Most customization involves changing certain site-wide elements to coincide with an organization's colors and graphical profile. With LISTSERV, this can be done by changing a small number of global templates. This section gives examples of some of the more common customization tasks and the templates in which it can be done.
The Global Header template (BODY-GLOBAL-HEADER) contains the top banner. Many organizations like to maintain a uniform graphical profile and wish to customize their LISTSERV servers with their own top banners. The contents of this template can be replaced in its entirety with a custom banner. The one aspect to consider is that the banner also embeds a Help icon (+IM OBJECT-GLOBAL-HELP), which offers users access to section-specific help. Organizations who intend to replace the entire top banner should consider incorporating this icon into their own banners to continue providing users with the same option.
The Global Trailer template (BODY-GLOBAL-TRAILER) contains the bottom banner, which contains the name of the LISTSERV server and the icons for LISTSERV, CataList, and the integrated F-Secure Anti-Virus service, if available. As with BODY-GLOBAL-HEADER, the bottom banner can be replaced in its entirety with a custom bottom banner.
The Global Help Header template (BODY-GLOBAL-HELP-TOP) contains the top banner for all section-specific help pages. This template can be edited to give all the help pages a custom look.
All non-graphical HTML elements of the Web interface are controlled by one global stylesheet. This stylesheet (STYLESHEET-GLOBAL) can be fully customized to change fonts, colors, sizes, backgrounds, and so on.
Note: The font sizes can be controlled by each individual user though the
Preferences section. In order to maintain this functionality, font size changes should be set using the FONTSIZE variables in SKIN instead.
If an organization wants to translate all or parts of the Web interface into another language, then the best place to start is this template. The Global Text template (TEXT-GLOBAL) contains global text variables used throughout the Web interface. Each text variable is on its own line. Each line starts out with the name of the variable in uppercase letters followed by the text that is inserted every time the variable is called. The names of the variables should not be changed, only their values. Even if organizations do not intend to do translating work, this template contains two variables in particular that can be useful to customize. T-DEFAULTTITLE is the text that is inserted inside the <TITLE> tag on all pages and is displayed in the browser. T-DEFAULTDESC allows organizations to insert a description of the LISTSERV site. If defined, this description is shown on the server archive index page, right after the server name. This is a good place to describe your organization, terms and conditions of the service, or display contact information.
These templates (BODY-A1 and BODY-A1-BOTTOM) control the appearance of the list archive index, which also acts as the home page for the list. This template can be customized for the entire site or on a list-by-list basis.
