Directory structure explained

Should you not be familiar with standard terms such as content objects or nodes, please take a look at Datatypes, Classes, Objects and Nodes first.

The templates are stored in the folder /design. Here you will find the folder /design/standard, /design/admin/, /design/user/ and /design/demo/, which each represent a global site design. The basic principle for creating custom designs is to create override templates in your custom design folders that replace the designs in /design/standard. If Exponential does not find an override template it simply uses the template in the standard directory.

In the current set-up the admin folder contains the overrides and functionality for the admin section, the user folder is a basically empty design based on standard and the demo folder contains the overrides and functionality for the demo site that comes with the installation. The latter is a good starting point to look through when you want to examine how to create your own design. Take a look at Template Language for further reference. Please note that template caching should be turned off while you develop or edit templates ( How do enable/disable the cache function?).

Standard design folder

/design/standard/fonts/ - font data for the TextToImage function
/design/standard/images/ - the global images
/design/standard/override/ - some specific templates that override those in .../templates/ (below)
/design/standard/prepare/ -
/design/standard/stylesheets/ - CSS files
/design/standard/templates/ - main templates folder

In this folder you find

.../class/ - generic content class handling templates
.../class/datatype/edit/ - specific datatype editing templates when creating/editing content classes. Only those that need specific handling are found here.
.../content/datatype/edit/ - generic datatype editing templates for actual content objects. Here you find all datatypes.
.../content/datatype/view/ - generic datatype viewing templates
Note: info on the above three directories in context at http://ez.no/sdk/kernel/view/content_datatypes
.../content/datatype/view/xmltags/ - generic xml tags viewing templates
.../content/view/ - generic content object viewing templates (e.g. for an article)
.../node/ - generic node handling templates
.../node/view/ - generic node viewing templates (e.g. for an article). Difference to content/view (above) is, that a node is a pointer to a content object (actual page) within the site hierarchy.
.../error/kernel/ - standard error message templates

and many more.

Custom design folders (all folders except for the standard folder)

/design/(yourdesign)/stylesheets/ - CSS files
/design/(yourdesign)/images/ - custom images
/design/(yourdesign)/templates/ - this is where all the generic templates of your design go.
The main file will be the pagelayout.tpl that defines the default page design (equivalent of frame.php in the 2.x series). To make section specific page designs put a pagelayout_section_[sectionnumber].tpl in /design/(yourdesign)/override/templates/ (see below).
/design/(yourdesign)/override/ - this is the top level directory for all the templates that override those that are in the standard design folder or in your generic design folder. This is where probably most of your custom designs go.
/design/(yourdesign)/override/templates/ - directory for section templates. These override /design/(yourdesign)/templates/pagelayout.tpl (see above)
Example: /design/(yourdesign)/override/templates/pagelayout_section_[sectionnumber].tpl - override layout for section number [sectionnumber]. If you create a new design, these files are most important.
/design/(yourdesign)/override/templates/content/ - override templates for your handling (editing, creating) content objects (either self created or predefined objects) as well as datatypes
/design/(yourdesign)/override/templates/node/ - override templates for viewing content objects and pages. This is the second most important directory, where all custom content templates go (these complement the pagelayout templates from above)