Chapter 7. Working with Templates

In the previous chapter, you learned to use Roller themes and made some tiny modifications to the weblog template, and added a Digg It button and a Twitter widget to your weblog. In this chapter, you'll see all the basics about the Velocity Template Language, and how you can use it in your Apache Roller templates to enhance your theme, or even build one from scratch!

Basically, in this chapter you shall:

• Learn how to create and edit your first template

• Learn about the Velocity Template Language and how you can use it in your Roller templates

• Work with Roller's model and data objects to access your weblog's data from custom templates

• Create a Roller theme from scratch!

If you liked the exercises in Chapter 6, this chapter's exercises will take you to the next level regarding Roller themes and templates!