How to customize academic templates

While building website with Pillar using academic archetype, sometimes you may want to change some elements. Then, in this tutorial, we are explaining how academic archetype is working and how to modify it.

academic archetype is a Pillar archetype especially for building static websites (personal ones or for projects) in Pillar.

Let's explain the global presentation of an archetype. It is a directory containing other directories like:

• sample directory: this directory contains some pillar files like example of project using this archetype.
• support directory: this one contains all the css, js, and mustache files which compose the archetype.

For academic archetype, we have something like that

academic\
  sample\
    index.pillar
    pillar.conf
    projects.pillar
    publications.pillar
    toc.pillar
    research.pillar
    contacts.pillar
    avatar.png
  support\
    html\
        css\
          styles.csss
          ...
        fonts\
          ...
        hightlightjs\
          ...
        img\
          ...
        js\
          ...
    templates\
      html\
        main.mustache
        blog.mustache
        fixed_profile.mustache
        no_profile.mustache

• toc.pilllar is the file containing the menu of the website.

By default, this file looks like this

${inputFile:path=index.pillar}$
${inputFile:path=projects.pillar}$
${inputFile:path=research.pillar}$
${inputFile:path=publications.pillar}$
${inputFile:path=contacts.pillar}$

Each input file is representing a menu (page) of your website. Each file needs to contain at least one title (H1 ! or H2 !!). The Menu builder is just taking the first title founded in a file as menu label. For these kinds of websites with academic you can't have submenus, or you will have to modify the menu builder. Then if you want to modify the menu, just modify this template by adding or removing an input annotation.

• academic archetype is installed by this command

$ pillar archetype academic

This command is just copying files from archetype to project:

• first, files in sample directory are copied to the root of your project folder. It provides you a starting environment with some contents and configurations.
• in second time, support 's files are copied to a _support directory under the project folder with the same structure as in the archetype one's.

So after this command, your project looks like this

your_project\
  index.pillar
  pillar.conf
  projects.pillar
  publications.pillar
  toc.pillar
  research.pillar
  contacts.pillar
  avatar.png
  _support\
    html\
      css\
        styles.csss
        ...
      fonts\
        ...
      hightlightjs\
        ...
      img\
        ...
      js\
        ...
    templates\
      html\
        main.mustache
        blog.mustache
        fixed_profile.mustache
        no_profile.mustache

By default, the main.mustache is the template file used for generating pages. This template is a classic with a profile on the left and page contents on the right.

You can change template for certain files. To achieve that, add this code at the head of that file.

{
	"template": "no_profile.mustache"
}

So, that page will be generated with a different template file. In this case, the page won't contain a profile at the left, only contents on the page. When you want to use your own template, just place it at this location "_support/templates/html".

If you want to completely change the mustache template for all your pages, you can directly specify the template in pillar.conf.

• The blog.mustache template propose a disqus comment integration. It allows people to comment on your articles.
• fixed_profile.mustache presents a fixed profile on the left. Even if you scroll down the page, the profile is always visible on the left.

The main included css file is styles.css. This file contains principal css rules used in the template. If you are interested in touching the css, you can check for that file.