Converting from previous versions

Connversion involves:

Migrating customizations from previous versions.
Accounting for differences in editable regions (which are unaffected by applying changed templates).

Migrating customizations

It is important not to "mix and match" parts of the Version 2, 3.0, and 3.5 style sheets unless you are comfortable with both HTML and CSS – some of the changes are subtle, and attuned to the HTML of the new templates. On the other hand, version 3.5 or version 4.0 can be migrated to version 4.1 just by editing and applying the new templates.

Banner graphic

If your original banner graphic was called home_top_header.jpg, and it was 750 × 77 pixels, simply replace the new file with the old. If the name was different, the easiest solution is to rename the old file. If the height was different, you'll need to change both chrome.css and the templates you use, as described here.

Footer

Because the HTML of the footer changed dramatically between version 2 and version 3, it is easiest to recreate it by modification of the footer in the template, rather than try to convert. No conversion is needed between 3.0 and 3.5.

Away links

The structure of the away links is also totally different in version 3.0 and later. The backgrounds are now declared in the HTML rather than in the stylesheet, and the links are a table rather than a list. Again, it is easier to recreate the links than to convert the old markup. Version 3.0 away links require cellspacing="0" to be added to the <table> tag in order to work in Version 3.5; there are other differences, but none are necessary to covert an existing site.

Accounting for differences in editable regions

There are five possible editable regions (depending on the template); one is new, and two are changed:

topmenu – This is new to Version 3.0; in Version 2, it was not editable, and in Version 1, there was no top menu available. Applying 3.0 or 3.5 templates to a page created with the Version 2 template will result in loss of all the <li>s of the original topmenu <ul> and their replacement with the <li>s in the editable region. If they have not changed, this is not a problem. If so, they can be replaced manually from a copy of an old template or old page.
main_menu – In versions 3.0 and 3.5, the editable region now only includes the <li>s, rather than the entire <ul> (the purpose was to avoid the insertion of accidental paragraphs in the region). Applying a new template to a page created with Version 2 will result in a <ul> inside a <ul> (which is invalid as well as adding extra space). The inner <ul> must be removed manually, preferably in Code view.
page_heading – No changes .
contents – No changes.
submenu – The top title of the submenu is now <h2> rather than <h1> (this is semantically more correct, since there should ordinarily be but a single <h1> on a page), but the identical <h1> styling is left in the style sheet to make this conversion painless. If you convert existing <h1>s in the right column into <h2>s, their appearance will not change.

Next, setting up a template site for Contribute users.