Ok, it'll take me awhile to fiddle around with all of this stuff anyway, I'm just getting use to it first.

One other useful feature suggestion might be if you could colour highlight templates that you've edited. This was I can easily look down the list of templates and see which I've manipulated before without having to select them first.

First, the front page is a news page? In this case you should choose the news module as default. You find this option in the main menu under main preferences.

The columns should be only displayed on the front page? Contentteller comes also with support for an alternative site_header/site_footer but only for a few sections of the website. I may change this in one of the future releases though.

In the meantime you can do this again with a small PHP script inside of the site_header/site_footer template.

Here an example:

Open site_header in the template editor and choose "Add PHP part to this template". Then apply the following code:

global $ct;

$columns = ($ct) ? "<div class=\"altmainpage\" id=\"content\">" : "<div class=\"colleft\" id=\"menu1\">".$insert['site_block_1']."<div style=\"text-align: center;\">".$insert['site_tasks']."</div></div><div class=\"colright\" id=\"menu2\">".$insert['site_block_2']."</div><div class=\"mainpage\" id=\"content\">";

Now replace the following in the HTML part of the same template:

<div class="colleft" id="menu1">

{$insert['site_block_1']}



<div style="text-align: center;">

<!-- Do not remove -->

{$insert['site_tasks']}

<!-- Do not remove -->

</div>

</div>



<div class="colright" id="menu2">

{$insert['site_block_2']}

</div>



<div class="mainpage" id="content">

with

{$columns}

Now open site_footer and add the following PHP code:

global $ct;

$site_tasks = ($ct) ? "<br /><div style=\"text-align: center;\">".$insert['site_tasks']."</div>" : "";

and the following in the HTML part in line 3 (before the two </div> lines):

{$site_tasks}

Let me know if you need additional help or if something is unclear.

Well my main problem right now is that the sites overall header and footer does not do what it says on the tin, it also includes the content layout for the sites front page. But if I remove that then there's no clear indication of where I go (third template) to make the front page content, it's all very confusing.

Essentially I want my front page to look like it is now, albeit inside CT:
 ISPreview UK - Independent Internet Service Provider Information Source

Getting this to work with my beta without forcing the same front page layout upon all the other sections is proving to be overly problematic.

Custom templates are mainly for module developers to allow them adding templates to their newly written modules. This feature is not meant to add template to existing modules except you modify them first.

In which template are you calling {$insert['site_a_left_column']} and what does it contain?

Beside site_header/site_footer there are now also page layout templates such as news_layout_extended_story or content_layout_pages that allow customizing the entire website layout for each section.

So how can I call my custom template, otherwise what's the point of them ?

Thanks for your suggestions. I will improve the template editor in one of the coming releases. In fact it is already on my do list

If you have ideas or suggestion for other improvements, please use the  feature tracker.

No, it is not possible to call custom templates like this. The PHP script must call the template in question. It would take to many resources on the server if the template system would load all available templates for each request.