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Introduction

This tutorial should help you to do the first step creating a website with Contao and show you on a very basic level how to begin. It helps you get answers of the questions ... where to I begin with my Webpage? What are the first steps.

The result of the tutorial will be a web page with two columns, a header and a footer with some pages and articles. The requirements are:

• Overall with: 960px
• Alignment: center
• High of header: 50px
• With of left column: 220px
• High of footer: 25px

Requirements

• Contao needs to be installed with success
• Installation needs to be checked with the system-check tool and removed from all errors if there are some.
• The Example Webpage "Musicacademy" will NOT be imported while installing Contao
• Knoledge of HTML and CSS

Preparations

Files

All files(pictures, documents, Video- Audio-files ...) where belong to the web-project, are stored in the /tl_files/ folder. To get a good overview, you can store the files in several sub-folders. With the integrated [File_Manager] (Backend-System --> File manager), you can create the structure as needet. For example we put all the files for the Webcontent in a subfolder named "firstsite/theme". As this here is a very simple project we could create the CSS File in the Subfolder "theme". We name it layout.css (more later). The full path will be tl_files/fistsite/theme/.

Filemanager

Templates

Templates (check also edit_templates) are stored in the folder /templates/. In the Back-end you can find the templates in Layout --> Templates. Similar as with the files, you can create a sub-folder named "project-name". In our case it is /templates/firstpage/.

Templates

Hint:

Files in the folders "tl_files" and "templates" will be NOT overwriten when you do a update from the Contao-Core! But it is allways a good idea to store this files/folders and also the database when you uptdate the system. Then this /files/folders and the database are the hard work you do for a web-project.

Theme

We do create in the Theme_Manager a new "theme" with the name "fistsite". With this, we do have the controll over all actions where are needed to display a wep-project. This are files, stylesheets, frontend-modules and page-layouts.

When you create a "theme" you have to give a name and also mention the autor. Below you make settings to wich folders the "theme" belongs. Also the template folder can be selected. If you have already a screen-shot of your web-project you will be able to select it to show a small picture.

Create Theme

If you save your "theme" you will see a overview of it with several functions you can access. From left to right, the small Icons represent the functions as, edit themes; delete themes; information; CSS edit of the theme; front-end Modules; page layouts; and export of the theme. (For the screen-shot below i used contao 2.9.3)

Theme Overview

Stylesheets

You can create a Stylesheet for your own theme. On the theme-manager by the theme "fistsite" you have the CSS button. Within this button click you will open a overview where you see all your style-sheets for the theme you selected. With "new style-sheet" you create the necessary file.

Create Stylesheet

It is also possible to import a CSS file. You just have to put it in the tl_files. As I mentioned while explaining the "File Manager" under the section "Files" when you put your CSS files in this Folder, you will also get it while you do a export of your theme.

Import Stylesheet

The CSS-Manager looks like this after creation and import of the CSS Files:

Import Stylesheet

Page Layout

On the next step we will create a Pagelayouts. Back in the theme-manager on the theme "fistsite" we have to click on the "page-layout" button (second last one on the right). Now it is up to create a new Layout and we name it default. As mentioned in the Introduction we do the following configuration:

Create Page Layout