I just bought a responsive softpress template and have begun “converting” a small site.
First, the simplest question: What is the best approach to using template pages and masters with an existing site file?
A. Copy and paste the new template pages and (renamed) masters into a duplicate of the existing site file? Then apply the new masters to the old pages?
OR
B: Copy and paste pages one at a time from the existing site file into the new/clean template based file? Then apply the new masters to the old pages?
C???
Of course I want to preserve all the old link names and structure as much as possible.
I think your approach is untenable, that it will not work.
Freeway templates are for building new sites, not magically applying to existing contents. What you are proposing will obliterate that content, because the existing content isn’t part of the template’s master page, regardless of which direction you are traveling.
Secondly, and perhaps as important, Freeway files are much more than master pages… there are styles and layouts that make up the whole thing, and it all must work together. They are meant to provide a structure into which to place your content with the template’s layout and style system. Chopping and swapping bits will be only be disastrous.
The best approach here would be to use the template to set up a new site-- make the same number of pages as the old one, make sure to set the page names and filenames to the same as the previous one. I wouldn’t just copy text and images over as Freeway will want to copy styles and other attributes as well, and this will pollute the template’s styles. You can, of course, modify the templates styles to make things more to your liking, but you must be careful not to “break” the template. Copy/pasting text without the extra style baggage can best be done using an interim app like TextMate which treats styled text like plain text. Or, sometimes I can get the “Paste in Place” command to work, other times I cannot. Copy/pasting images and other elements is too risky and should just be done again-- within the framework the template provides for these things.
Finally, the ability to be responsive is not the same as being responsive. While the template may be built to be responsive, that can all be thwarted by your interaction with it or by the way you place your content into it. So be cautious how, and how much, you change the template with your content.
The Big Erns,
Thank you for the detailed comments and advice. This isn’t the news I would like of course, but it explains why my attempts a chopping / swapping has been behaving poorly. And it is better to know this than to keep going down a messy path.
Thanks so much and I’ll start powering thru this.
Cheers,