Here's an email I sent to the EASE-HOME forum when 15.0 was still in beta:


> I'm writing this not as an L-Soft employee but as a fellow EASE Home list
> owner (though I wouldn't be surprised if this became a basis for a formal
> LISTSERV Tech Tip in some future issue of the LISTSERV At Work
> newsletter).
> 
> I run the EPILEPSY-L list on EASE Home, and of course, I had 
> customized my WWW_INDEX mail template so as to have additional 
> information about the list and about epilepsy on my list's home page.
> 
> The WWW_INDEX templates was what was referred to as a "static web 
> template" as opposed to most of the web templates which are "dynamic web
> templates". It was "static" because it did not change depending on who was
> looking at it. The WWW_INDEX template was used to produce a listname.html
> file on the server. The distinction between static and dynamic web
> templates, the different syntaxes, as well as the lack of "dynamism" in
> the home page, all have created a lot of confusion over the years. 
> 
> As a list owner, I am very happy to see WWW_INDEX become obsolete and
> replaced by a dynamic web page (easier to customize, and as you can
> imagine, I'm a heavy user of the customization features). As a member of
> L-Soft's technical staff, it is a relief that I will never again have to
> explain the different types of web pages. :-)
> 
> Although WWW_INDEX is now obsolete, L-Soft development did spend a 
> lot of time and energy to make sure that existing customizations 
> would not break, or to at least lessen the impact of any breakage 
> that was unavoidable. So if you have a customized WWW_INDEX template, you
> do NOT have to rush to convert to using a dynamic home page. At worst, you
> may have a small amount of tweaking to your WWW_INDEX, but most people do
> not have to do anything and their existing WWW_INDEX will work just fine
> in LISTSERV 15.0. 
> 
> For those who DO want to convert to using the dynamic home page, here is
> what I did for my list and I found it took about 15 minutes to do the
> conversion.
> 
> 1. Get a copy of your existing WWW_INDEX: 
>    1.a List Management -> Customization -> Mail Templates
>    1.b Select Template Category: "Most Useful Templates". 
>        (May need to click on "Select" button)
>    1.c Select Template: "Obsolete [WWW_INDEX]". Click Edit Template.
>    1.d Copy then entire contents of the template, and paste it in 
>        a text editor (such as Notepad) on your workstation. 
>    1.e SAVE the file on your workstation. Save 2 copies of it, 
>        so that you have one that you will not make any changes to
>        and can always paste back into your WWW_INDEX template if
>        things go wrong, and one that you can make changes to for
>        preparing to go dynamic.
> 
> 2. Delete your WWW_INDEX template. Yes, I know it hurts, but you 
>    did save a copy on your workstation, right?
>    2.a Hit the Delete button in the "Edit Mail Template - WWW_INDEX"
>        page. Click "OK" when it asks if you're sure.
>    2.b Go to your list's home page (top right of the screen should
>        have a "listname Home" link) to see what the default Home page
>        looks like. Ooo aaah! Isn't it nice? It knows you're logged in and
>        knows which menus to display, knows your preferences, etc.
>    2.c The list description (if any) comes from the List Description
>        in the list header. If you want to change it, go to List
>        Management -> List Configuration -> List Configuration Wizard
>        and change the "List Description" field. 
>    2.d If you would prefer to specify your list description in HTML,
>        there is a way to make LISTSERV use the HTML Description field
>        instead. This could even be the easier way to redo your
>        customizations, if they are not extensive. (But this is not part of
>        the process I'm describing, so if you want to know more, just ask.)
>        
>    2.e If you made any changes to your list description, take another
>        look at your home page. Maybe this is all you really wanted in
>        terms of customization? If so, you can stop right here. 
> 
>        If you're as hopelessly geeky as I am, keep reading...
> 
> 3. Modify your saved WWW_INDEX file that you created in step 1 to use
>    WWW template syntax. 
>    3.a Change all occurences of "&&" to "&" (in the static templates
>        we needed to use double ampersands to prevent them being
>        interpreted as the beginning of a template variable -- a
>        problem that does not exist in the WWW templates).
>    3.b Replace "&WA_URL;" and "&WA_URL" (may or may not end with ";")
>        throughout your customizations with "&+SCRIPT;" (must end with
>        ";").
>    3.c Replace "&LISTNAME;" and "&LISTNAME" with "&+LISTNAME;"
>        throughout your customizations. (All these replaces are why I
>        recommend using a text editor rather than trying to do them in the
>        template editor in step 4).
>    3.d Look to see if you used any other &variables or .Commands
> 
>    Note: You might not have any changes to make in step 3. I did
>          because I'm hopelessly geeky. Most normal humans would
>          just have used the name of the list rather than &LISTNAME
>          and so on...
> 
> 4. Create customized "top" and "bottom" templates.
>    4.a Look at your saved WWW_INDEX file. Somewhere in there, 
>        you may have some "navigation code" that looks like this:
> 
> .IM WWW_NAVIGATION
> .bb &SEARCH ^= ''
> <hr>
> <A href="&WA_URL;?REPORT&&z=4">Archive Search</a>
> .eb
> </b></font></td></tr></table></td>
> <td valign="top" class="body">
> 
> <table width="100%" cellpadding="5"><tr><td class="body">
> <font face="arial" size="+1"><center><b>Archives of &LISTADDR</b>
> <p><i>&TITLE</i></center></font>
> 
>        Note: You might not have the above, depending on which 
>        version of LISTSERV was running when you made your
>        customizations. 
> 
>        And further down (perhaps directly following the navigation),
>        you may have something that looks like this: 
> 
> <hr>
> <font face="Arial" size="-1"><b>
> <ul STYLE="list-style-image: url(/archives/images/ls1-bullet.gif)">
> .bb &SEARCH ^= ''
> <li>&SEARCH;Search the archives</a>
> .eb
> .bb (&KWD(SEND,1) ^= OWNER) and (&KWD(SEND,1) ^= OWNERS)
> <li>&POST;Post to the list</a>
> .eb
> .bb &KWD(SUBSCRIPTION,1) ^= CLOSED
> <li>&SUBA;Join or leave the list (or change settings)</a>
> .eb
> <li>&LMGT;Manage the list</a> (list owners only)
> <p>
> .DD &DD
> </ul>
> 
>        Again, depending on the version you customized, it
>        might look different, but there is basically some
>        amount of code surrounding the line ".DD &DD".
> 
>        Basically, you want to throw out all the L-Soft supplied 
>        code and split your customizations into 2 parts: 
> 
>        - All customized HTML above the .DD (or between the
>          Navigation code and the .DD) (the "top")
>        - All customized HTML below the .DD (the "bottom")
> 
>    4.b Go to List Management -> Customization -> Web Templates
>    4.c In the bottom section of this page, under Create New Template,
>        provide a name for the top of your customizations. I called
>        mine BODY-WWW_INDEX-TOP. Starting the name with "BODY-"
>        imparts a bit of "magic" to the template, as you'll see later.
>    4.d Paste in your "top" customizations. Push Update button. Push 
>        Back button to get back to the main template editor page.
>    4.e Repeat 4.c and 4.d to create a template for the bottom
>        customizations (e.g. BODY-WWW_INDEX-BOTTOM).
> 
> 5. Make WA use your new top and bottom templates.
>    5.a Go to your list's Home page
>    5.b At the top right of the page, click on the link for 
>        "Edit Page" (this function is described in more detail
>        in the document that Sandra mentioned in her email)>
>    5.c Click on "BODY-A0". This opens a window with the template
>        editor for the template called BODY-A0.
>    5.d Before the first line of this template, add a line to 
>        include your top template, e.g.:
> 
> +IM BODY-WWW_INDEX-TOP
> 
>    5.e After the last line of this template, add a line to include
>        your bottom template, e.g.:
> 
> +IM BODY-WWW_INDEX-BOTTOM
> 
>    5.f Click on Update
>    5.e Go to your list Home page and see how it looks. 
>    5.f If you need to make modifications to your customizations to    
>        make them work better with the new look, the Edit Page 
>        function will give you links to your new templates if you
>        started their names with "BODY-" like I told you to. 
>        (That's the magic). If my technique failed miserably for you, just
>        delete your customized BODY-A0 template to revert to the default
>        WA-generated home page. If you hate this and want to go back to
>        your old static page, just recreate your WWW_INDEX mail template
>        from the unmodified version you saved in step 1.
> 

> In case you're curious, here's the resulting Home page for my list:
> 
> http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/epilepsy-l.html
> 
> 

-- 
Francoise Becker

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