Konzern Theme: Important Information
The Konzern Theme is a theme with a huge amount of functionality. Many features have to be explained to make them work. Please read the following section very carefully.
Plan First
It is vital you plan your site first when you like to use the Konzern theme. As you probably will add many features that depends on Snippets or the site structure, you should have an idea how your site should work and which features you like to implement. Here is an overview of what you should think about first, before starting to work:
Do you plan to add language support?
If so, you should read the section Creating a multi-lingual site first and make sure you structure your site correctly
Will you use a Static Navigation (links that always show up and directs the user to common sites like Contact Us, FAQ, ...)?
If you want to use the static navigation, it is recommended you first read about that topic in this manual and add the snippet to the first page you create. Afterward, you can apply this snippet to be included on every new page.
How many sections (top navigation items) will your site have?
Even you can easily change the layout by using master styles in the page inspector you should consider thinking about the number of sections you will have in your site. As you can read in the next section, it is vital to choose the right overall width and navbar item width depending on the number of sections you will have
Do you want to use images for the navbar sections?
Using images for the navbar sections will lead to fixed sizes for the navbar (as images are fixed in size). Using images can improve your site a lot but also restrict its flexibility. So, you first should have an idea on how many sections you want to have. This will tell you the width of your images to choose. Sure, you can alsways expand or shrink your site structure but it's important you make some design thoughts first (e.g. you can't use navbar item images with a width of 200px if you are using more than 5 site sections)
The Correlation between Navbar Item Width and the overall Width
In the Konzern theme the site sections are designed as blocks in the navbar with a fixed width. To make the blocks fit nicely in the whole navbar width you have to choose the right relationship between overall width (1) and the navbar item widths (3). Let's say you want to have 6 sections (blocks). Now the overall width to choose should be able to be devided perfectly by six. The possible widths are: 720px, 840px, 900px and 980px. If you devide these widths by six you will have the exact width of the navbar items:
720px : 6 = 120px
840px : 6 = 140px
900px : 6 = 150px
960px : 6 = 160px
General formula:
Width (1) : Number of Navbar Items (2) = Navbar Item Width (3)
As you can see a width of 150px isn't available for the navbar item width. So, you can choose the following widths for your site:
Width: 720px, Navbar Item Width: 120px
Width: 840px, Navbar Item Width: 140px
Width: 960px, Navbar Item Width: 160px
Possibilities of the Navbar
The navbar in the Konzern Theme has been designed in a very unique way and I think it has never been seen before in any theme for RapidWeaver. The top navbar sections work with background images or with different and highly customizable colors only. You can believe me, I invested a lot of time and energy getting it right in all modern browsers (including IE6 and IE7). The main idea is to be able to style every single navbar section. It is important that you understand the relationship between the overall width and navbar item width as explained in the section above.
The easiest way to style the navbar is by just using the different color variations that can be found in the style variations section in the page inspector. I do suggest you simply try them out and see how beautiful designs can easily built with these options.
Another way to style the navbar is by using navbar section images. If you are using Photoshop (or any other graphics app) I suggest you create a new document with the size of the whole navbar. Then, place the images you want to use at the right spots (probably the normal images and hover images on separate layers). Afterward, you can export them as sliced images and you will have all the images you need. Please also think about using text with your images to give a textual feedback on the section (e.g. a little description).
The navbar images can be copied into the theme with the image admin tool which is included with the theme. If you need help about using the image admin tool, please read the section in the beginning of this document.
You can also set the navbar to show its subpages in the top navigation or in the sidebar. Note that all 3-rd level navbar items will always be shown in the sidebar. If you choose the navbar placement option in the top navbar, your first and second level items are displayed in the top navigation. If you choose the items to be placed in the sidebar, only the first level will be placed right below the navbar sections in the top navigation.
How to only show a Background Image in the Navbar
To show only the overall background image in the navbar and no navbar section images or colors you have to set the following options in the style variations:
- Navbar Main BG Image: ANY IMAGE
- Navbar Images: No Images (only colours)
- Navbar 2nd Level Transparency: Transparent
How to use the included Snippets
Even you know how to work with RapidWeaver, you probably haven't used Snippets in RW. If you have, you can skip this topic.
Snippets are small pieces of code that can be used in RapidWeaver. You can access the snippet window (and all your snippets) by bringing the snippet window to the front via Menu -> View -> Show Snippets...
You place a snippet into your site by just drag n' drop the snippet with your mouse. The Konzern Theme has many pre-built snippets you may use a lot to add several features to the theme.
To install a new snippet, you can simply double-click the snippet file (which you find in the downloaded theme folder). All snippet files have a suffix of rwsnippet and are placed at the following place in your home directory during the installation:
Library/Application Support/RapidWeaver/Snippets/
I will tell you more about the specific snippets in the Konzern Theme and how to use them in the sections below.
How Google Search Works
One Top Feature of the Konzern Theme is the automatic google site search which is preinstalled in the theme. It is very easy to use: In the style variations in the page inspector you see the option "Google Search". When you enable it, you will see a search form in the top bar of your content window. The search only works correctly when you have uploaded your site and restricts the search to your domain. Also, all content is fetched via google and added dynamically in the content without a new page load. If you don't want to use the google search field, simply disable it in the style variation.
Third Party Plug-Ins
Description: I have tested the theme with many third-party plugins available. Most of them work without any problem. If you find any problems, please report them to me. You can also try if the following handling will work for you:
Included in the theme download folder is a theme called "CAEmpty" which you can use to fix the problem described above. The theme CAEmpty creates pages containing only content - no header, footer or navbar.
1) Create your 3rd-party plugin page and choose the theme "CA Empty" from the drop-down menu Page-Specific Theme [1]. Note that you should choose the same background color[2] as is used in the main site with the theme. Now chose the General Settings tab[3] and make sure you disable the Show in Menu feature.
2) To include this page in your site create a new page which will be the container for the page you created in step 1. Choose iFrame from as the Page Style. Click the Setup button[4] of the iFrame page and write the correct link to the page created in step 1[5]. As this will vary from each site I can't tell you what exactly you will have to write. Check the Folder and File Name entries in the General Setup section of the 3-rd party plugin page you created in step 1. If you want to be sure, publish your page and open the plugin page in a webbrowser. Now you just copy and paste the real URL from the browser's address bar to the above url field.
You may also need to adjust the iFrame size[6]
Flash Slideshow and IE/Win
Description: If you open a page with a flash slideshow in IE/Win a notification window pops up: „Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site ... Operation aborted. When you click on „OK“ an almost empty page will be diplayed, starting with „Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage“.
Solution: There are two possible solutions for this problem.
1) The problem lies in the flash slideshow plugin and swfobject js script in combination with the included mootools javascript library in the sphere theme. To fix this at the moment you have to manually correct the source code of the exported page (changes in red):
<script type="text/javascript" defer="defer">
//<![CDATA[
var so = new SWFObject("files/slideshow.swf", "mymovie", "460", "320", "6", "#ffffff");
so.addParam("quality", "high");
so.addParam("wmode", "transparent");
so.addParam("base",".");
so.write("flashcontent");
//]]>
</script>
2) Use the free RapidAlbum plugin to build your slideshow. Within that plugin you can include the fix described in the first solution. That way you don't have to edit the exported slideshows, just correct it in RW and the exported code will fix it:
[1] Choose Slideshow as the template from the drop down list
[2] Switch to the HTML tab
[3] Select Slideshow from the drop down list
[4] Add the defer attribute in the HTML code
For more information about the plugin or to download it, please visit the following site: