Create a Publication-Specific Overlay

If all your publications are based on the same blueprint, then they will have the same look and feel. What if you want to differentiate the publications slightly, by giving each one its own page header layout, for example? You can do this by creating publication overlays.

First of all, find out where the page headers are defined. A header is typically the same on all pages of a publication – both article pages and section pages. The header is therefore usually defined in the config.default template. If this is the case, then you can specialize the header of your dailynews publication as follows:

1. Start Content Studio and log in as a user with editor or journalist access to blueprint-one.

2. Find the default template (config.default) in the section tree and right-click on it.

3. Select Create subsection... from the displayed menu.

4. Fill the fields in the new template as follows:

   Section unique name

   Enter overlay.dailynews.config.default. The second part of the name (called the overlay key) must be the name of the publication you want to specialize. It must be an exact case-sensitive match for the publication name.

   Section name

   Enter a short string (one character is enough). You are required to enter a name in this field, but whatever you enter will be replaced with an automatically generated name of the following form:

   <key> parent-name

   where key is the name of the publication that is to make use of this overlay (i.e dailynews) and parent-name is the title of the parent template the overlay will modify (i.e Default).

   Relative directory URI

   You can leave this blank: it will be filled with an automatically generated name.

5. Save the overlay and close it.

6. Double-click on the new overlay in the section tree to open its section page editor. You will see that the section page is completely empty.

7. Double-click on the new overlay's parent template (config.default) to open its section page editor.

8. Select everything in config.default's Header area, right click and select Copy from the displayed menu.

9. Switch tabs to the overlay editor, right-click on the Header area and select Paste from the displayed menu.

10. Make whatever changes you require to the layout components you have pasted in to the header.

11. Click on Publish to save and publish your changes.

You have now created a specialized page header for your dailynews publication. All pages in the dailynews publication should have a different header from the pages in your other publications. You can specialize your other publications' headers by creating corresponding overlays for them (overlay.weeklyrag.config.default and overlay.monthlyreview.config.default, for example).