A Plateful of Templates
By Ray Valdés
Design templates, perhaps the most important function of a Web content-management system, is an old idea that we often revisit and revise as Web production technology evolves. You probably already know that templates basically separate design from page content. This division eases the content update process while maintaining a standard appearance across all pages on the site. Modern template systems must also deal with separating program logic (source code) from both presentation and content.
It's difficult to discuss template function separately from other functional areas of content management, because many such functions go hand in hand. For example, commercial packages often implement repositories capable of holding both design templates and page content. Nevertheless, I'll describe some template-only mechanisms for those of you looking to solve specific problems.
Despite being an old concept, templates are still a subject of great interest, given the current spirited debate in the Web developer community regarding the merits of Java Server Pages (JSP) compared with simpler servlet-based template alternatives (for example, WebMacro and FreeMarker). I'll get to this controversy later, but first I'll give you some background.
Team Management
Managing and maintaining a growing number of pages on a site has been a problem since the Web's earliest days. The site development process usually includes a team of people with different backgrounds: writers, editors, visual designers, and programmers.
