When you open a Templates Builder section you can see the following options:
1. Rules for creating a skeleton
2. Sample skeleton
3. Skeletons of standard designs
4. You're using default style sheet of the design #, or Personal style sheet is in use

Those are the links to definite pages of the Control Panel. #1 and #2 are pop-up windows, # 3 opens a drop-down list with the links to standard skeletons (if you click on one of them it will be loaded to the editing area). And finally, #4 will open a pop-up window with the link to the CSS file.

Let’s get back to item 2 (sample skeleton). There are three buttons at the top of the opened window – Skeleton code, View, Edit. Active button is in a pale color, it is Skeleton code by default. When you click View you’ll see the page as it will look. We can view the appearance of the main site page (and main module pages), forum and pop-up windows. Pop-up windows are a user profile, poll results, a list of PMs etc. When you click on Edit the skeleton code will be copied to the editing area of the Templates Builder. Below are the checkboxes by means of which you can change the design either of the whole website or of some definite module(s): just remove the checkmarks for those modules which you don’t want to change. Under the checkboxes you can see the following buttons:

1. File Manager
2. View
3. Create templates (after you have clicked on this button the templates of the marked modules will change)
4. Additional options
a) Add to designs set (Addition of the created design to the set of default designs. This design will be used when restoring templates)
b) Archive the skeleton (Creation of an archive which will contain skeleton code file, style sheets file, files of images, setup manual file for installation of the skeleton on any other uCoz site)
c) Save skeleton (Saving skeleton code in a file to continue its configuring in future (backup))

Sometimes your code may contain mistakes then the system will warn you before creating an archive. The archive will be saved together with a special error file where all confusing places of the code will be listed.

If you have already edited uCoz templates then you are familiar with the principles of their structure and with the special uCoz codes. You can use in the skeleton only those codes that are working in all templates. You’ll have to paste all codes, specific for certain modules, manually. Except the standard codes, special skeleton codes are used.

The list of special Templates Builder codes:

1. [TITLE] – page name (for the <title> tag)
2. [CSS_URL] – URL of the CSS file
3. [RSS_URL] – URL of the RSS feed (for the modules that have it)
4. [MODULE_PAGE_URL] – URL of the main module/section page (for the modules that have it)
5. [MODULE_NAME] – module name
6. [CATS_TITLE] – name of the block with the module categories list
7. [CATEGORIES] – list of the module categories (for the modules that have them)
8. [CALENDAR_TITLE] – name of the block with the calendar of additions
9. [CALENDAR] – calendar of additions (for the modules that have it)
10. [SEARCH_TITLE] – name of the search block
11. [SEARCH_FORM] – search block for searching module entries (for the modules that have this feature)
12. [BODY] – main part of the page (list of entries etc.)

When installing a skeleton on the site the Templates Builder will automatically replace those codes by the equivalent standard codes, specific for each module. In the general case [BODY] is not equal to $BODY$. For example, you’ll get the following code instead of [BODY] on the main page:

And for the File Catalog (the source code is the same):

And for the Forum you’ll get just <!-- Header -->...<!-- /Header -->, <!-- Footer -->...<!-- /Footer --> and the following code in between:

The conditional operators for the Templates Builder also have unique features. They are of two types: ordinary %IF% %ELSE% %ENDIF% and {IF} ... {ENDIF}. The first type is described in the Control Panel. The second type is easy to understand: these codes are used for those parts of the code that will be displayed for certain modules only. The system knows itself what and where to display.

That is what you should know when working with the Templates Builder.