Creating themes for use within GetSimple are extremely easy. GS uses template tags similar to WordPress (if you are familiar with that). All template pages are written in PHP, but need minimal PHP required to work properly.
There is only one truly required theme file, and that's template.php. You then place that file within it's own unique folder name, and install it on your server.
template.php is the “Default Template” file used for most pages within your site, but you can make other files within your theme and set particular pages to use that new template file instead by choosing it within the Page Options → Template setting:
At the very minimum, a GetSimple theme consists of only one file: template.php. This file should reside inside a folder named specifically for your theme, and placed within the theme folder of your GetSimple installation such as: /path/to/getsimple/theme/my_theme/template.php
By default all new pages use the template.php file when displayed. Developers have the ability to create other non-standard template files such as homepage.php or contact.php. The user of the cms would then choose that particular template when creating a new page.
Developers also have the ability to include certain PHP functions within their theme by using the functions.php file. This will be placed in the same folder as the template.php file. The functions file can be used for just about anything to do with PHP as it is automatically included by GetSimple before the theme is loaded.
The use of other files are completely up to the theme developer. Most of the time, it would be best to break the template.php file down into a couple other files such as header.inc.php, footer.inc.php, sidebar.inc.php and style.css. These files can then be included into the template.php file.
Example usage to include footer.inc.php, at the end of a template file:
Download<?php include('footer.inc.php'); ?>
The file names listed above are completely arbitrary, but demonstrate a good semantic approach to laying out a theme. By breaking out certain parts of the template into the if you plan to create other non-standard template files such as homepage.php or contact.php (described above).
As of 3.1, you can force the page editor's “Template” dropdown to ignore partial template files by naming them with a .inc.php extension. For example, a user will not be able to choose footer.inc.php as a page template because it's file extension will prohibit it from ever showing in the select box.
Once you have the file layout and style created, the next step is to use our template tags to show the content that will come from GetSimple.
For example, if you want to show the title, link and body inside your template, use something like this:
<a href="<?php echo get_page_url(); ?>"><?php echo get_page_title(); ?></a> <?php echo get_page_content(); ?>
