Zum Inhalt springen

History of the TYPO3 template

There are already a large number of ready-made templates for TYPO3, why has jweiland.net developed yet another template?

How it all began

The very first TYPO3 versions were delivered with a collection of templates for websites. These had names such as Business, CrCPH, HYPER, Green or Candidate. They served as examples of how websites could be created using pure TypoScript. Here is an excursion into the Internet of the early days with the original twelve TYPO3 templates.

Later these templates disappeared again, they were visually and technically outdated. If you now set up TYPO3 again, only an error message appeared on the website: No Template found!

By adding a TypoScript template data record to the start page, the message "Hello World!" was at least displayed - but this was miles away from a designed website. First you had to create a layout using HTML templates, CSS and TypoScript, and that was a long, arduous process for many users.

Quite a few were frustrated and looked around for other solutions. There was WordPress, for example, which displayed a sample template immediately after installation. The editor could now enter text, save it and it immediately appeared on the website. Success was therefore visible within a few minutes. TYPO3 beginners, on the other hand, often had to struggle for weeks before a satisfactory result was achieved.

The first sample project

To make it easier to get started with TYPO3, we developed the first version of our sample project in 2008. When customers ordered a hosting package, the sample project was installed alongside the "empty" TYPO3 site. This meant that anyone who wanted to could log into the TYPO3 backend, enter content and see the result immediately.

Many of our customers used the template as the basis for their own website. We received a large number of inquiries about how to change the logo, colors, fonts or width of the columns or add further functions. We therefore created corresponding instructions and were able to see many variants based on our template some time later.

New template for TYPO3 version 8.7

The first version of our responsive template was five years old - a long time on the Internet. We therefore developed a new template for version 8 of TYPO3. During development, we took care to consider all aspects of a modern website. The template was designed to be as lean as possible. Bootstrap was not used, as this framework unnecessarily inflates the template.

The most frequently required functions such as news, multilingualism, optimization for search engines, short loading times, search function and perfect display with current browsers were taken into account.

Various layouts for 1-, 2- and 3-column display and different navigations are available. With the integrated fancy box, images can be displayed in a lightbox with a darkened background. We have acquired an 'Extended License' from fancyapps for the sample project, so that this function can also be used in commercial websites based on the sample template.

For the new version, we have again created a series of instructions, which can now be accessed directly in the TYPO3 backend via the help function.

Template for TYPO3 9 LTS

Shortly after the release of TYPO3 9 LTS, we also published a new version of our template.

Here, however, we can speak more of an "evolution" and less of a "revolution". We have not implemented any fundamentally new functions, but instead use the new functions of TYPO3 9 LTS.

The new system extension "seo" is now used for search engine optimization, the previously used extension "cs_seo" has been removed. Readable, search engine friendly URLs are now also generated directly by TYPO3, the previously used extension "realurl" is no longer required.

The popular lightbox effect when enlarging images is also no longer realized via an additional extension.

All in all, the sample project has been streamlined and adapted to the new functions of TYPO3 9 LTS.

This page contains automatically translated content.

Updated: 17.07.2024