A template for Moto CMS is a flash website, and its creating is similar to creating a usual flash website. This guide can help you understand the general process of creating Moto template. You can find much more detailed information on each step in our Developer's Guide articles.

So, here are the steps which must be followed to create a template for Moto CMS:

Basic Steps

The first step in creating Moto CMS template is analyzing the design of the website you are going to build and deciding how many layouts it will have. The quantity of layouts depends on the quantity of states with different site elements. For example, when there is a splash page with enter button, a content page, and a gallery - it will be a template with three layouts because there should be different animation of appearing and disappearing for each of the state. If there are many content pages, their appearance animation can be the same, so they will belong to one layout.

When the quantity of layouts is defined, you can choose one of 5 Moto source templates. Learn more about layouts and source templates from our tutorial. Source templates can be found on the downloads page.

If there is no source template with needed layouts quantity, you can modify an existing one or create transitions on your own. In case if you start creating a Moto website from the clean FLA file, without a source template, you need to install and add a component. Click here to learn how to install a components package (MXP).

The site width, height, and background color should be set in the Document Settings of moto.fla and website.fla.
Then the same values should be set in the config.xml file. Config.xml is the configuration file of the Moto Template. It is edited manually, no changes are made by control panel. Config.xml can be found in the template's root folder. The main parameters which you have to set are:

ALLOW_FULL_SCREEN - true / false - enabling fullscreen mode.
WEBSITE_WIDTH - website width. Can be specified as a number or 100%.
WEBSITE_HEIGHT - website height. Can be specified as a number or 100%.
WEBSITE_MIN_WIDTH - minimal website width. Scrollbars will appear if the browser window is fewer than this width.
WEBSITE_MIN_HEIGHT - minimal website height. Scrollbars will appear if the browser window is fewer than this height.
FLASH_PLAYER_VERSION_REQUIRED - minimal flash player version required for viewing your website. 9.0.23 for CS3. 10 and higher for CS4 if any CS4 features are used.

All site objects are placed in holders (containers). Holder is an empty Movie Clip which different elements can be added to. Each holder can have its own animation what widens the possibilities of animating the flash site in general. For example, you can place top menu in the top holder, bottom plane in the bottom holder, and content in the content holder. This way you can create different animation of appearance for each of them.

Every template has website and page holders by default. They have no animation, so they should be animated manually. They already contain objects and are added to the structure file.

It's not necessary to create all holders at once, they can be added while creating the site.

You can find more information about holders in our tutorial.

Now you can create animated objects for your website. You should create a slot if you want an object to be animated and have properties which will be editable in the control panel.

For example, read more buttons, close buttons, image containers can be made as slots. You can make such properties as label, color, size, etc. editable in the panel.

You can learn more about slots from our tutorials.

Advanced Steps

When the slots are made, you can move to creating more complex objects - modules. Modules are more complex Moto objects which not only have animation and properties, but also have the own control panel. Every module's control panel is accessible in the main Moto CMS Control Panel.

The most common examples of modules are menu, gallery, music player, video player, contact form etc.

You can learn how to create modules with the help of our tutorials.

There is a preloader's Movie Clip with 100 frames animation in moto.fla. It is the preloader which is displayed on the site loading. You can remake the preloader animation as needed.

There is a text field in preloader by default, but you can create a preloader without text field.

Only the standard font should be used in preloader. If there is a color in preloader which is present somewhere else in the site and will be changeable, it's better not to use it here, as it won't be changed in the control panel then.

Popup is a modal window which appears over the entire website, no matter what state it is in. Popup content is editable in the control panel and may contain text, images, slots, modules and so on. Popup is commonly used for Read More and Privacy Policy information.

You can find more information on popups in our article.