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County Coordinator's Helper

Customizing Your Pages

NOTE: This software and associated documentation are
    Copyright © 1997 Patricia A. Lindsay.

Reference Information

  1. Sample page documentation. Description of sample pages and information on how the HTML for a page is defined and stored in CCHelper.

Control Settings.

Changing the Appearance of the pages.

  1. Changing the fixed text portion of the pages. The fixed text is the part of the page that doesn't change. To illustrate, here is the text for the "common header" section.

    <html> <TITLE>[[COUNTY]] County, [[STATE]], [[TITLE]]</TITLE>
    <H1><IMG SRC="usgenweb.gif" align=left>
    <center>[[COUNTY]] County, [[STATE]]</H1>
    <h2>[[TITLE]] [[SUBTITLE]]</H2></center><br>
    <br>
    SURNAMES: [[atozsur]]<br>

    Everything in the above text that is not enclosed in [[ and ]] is fixed text. Everything inside of the [[ and ]] is a symbolic, we'll get to symbolics later.

    To make changes to the fixed text you edit the text in CCHelper. Possible changes include changing the background, adding a .gif file, changing the fixed text in the header, changing the way your name and e-mail address appear at the bottom or changing the phrasing on the researcher's page.

    Example #1: change the background color of all of the pages that use the common header

    • Choose "Manage","HTML Sections", "common header", "Edit". In the "text" window add a BODY HTML tag to change the color. The following sets the background to white and the text to black:

      <BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" Text=000000>

    • If you use an HTML editor, then use the editor to generate the desired HTML tags and then cut-and-paste the HTML code into the "text" window.

    Example #2: change the phrasing on the researcher's page from "Registered surname(s) [[surline]] on [[postdate]]" to "Registered these surnames(s) [[surline]] on [[postdate]]"

    • Edit the "res. body" HTML section and add the word "these" to the text.

  2. Making changes to text that is not fixed.

    Symbolics are used to tell the CCHelper HTML generator where to place the data stored in your database. You specify symbolics in the HTML by enclosing the name in [[ and ]]. In Example #2 above, during HTML generation, CCHelper will put all of the surnames registered on a given date by researcher where it says [[surline]] and put the date the surnames were registered where is says [[postdate]].

    You can find more information about the various symbolics in CCHelper under "Manage", "Control Settings" and then scroll down to where "Symbolic Field" is shown.

    Example #3: remove the date in the text in Example #2 above., so it will just say "Registered surname(s) [[surline]]".

    • Edit the "res. body" section and delete the "on [[postdate]]" from the text.

    Example #4: leave the date, but change it from the "May 22, 1997" format to the "5/22/97" format.

    • Edit the "res. body" section and change "on [[postdate]]" to "on [[postdatex]]". (The symbolics [[postdate]] and [[postdatex]] are both described on the "Manage", "Control Settings" window).

  3. REPEAT and IF commands.

    The above instructions refer to CCHelper substituting the symbolics with data, eg [[resname]] will be replaced with the researcher's name. You may wonder, "How does it determine which researcher?". CCHelper reads through the data in your database based on the REPEAT commands defined in the HTML and then "repeats" a portion of the HTML for each set of data it reads. For example, when you want to specify the HTML that is to be used for each researcher, you use the /[REPEAT FOR EACH RESEARCHER]/ and /[END REPEAT]/ commands. Here's an example from the "res. body" HTML section in CCHelper that illustrates the REPEAT command as well as the IF command.

    TextComment
    <center>RESEARCHERS: [[atozres]]</center><br> This text does not repeat, it only appears once on each page, because it is before the REPEAT command.
    /[REPEAT FOR EACH RESEARCHER]/ This says "repeat the following line(s) for each researcher".
    [[atoztag]] [[Tag]] <h3>[[ResName]]</h3> <ul>
    /[ IF ResEmail EXISTS ]/ This says "only do the following line(s) if this researcher has an e-mail address".
    <li> Email: <a href="mailto:[[resemail]]">[[resemail]]</a>
    /[ ENDIF]/
    /[ IF ResWebPage EXISTS ]/ This says "only do the following line(s) if this researcher has a Web page."
    <li> Personal Web Page: <a href=" [[ResWebPage]]"> [[ResWebPage]] </a>
    /[ ENDIF]/
    /[ IF ResNote EXISTS ]/ This says "only do the following line(s) if this researcher has an note".
    <li> Other: [[ResNote]] </a>
    /[ ENDIF]/
    /[REPEAT FOR EACH REGISTRATION]/ This is a repeat inside of a repeat, in this case it says "repeat the following line(s) for each surname registration for the current researcher".
    <li> Registered surname(s) [[surline]] on [[postdate]]
    /[END REPEAT This ends the repeat for the surname registration.
    /[REPEAT FOR EACH QUERY]/ This says "repeat the following line(s) for each query for the current researcher".
    <li> Posted <a href="[[QryRef]]">Query</a> on [[postdate]] for surname(s) [[surline]]
    /[END REPEAT]/ This ends the repeat for the query.
    </UL>
    /[END REPEAT]/ This ends the repeat for the researcher.

    Note that commands are enclosed with /[ and ]/. You can find more information about commands in CCHelper under "Help", "Command Help".

Creating a new page.

Changing File Names

Return to the CCHelper Home page.

Return to the Install on Windows 95 page.

Return to the Install on Windows 3.1 page.

Return to the Getting Started page.

Copyright © 1997 Patricia A. Lindsay. All rights reserved.
Patty Lindsay
plindsay@discover.wright.edu