Setting up this script is a BIG PAIN!! I thought that the templates were supposed to help make it easy to create pages that fit the look and feel of the rest of our site?!? The header.html file is not plain text and cannot be edited in FrontPage. The color choices I've set up are getting changed somewhere in the process. The instructions do not make it clear which page we are supposed to direct our subscribers to, either before they pay for a subscription or after. (I've figured out that the potential member gets directed to the signup.php page which then directs them to the payment processor and then back to..... is it the member.php page?) I had a complete workable solution, but one that was unprotected from non-users accessing the website. This is just about too hard to work with. I can see where the Smarty thing makes it easy for the programmers, but it does not make it easy for the users! Can anyone help explain how I can get the templates to look like the rest of my site???
this is step 6 of the install Code: If all ok, you may customize templates. You should customize at least: header.html footer.html thanks.html sendpass.txt signup_mail.txt Tip: 90% of aMember look&feel can be customized by editing CSS stylesheet in the file header.html they are all in the templates folder. I've learned the hard way over years that there are 3 parts to an html page. One, the header with the logo; the header can actually include a menu on the left side of the page. Two, the content which goes beneath my logo and to the right of the left menu and to the left of the right menu (see #3). Three, the footer, which can also contain a right menu and any footer type info. here is what the header looks like from my zip file: Code: <html> <head> <title>{$title}</title> <style> /* properties for entire page and text inside tables */ body, th, td { background-color: #$config.page_bg#; color: #$config.page_fg#; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 9pt; } /* properties for all input elements */ input, textarea { font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 9pt; } /* properties for headers */ .hdr, h1 { color: #707070; font-size: 140%; font-weight: bold; text-align: center; } /* vedit - vertical table (signup, profile edit) */ .vedit { background-color: #F0F0F0; } /* vedit - usual column (right) */ .vedit td { padding: 10px; padding-left: 15px; background-color: #E0E0E0; } /* vedit - header column (left) */ .vedit th { padding: 10px; padding-right: 15px; text-align: right; background-color: #C0B9C0; font-weight: normal; } /* hedit - horizontal table (payments list) */ .hedit { background-color: #F0F0F0; } /* hedit - usual column */ .hedit td { padding: 5px; background-color: #E0E0E0; font-family: "Verdana"; font-size: 8pt; } /* hedit - header column */ .hedit th { padding: 5px; background-color: #C0B9C0; } </style> </head> <body bgcolor=white> you may need to edit the css stuff now all you have to do is to take a table like so <table> <tr> <td>left menu</td> <td>content</td> <td>right menu</td> </tr> </table> put the red part in the header.html and the blue part in the footer.html and you are good to go. the place where I have left/right menu you can put anything there (or even nothing). I suggest another table. then you can put a menu, a text scroller, text ads, etc. (yeah, sorry about the tables for structure, for you purists...LOL ) Finally, you may need to edit the other html/txt files - the content in my table example above - to conform them to your site... I haven't looked at them all but there is no formatting tags (fonts, colors, bolds, etc ) so all the stuff is controlled by the css style. I know it may look difficult but I speak with some experience on this subject. When I saw the template files I jumped for joy. they had no formatting that I had to delete and I could use the css styles to control most of formatting. and the header.html and footer.html are pure gold to me....! I just got out of competitor program ( dreamcost.com). the html pages (and the program ) were a nightmare...!!! There was no way for me to change the html pages to the look and feel of my site. any pain using amemberpro is non-existent compared to dream account... Sorry about your having to use FrontPage.
I did see that step 6 about the templates, but I just haven't been able to get colors, fonts, and so on to match my other pages. I have to admit that I know nothing about CSS formatting. All of my formatting is direct in the html pages themselves. Does the CSS formatting in the included header.html file have to be there? If I eliminate it, will my colors return to normal? Part of the "look and feel" of my website is the color scheme. I have all pages presented in tables, which have a particular background color, border color, etc, so this is important to me. I'm also still a little confused about how to link the various pages together with the rest of my site. I'm gathering that amember handles the order-taking process, so my sales page should link to the signup script. But what should happen after that? My current setup is like this. My sales page links directly to ClickBank, which then links to a page where the customer fills out a small form with name and email fields (to subscribe to the autoresponder for updates and news). Also on this page is thank-you information. Once the customer fills out the form, they are taken to another page which informs them of the membership URL with some additional information. Of course, the membership URL leads to the pages that I want protected by amember. How do I translate this to the amember format? Which pages link to what? I know this must be obvious to you, but it's not to me. I understand your sympathy for FrontPage users. Thank you.
First on the customization. I think you will find this page useful: http://cgi-central.net/amemberdocs/help/custom.htm Also bear in mind that if you are using an FP generated page to make your template as described there you will need to strip out any FP specific stuff that is on there, so nothing that needs extensions or refers to bots and so on. On the CSS, I think you will find that it is best left in, but edited. You really do not need to know anything much about CSS to do that, essentially all you should need to edit are the colors. Just play around with the colors as they currently are, change some to colors you want and see what happens. It will take a bit of fiddling but you will get it right. As to integrating the payment system itself - it is not so much a matter of altering your current system as scrapping it altogether. The pages of the script link to each other themselves - you don't need to be involved in that. All you need to do is enter your products in amember, then link to signup.php. Your products will be displayed there and off people can go. Of course you also need to set up the payment plugin you need - info on that in the docs. When users register with amember they recieve an email telling them what to do to get into the member url. You can edit the emails. Users will login via login.php in the amember directory rather than going direct to the URL, though they can do that too.
Thanks for your time in explaining all this to me. The only thing I really use FP for is to see what I'm working on so I can judge the layout visually. I don't use any of the FP specific features. Is there a good reference on the CSS system? If I need to work with it, I probably will have to read up on it to understand it. I really would like to use plain basic html files, though, and handle all the formatting manually. I know this is not the most efficient way to do it, but it is what I've already done and it would be easier that way. One more question on the CSS. Do all browsers interprete it the same way? In other words, will everyone who visits the pages formatted with CSS see the pages exactly the same? Consistency is a major issue with me, as you no doubt already know. On to the subject of linking the pages together again. My sales page should link to amember, which will link back to the membership area of the website. Where should I put my thank-you information and other introductory material?
To be honest I would forget understanding it for now - learning CSS will not be something you do in an evening! To change the colours you do not actually need to understand it and I would get this thing working first before moving on. All you are going to need to do is to change the actual hex values of the colors. As I say play with them, replace the ones in there with colors used on your site and you will eventualy get a mix that works for you. Using CSS does not mean you are not using plain, basic HTML files. You are NOT going to be able to work on the script pages in the way you normally do with FrontPage. That is just how it is, accept it and move on. That said - your template page is just an ordinary site page with all the normal stuff in it but no content where the content goes. It is just that at the last minute you split it into header and footer files. Yes, this means that locally you cannot see all the formatting if you are working on a page but if you are going to use scripts, that is how life will be. Header and footer files really are the most efficient way to integrate things into the overall look of your site, no matter how that site was originally constructed. There are books filled about CSS and the problems around browser compatibility - but the CSS used in this case is very simple and there will be no significant difference in different browsers. All of that can be in aMember - have you actually gone through an order process? Have you set up products? Follow the instructions in the docs, get the thing working and then start to see what you need to customise. If you want to go through an order process, sign up for free membership here if you like, or start buying then abandon the process, whatever. You need to get a feel for the flow of the script. http://www.fionaharrold.com/ I think you just need to stop worrying about the fact that this script does not do things the way you are sued to doing them - that is just how it is and worrying about it won't make it different. Get in there, follow the instrcutions, get the thing working anyway you can. It really is not hard - beleive me I have used several membership management scripts and this is BY FAR the easiest to customise.
Alan has abbeyvet said amember pro is very easy to customize just to show you how much you can change it have a look on my site order page: http://www.vbulletinstyles.com/members/signup.php and client login page on most pages of the site: http://www.vbulletinstyles.com/index.php Most of the template are just like plain html files. If you need any help just ask here and i'm sure we can give you a hand Miko
Thanks for all the help, guys. I've got it working now, and all I really did was to strip out the CSS stuff. My colors are right, and the formatting looks good. When I get a chance to learn more, I'll probably put it back in, but for right now, I have a working system. I understand now about the header and footer files. Once I saw that I simply take my template page that I've been using to construct the other pages in my site and split it in two, it became much easier to understand. When I read 'header' and 'footer', I think of those in a word processing document, which stays only at the top and bottom of the page. But with this, you do have top and left in the header, and the right and bottom in the footer. Slick! And all of this is built on the fly with PHP pages. I can't wait to learn how to do this with the rest of my site. But that will come another day. I knew there was a great deal of flexibility in this script, which is one reason I really wanted to get it working. The main problem I've had is simply that I'm not familiar with HTML and web scripts. I've learned a lot over the last 7 months! By the way, I've figured out where to place the introductory material. There is a 'thanks.html' page that is shown after a successful payment. This is what I wanted to know - I guess I couldn't see it right away, trying to get the signup page formatted correctly before moving on to the other templates. And the signup_mail.txt is where I place the letter that's sent out to the new member. I'm sorry to be a detail person, but sometimes you have to point out the obvious with me. A list of included templates and the functions they serve would have made it easier for me. I've read somewhere on this site that the templates for the Pro version are different than with the free version. But now that I understand the fundamental concepts involved, I don't expect to have many problems. I do have another question, but since it is on another topic, I'll start another thread instead of posting it here. Thanks again to everyone who's helped.
I am really glad you got it sorted. I knew from the start precisely the conceptuial difficulty you were having with the 'header' and 'footer' file. many people are under the same impression as you are, but once you realise the reality it is very elegant isn't it? You can apply it very usefully (and easily) to the rest of your site too. I guess you have a bit of overload right now but put that one on the backboiler and read more about it when you get a chance - you will be glad you did!
Need a bit of help I'm also having a tiny bit of trouble customizing my pages. I did great until I went to change the font color and encountered this: color: #$config.page_fg#; I'm pretty knowledgable with CSS but I'm use to a hex code being there not whatever that is. LOL How do I change the font color on my header.html and all the other properties that have that #$config.page_fg#; in it. I don't know what exactly that is. Thanks so much for taking the time to help me out.
This will be replaced with setting from aMember CP -> Setup -> Color. Of course, it is not a problem to replace #$config.page_fg# to your color definition, for example: #f0f0f0