Here's a template-editing tip for you...
...when I am editing my templates, I select the template code that I want to edit, and then cut and paste this code into Dreamweaver, where I have created a new, empty html page (make sure you go into "code view" in Dreamweaver, and delete all the default html code that appears when you create a new page, so that you are not going to add in extra code to the template code when you paste it in).
Because Dreamweaver has both a "code view" and a "design view", pasting in the template code like this allows me to get a better idea of what the template looks like visually...so if I want to insert a table in the middle of the template page for example, I can see where to do so much more easily then if I was just editing the template code by hand in the XOOPS administration window.
Once I have made the changes to the template that I want to make in Dreamweaver, and change the Dreamweaver view to "code view", so that I am looking at the template code again, hit "select all", and then "copy". I then head back over to the correct template page, cut/delete out the old template code from the window, and paste in my new, modified template code, and hit save.
Make sure when you hit save that the message says "database updated"...sometimes, if you take too long to make the changes, it will say "taking you back to where you were..."...this means that the new code you just pasted in the box did not save, so you have to open up the template file again, paste the new code, and hit save again.
Here's another hint as well. Once I have set up my initial XOOPS site, I make sure all the modules I have installed have generated templates, then I clone this template set and set it as default in the general preferences. I make a new template set clone, and set it as the default every week or so, or when ever I have done alot of template editing. I always keep the previous version of the template set as a backup, and then delete everything else...so at anytime, I have the default template set (which you cannot delete?), the latest cloned version that I am using at the moment, and then the previous cloned version, which I keep as a back up. Hope that makes sense!
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