it does give you complete control over the look of every aspect of Confluence. It also means that you can edit your templates in a text-editor if you wish, rather than through the web interface.
| Caching Velocity is configured to cache templates in memory. When you edit a page from within Confluence, it knows to reload that page from disk. If you are editing the pages on disk, you will either have to turn off velocity's caching temporarily in `WEB-INF/classes/velocity.properties`, or restart the server to make your changes visible.
In Confluence 2.6 and later, some Velocity files are located inside the Confluence JAR file that can be found at `confluence/WEB-INF/lib/confluence-x.x.x.jar`. To override files inside this JAR (which you can open with any ZIP tool like WinZip or 7-Zip), put your customised file in the same directory structure under `confluence/WEB-INF/classes/`. For example, the file `templates/macros/alphaindex.vm` inside confluence.jar can be replace by putting your custom file in `WEB-INF/classes/templates/macros/alphaindex.vm`. You do not need to modify the file inside the JAR. See also Editing Files within JAR Archives. ##### RELATED TOPICS
Theme Plugins
Customising a Specific Page
Customising Look and Feel Overview
Creating a Theme Plugin
Global Templates
Customising Layouts
Customising Colour Schemes
Upgrading Custom Layouts
Editing the Footer
Working With Decorator Macros
Adding a Site-Wide Banner
Velocity Template Overview Basic Introduction to Velocity

Document generated by Confluence on Nov 05, 2009 23:27