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Customise home page

When your users go to your Messaging Engine-powered web site, they see the home page that you design for your site. The page is simply an HTML web page. However, you can also add special tags to insert the login boxes, latest news items, signup links for each of your account levels, and so forth. This section describes these special tags.

The current sample login can be found here, where you can see how the tags below are used.

Header/Form items

  • [% Head %]

    • Replaced by header information that needs to go before the <body> section of the document (JS to automatically put focus on username box, etc). Eg.

    <head>
    [% Head %]
    <body>

  • [% Body %]

    • Replaced by attributes passed to the <body> section of the document (JS to automatically put focus on username box, etc). Eg.

    <body [% Body %]>

  • [% Action %]

    • Replaced by the form 'action'. Eg.

    <form action="[% Action %]" method="post" enctype="multipart/form-data">

  • [% Hidden %]

    • Replaced by the forms hidden fields. Must be included on the page after the <form> tag. Eg.

    <form action="[% Action %]" method="post" enctype="multipart/form-data">
    [% Hidden %]

  • [% Messages %]

    • Replaced by FastMail server messages. Should be placed after any general page header so user receives appropriate logout, expired session, etc messages. Eg.

    <!-- Finished header -->
    [% Messages %]

  • [% UserName %] and [% UserNameDef %]

    • Replaced by the CGI name for the username text field, and default value for field (based on cookie, last failed attempt, etc) Eg.

    <input size="20" name="[% UserName %]" value="[% UserNameDef %]">

  • [% Password %]

    • Replaced by the CGI name for the password text field. Eg.

    <input type="password" size="20" name="[% Password %]">

  • [% LoginBtns %]

    • Replaced by the HTML for the login buttons. You can't control the individual buttons because non-javascript browsers will have a 'Go to secure login' link instead of a button. Each button will have a class tag of 'LgnBtn'. Each login link will have a class tag of 'LgnLnk'. Eg.

    <td>[% LoginBtns %]</td>

  • [% PubTerm %], [% SavePassword %] and [% ScreenSize %]

    • Replaced by the CGI name for the 'public terminal' checkbox, the 'save password' checkbox, and the 'screen size' popup menu respectively. The 'screen size' popup menu should return -1 for the default user size, or 0, 1, 2, or 3 for small, medium, large and extra large respectively. Eg.

    <td nowrap><font size="-1">Save password:</font></td>
    <td nowrap><input type="checkbox" value="1" name="[% SavePassword %]">

  • [% Problems %]

    • Replaced by HTML links to the 'problem solving' screens. Currently the 'Lost password', 'Login problems' and 'Account problems' links. Eg.

    <td colspan="2" nowrap>
    <font size="-2">[% Problems %]</font>
    </td>

Page links

  • [% Page,xyz.html %]

    • Replaced by an absolute URL to the particular page. Available pages:

    • about.html
    • comingenhancements.html
    • knownbugs.html
    • disclaimer.html
    • pricingtbl.html
    • spam.html

    Eg.

    <a href="[% Page,about.html %]" target="_blank">About FastMail</a>

  • [% FAQ,item/page %]

    • Replaced by an absolute URL to a particular FAQ page (ends in .html) or page (no .html). 

    • FMFAQ.html -> /docs/faqparts/FMFAQ.html
    • ExternalAccess -> /docs/faqparts/ExternalMail.html#ExternalAccess

    See the FAQ page for examples of FAQ items, it's always the part after the # of a URL. Eg.

    <a href="[% FAQ,FMFAQ.html %]" target="_blank">FAQ</a>
    <a href="[% FAQ,ExternalAccess %]" target="_blank">IMAP access</a>

  • [% Support %]

    • Replaced by an absolute URL to go to the support screen. Eg.

    <a href="[% Support %]">Support</a>

  • [% Signup(,OptLevel) %]

    • Replaced by an absolute URL to go to the signup screen. Optional level defaults signup level to the given value (1 = guest, 2 = member, 3 = full, 4 = enhanced) Eg.

    <a href="[% Signup %]">Sign up now</a>
    <a href="[% Signup,4 %]">Power users</a>

Information items

  • [% News,item/date,ItemNum %]

    • Replaced by a news item, or news item date. News items are numbered in reverse cronological order from 1 upwards. 1 is the most recent news, 2 the next, etc. Usually you want up to 3 or 4 news items. Eg.

    <ul>
    <li><i>[% News,date,1 %]</i>: [% News,item,1 %]</li>
    <li><i>[% News,date,2 %]</i>: [% News,item,2 %]</li>
    </ul>

    This generates the following result:

    • 18 Jul 2002: New newsletter now online
    • 10 Jul 2002: Mozilla configuration docs available

  • [% RandomQuote,quote/attrib,Item %]

    • Generate a random user quote. You can get a quote and attribution separately. You keep them together by specifying a common 'Item' number. Eg.

    <h3>Quote</h3>
    <table><tr><td>[% RandomQuote,quote,1 %]<br><i>[% RandomQuote,attrib,1 %]</i></td></tr></table>
    <h3>Features</h3>

    This generates the following result:

    This is the first such tool I've used where I didn't have a sneaking idea that the developers were a little clueless.
    Robert Colon

    Attributions may have hyperlinks. If they do, the class of the hyperlink is LgnQuoteLnk
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