A template is a great way to customize the look of your search engine results pages. A template is simply an HTML page with special fields. The special fields tell FreeFind where to insert the page contents. This enables you to create a completely customized look and feel.

Professionals and perfectionists! Using templates is more complex than the basic customization options, but if you are an experienced web developer who wants to control the look of the results precisely then this feature is for you.

Creating a template is easy. You just create a regular web page and then tell the search engine where to insert the page title and page contents (search results, site map, etc) by using simple text strings.

Once your template is finished you need to upload it to the FreeFind server. This is done using the Control Center. After logging in, go to the page and use the "upload custom template" option.

Both these steps are covered in more detail below.

Usually the easiest way to create a template is to copy an existing page on your site then modify it for use as a template. You will need to make the following modifications:

Replace the page title with "::title::"

Remove the title of your page and replace it with the text "::title::" (without the quotes). This is the location the title text will be inserted before showing it to your visitors (for example, "Search Results", or "Site Map").

Replace the page content with "::content::"

Remove the content of your page (the "stuff" that make that page unique), and then add the text "::content::" (without the quotes) where you want your search results to be located. The search engine will insert the actual search results at that spot before displaying the page to your visitors.

Ensure there are no relative links

Since the page will be served from our domain, all of the links in your template need include your domain name, so they refer to your content and not ours. The easiest way to do this is to add a "base href" tag at the start of the head section. The href value should be the address of your site or address of the page which you based the template on. For example:

				<base href="https://example.com/">
			

To illustrate, here is what a template might look like:

Note the "::content::" text where the page content will be inserted. Using this template, FreeFind would create a search result page that looks like this:

When that same template is used to create a site map page it looks like this:

As you can see, a single template is used to generate more than one type of page.

FreeFind serves up to six types of pages, depending on what features you are using. The same template is used for all six pages, so don't include page-specific items in your template. For example, the text "Search Results" would look a little strange on the Site Map page.

The search engine serves up to six types of pages, depending on what features you are using:

1. Site search, query page – a single site search panel. (example)
2. Site search, search results – the results of a site search. (example)
3. Web search, query page – a single web search panel. (example)
4. Web search, search results – the results of a web search. (example)
5. Site map – an overview of your site. (example)
6. What's new – a list of the recently changed pages on your site. (example)

You can customize the page titles and headings for each page type separately. To do this log in to the Control Center and go the to the page. Then use the edit site search text, edit web search text, and edit site map text links.

After you have created your template you need to upload it to our servers. To do this log in to the Control Center then go the to the page. In the middle of that page, click on the upload custom template link. A dialog will appear with a large text area into which you can paste your template code. After adding your code click on the Preview button to quickly get a rough idea of how your search results will look without committing to making the change. If you are satisfied with your template, use the Finish button to use the new template.

The following HTML code is a simple template. It creates a page with the headline "Example Template". Both the headline and the page contents are centered. The page background is gray and the text color is white;

<html><head>
  <base href="https://example.com">
  <title>::title::</title>
  <style>
    body { background:gray; color:white; }
    body > div { text-align:center; }
    body > div > div {
      text-align:left; max-width:600px; margin:auto;
    }
  </style>
</head><body>
  <div>
    <h2>Example Template</h2>
    <div>
      ::content::
    </div>
  </div>
</body></html>