Rice Lake CRS-Certificate Retrieval System - Manual (Page 18)

14 Certificate Retrieval System User’s Guide
4.0 Customizing Front-End Administration
The front-end of CRS can be customized to fit in with
your website. Most layout changes are affected by
changing the cascading style sheet page for CRS. CRS
uses templates for its pages and these templates may
also be modified to provide additional content.
However, care must be taken to not change any of the
CRS tags that tell the template engine how to handle
and display data.
4.1 Introduction to the Template Engine
A template is a page composed of HTML code and
special tags used to control the content of the web
application. The special tags are parsed by a template
engine and rendered into instructions to the main
language engine (in this case PHP) where the
documents are then turned into web pages. The net
result is that the content can be changed within these
templates without adversely affecting the actual
application. This allows you to customize CRS to fit
the needs of your company.
Customizing CRS templates requires an in-depth
understanding of advanced HTML layout, cascading
style sheets, and JavaScript. Experience using a
template engine is also a desired skill. Improper
template modifications can render your CRS system
inoperable and may require re-installation.
4.2 The CRS Style Sheet
CRS uses cascading style sheets for style elements to
control look and feel of the web application. This
single sheet's rules for layout, fonts, and colors are
applied to the whole site so it can blend in with your
existing web-site design to become a seamless part of
your web presence.