Why Use Templates?

Standard Version

Do you ever want to:

  • Move a Fusion site project to another computer?
  • Share a Fusion site project with other users?
  • Move a page (or a number of pages) from one site project into another?
  • Transfer some complex custom CSS style formatting from one project to another?
  • (Most important of all) Back up your Fusion work?
    (Hint: if you don't regularly back up, count on losing work!)

Fusion Templates are the only way to accomplish these tasks.

  • In NetObjects Fusion 7, you can export template files of entire site, or just selected pages. This new feature makes it very easy to transfer one or more pages from one Fusion project to another.
  • Fusion 7 templates are a single zip file.

To create a template, do this:

  1. Open your site file as normal.
  2. Go to Site View.
  3. On the menu, select File, Export as Template
  4. In Fusion 7, choose Entire Site or Selected Pages. (This step does not appear in Fusion MX and earlier versions.)
  5. In the file dialog that appears, navigate to the folder where you want Fusion to save the template.

What's inside the folder where you save the Template? (Or in Fusion 7, what's inside the template zip file?)

What's it for, or what does it do?

YourSiteName.NFT

The NetObjects Fusion Template (.NFT) file.  It contains your site structure, links, page layouts, and MasterBorders, amongst other things.

A folder named Assets

All the inline graphic, applet, and file assets that you placed on your page layouts or MasterBorders.

A folder named Styles

All the elements of your site Style, including your raw banner and navigation button graphics, and the CSS files that define your regular and custom CSS text formatting.

  • With Fusion MX or earlier versions, when you want to share a project, or copy a project to another computer, you must get all three parts of the template:  The NFT and both the Assets and Styles folders, with all their contents.
  • In Fusion 7, the template zip file contains everything you need.

To make a Template back into a Site File (NOD):

  1. On the Site View menu, select File, New, From Template
  2. Navigate to and select your template file
  3. Enter a file name for the new NOD
  4. Click OK

To insert a Template into another Site:

  1. Go to Site View
  2. Export the site to a Template, in case the insertion of the new pages causes problems with your site.
  3. Select the page where you want the Template's inserted pages to appear as child pages.
  4. On the menu, select File, Insert Template.
  5. Select the desired template file, click OK.

In Fusion 7, you must choose what to do with the template's MasterBorders. This affects only MasterBorders in your current site with the same name as MasterBorders in the Template. Common examples: ZeroMargins, Default MasterBorder.

Setting

What it does

Use existing MasterBorders

The default setting: discards duplicate-named MasterBorders  from the Template, and preserves the existing MasterBorders in the site.

Overwrite existing MasterBorders

Overwrites the current site's duplicate-named MasterBorders with the Template's MasterBorders. Be careful with this setting: you may get unintended results.

Create MasterBorders with new name

Renames and preserves the Template's duplicate MasterBorders, such as "InsertedZeroMargins" or "InsertedDefaultMasterBorder." This setting was the default behavior in all previous versions of Fusion.

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