Saga Templates

Saga templates are presentation containers for site graphics, navigation and content. When a user requests a Saga webpage, Saga returns to their browser a template from the site they requested, filled with content from whatever Saga CHANNEL(S) they requested.

For example, a user might request the home page for the Portland State Academic Advising website. Saga would return Advising's main template, which includes:

  • the standard Portland State header and footer
  • the Advising site header and footer (which might contain links to sitewide utilities like the Advising sitemap or contact page)
  • a navigation bar displaying Advising's top-level navigation links
  • a large, central area to display the content of Advising's home page
  • smaller areas ("windlets") to display links to related content items from other Saga CHANNELS (eg, FAQs, EVENTS)

A Saga site might have different templates to present different types of content (ie, CHANNELS): one template to display basic webpages (ie, content in the PAGES CHANNEL), and other templates to display other types of content (eg, content in the EVENTS, NEWS, FAQS, or PROFILES CHANNELS).

In many cases, a site might have a layout that presents information from multiple channels. For example, a layout that primarily presented PAGES CHANNEL content might have a small window ("windlet") that simultaneously displayed related content from the FAQS CHANNEL.

Saga templates make heavy use of centralized Cascading Style Sheets for formatting. Because Saga separates content (kept in the Saga database) and presentation (Saga templates/stylesheets), editing a single template and/or stylesheet can have the effect of changing the look of every "page" in a site.