Vivvo Template Set is a presentational layer of your website. Each template set consists of two major components: a Theme or Skin - CSS and image file(s) containing actual visual appearance of the website, and a Templates or Layout - containing set of .tpl xHTML files intersected with VTE language tags that is responsible for layouting the website.
In Vivvo folder structure, templates and themes are inside the root respectively. You can have as many themes and template sets inside Vivvo folder structure as you like. Also, you can combine template set with multiple themes, if formatted properly, achieving remarkable results .
- <Vivvo Root> | |--- (...) |--- /templates |------ /tpl_set_1 |------ /tpl_set_2 |------ /tpl_set_n |--- /themes |------ /theme_1 |------ /theme_2 |------ /theme_n
In simple words, Template files (.tpl) instruct what elements of Vivvo site are visible and where, and Theme files (.css) determine how they actually visually look.
Templates are fragments of xHTML code interspersed with VTE language variables. Combined together they form complete xHTML pages that are served up to visitors. Your default templates are stored in /xhtml folder.
Templates folder can also contain custom template set you made. For example if you are developing set of templates for your site, you can create new folder (i.e. /my_site) and copy entire content of xhtml folder inside.
You can choose your template set from Administration » Layout.
Vivvo Template Set can roughly be divided in three main groups.
Example of /templates/xhtml/homepage/default.tpl, homepage frame template:
(click on image to open in full size)