Free CGAUX Flotilla Website Templates

At the request of Auxiliary Flotilla 5-17 in Waukesha, Wisconsin, I greatly simplified their flotilla website template so that it's much simpler to edit and post. I'm posting it here so that any flotilla can use it.

Click here to see a fully-functional demo of the site.

Download the 54Kb ZIP file of the site.

I happened to code the site in Dreamweaver CS3, but you can use any mainstream web editor (FrontPage, NVu (free!) and Coffee Cup HTML Editor are all good options). Or, if you just want to change text, you can do it in Notepad (or better yet, the free Notepad++ ...my favorite text editor).

Some additional notes about the templates....

1. None of the code is locked, so you can edit (and wreck!) anything in your templates. I've put blocked comments to show where to start and stop editing. You should be able to maintain your site primarily though <p></p> tags and <ul></ul> lists.   If you want to use tables, good luck...they're a bit quirky so I try to stay away from them!

2. Don't use Microsoft Word to edit your pages. They might look okay on the web, but Word adds in a MASSIVE amount of extra code, and will make your life miserable in the long run.

3. Take the time to write a good description in your Description meta-tag, but don't put much effort into Keywords. Google and Yahoo really don't pay much attention to them when indexing for their search engines, becuase they've been so mis-used by evil people.

4. If you want to change font colors and other styling, you'll need to do it in the global.css file. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) can be a little intimidating to learn, but any decent webmaster ought to know the basics, at least. I learned CSS coding from a terrific, simple how-to book called CSS: The Missing Manual. Highly recommended!

5. Two stylesheets are attached -- a global.css for the screen, and a print.css for printing. The print version doesn't show the top or bottom navigation bars, and all clickable links are "de-underlined".  Also, it prints in Times New Roman for easier readability.

6. If you decide to change text in 'repeating regions' (like "Member's Deck" in the navigation bar), remember that you have to change that same text on EVERY page. You can get around this by saving the page style as a Dreaweaver template, so that all changes to "master code" are repeated on all your pages. Or, do what I do on the CutterAgent site - change your site's .htaccess to parse .html documents, and include all repeating text as Server Side Include (SSI) code.

7. Enjoy updating your site, and feel free to e-mail me with any questions and suggestions for improving these templates. I really love this stuff, and am happy to help your flotilla look sharp on the web.

P.S. I would be happy to give credit to the original designer of this template, and for the artistry in the index.html collage...I just need to find out who you are!