Create Your Own Mambo Template

To create your own Mambo template you need to build the following files:

• index.php - the template structure file;
• template_css.css - cascading style sheet (CSS) for the template;
• templateDetails.xml - metadata file in XML format

OPTIONAL: To make it easy to preview the template in the template administration, or via the template switcher module, it is recommended to create a screenshot of the template (140px wide x 90px high) and save it as template_thumbnail.png.

In earlier tutorials, we talked about the index.php file and template_css.css. A blank template for Mambo and a CSS guide are available for you to use - just download these from the downloads area. Yesterday, we looked at creating the templateDetails.xml file. Today, we put them all together and prepare our completed template for uploading to our Mambo site.

Steps to Build Your Template Package

1. Create a folder and give it the same name as your template. This is the name that you entered in the <name> field in your templateDetails.xml file;
2. Add your index.php and templateDetails.xml files to this new folder;
3. If you are using a template_thumbnail.png screenshot with your template, add this to the templates folder as well;
4. Create a new folder/directory inside the template folder and call it images;
5. Add all of your template's images to the new images folder;
6. Create a second new folder within the template folder and call is css (without the quotation marks);
7. Add your template_css.css file to the css folder;
8. Now that everything is in place, zip up your templates folder (this will contain the css and images folders as well). If you do not already have a zip utility, you can download a free one from 7-zip.

Once that is done you are ready to install your new template using the Universal Installer in the Mambo administrator backend.

Free Download

A free download of a complete Mambo template starter-pack is provided here. This package contains a blank index.php file, a template_css.css file containing all Mambo CSS selectors ready for you to style, a blank templateDetails.xml file, and a basic template_thumbnail.png that you can use to identify which template is yours. You are free to use these as a starting point for your own template development. Enjoy!