Title: Customizing 2Col and 3Col Skins

This section explains the Customize features of the 2col and 3col skins.

To select the skin and access the Customize screen, choose one of the skins from the drop down box, click Apply, then click Customize.



Show Navigation Sidebar - 2col only



This section appears in the Customize screen if you selected 2col. It allows you to put the vertical navigation column (with calendar, project list, topic list, tools, etc..) to the left or right of the body of the page where articles appear.



Note: In the 3col skin, the project and topic list, search box, and links to Setup screens are on the left, while Calendar, page action menu, and sidebar are on the right)

Show Projects / Labels with Zero Activity



The list of Projects (when on Front Page) or Labels (when on a project Newspage) can be exposed

  1. Regardless of whether there is activity for the project or label in the selected timeslice (this gives you a full list of all projects available based on Read permission) or

  2. Only if there is activity for the project or label in the selected timeslice.





It is nice to select Yes on Projects, to enable navigation to the associated newspage (which will show the most recent content, perhaps from a previous timeslice). The default is No for labels, because clicking a label when there is no activity will yield a blank list of results.

Use Sections



This will allow you to control whether Traction presents the Front Page and Newspage in the default Section oriented manner (i.e. separating Headlines, News, and Custom categories from Recent Entries) OR in the reverse chronological style of a traditional weblog.



If you Select NO, then you will get the simplified Blog behavior which will show Recent Articles as the first section and, optionally, Recent Comments as the next section. If you select NO, then the rest of this help page is relevant.

Recent Articles and Recent Comments



This section of the screen is only relevant if you selected NO in Use Sections choice above. Here, you determine whether you want to show Recent Articles and Recent Comments, and how much content to display.



Recent Articles Size selection: The outcome of selecting Large, Medium or Small in the Size choices will provide different results depending on the skin or stylesheet you select. Here is an example of each as they appear in the Earth skin:

Large - Title, first paragraph, and details including Author, Date/Time



Medium - Title and details



Small - Title only.



Recent Articles / Comments selection: If the Minimum is positive (e.g. 5), it will show articles or comments from a previous timeslice if nothing is posted in the current timeslice. If you select 0 as the maximum, this section will not appear. If you select -1 as the maximum, there will be an unlimited number of articles or comments from the timeslice in this section.

Further Customization



There are three levels at which you might customize further:

  1. Create a new "skin" which is really a hardwired bundle of choices made based on the 2col or 3col skin. The Earth skin is an example of this.

  2. Create a new CSS stylesheet that meets a look and feel requirement of your own, and create a new skin based on that, or simply select it as a 2col or 3col option.

  3. Create an entirely new skin (or modify an existing SDL skin) with our Skin Definition Language (SDL)



For instruction on how to pursue any of these options, please refer to our customer knowledge base. Certain information, such as the SDL guide does require that you have permission, please Contact Us if you would like access to these supplementary resources.





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