14.6.12

Ever wondered about the 'Applies to this page only' thing?

Ever wondered about the 'Applies to this page only' thing?

“Applies to this page only”

This is one of the things that causes the most trouble for people on the RapidWeaver forum. It’s actually very easy to solve, although to be fair, it could work better. Perhaps in the next version … in order to understand what’s going on, follow the steps below and you’ll soon get it.
Make a new project in RapidWeaver. Add three Styled Text pages; you’ll get the Alpha theme by default, and that’s fine. Also by default, the Alpha theme has a style applied already, which you may not like, particularly as the menu links are too dark to see. You’ll notice that each page that you’ve make has ‘Applies to this page only’ set.
 So, click the ‘… is the master style for the Alpha theme’ button. Nothing will happen. Go to the Styles tab of the Page Inspector and turn off the sidebar. Go to the colors section and change the ‘Menu text’ to red. Now go to your second page. It will say ‘Applies to this page only’. Click the ‘… is the master style for the Alpha them’ button. Notice how it changes to be like your first page; the sidebar disappears, and the links turn red. Now you can see why this should read: ‘Uses the master style for the Alpha theme’ instead of what it does say. That’s really all there is to it. If you switch a page to ‘… is the master style for the Alpha theme’ and then make changes, then those changes become the master style for the theme. If you go to another page and click ‘… is the master style for the Alpha theme’, then that page will take on the same appearance as the first page that you altered [i]after[/i] clicking the ‘… is the master style for the Alpha theme’. By clicking that button, then altering the page, you set the master style. You apply it by clicking that ‘… is the master style for the Alpha theme’ button on any page that doesn’t have it clicked.

But, I hear you say: ‘What if I’ve got a twenty page site, with the sidebar hidden on fifteen of the pages and I just want five pages to have a sidebar and no others?’. If you click the ‘Applies to this page only’ on those pages, you’ll get your sidebar back, but you’ll lose [i]all[/i] the other changes you made to colours etc., because it takes the page back to what it was like when you first made it, with the Alpha theme defaults, illegible links and all. So that’s not a good idea.

But there’s a way round that; you just have to figure out what you want to do [i]before[/i] you start making the site in earnest. Have a look at this:


You’ll see that you can save styles. So, if you know you’re going to want some pages with, and some pages without a sidebar, first make one page that looks exactly as you want it as regards colours, sidebar, etc. Then go to that menu in the picture above and save the style. If it has a sidebar, save it as ‘mystyle sidebar’ or somesuch. Then, turn off the sidebar, and save another style and call it ‘mystyle no sidebar’. Then, when you need to apply the sidebar to those five pages, just go to the first one and choose the ‘mystyle sidebar’ style from this menu:


… that is, the button to the left of the ‘Save Style’ button you used to save the style. That will give you your perfect page, but with the sidebar, without losing any of the colours you made earlier. Although I said earlier that you have to do this before you start making your site, that’s not striclty true, it’s just easier. You can still do it when you’re halfway through; you may need to make a dummy page to work on to get your style right before you save it though.
The information on this page is completely free, but if you want to make a small donation it will be greatly appreciated …