Template management

Publish a project as a template, update it, edit its details and delete it.

You publish templates from the editor, and manage them on their page in the gallery or in the admin panel.

To turn the gallery on, choose its categories or let a user who is not an administrator publish, see Templates.

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Publish a project

1. Compile the project

   Open the project and click Recompile. The PDF you see is the one the gallery will show.

   While the editor has no PDF, for example when you open a project that does not compile, Manage Template is greyed out.

   

   No PDF yet, so nothing to publish

   Publishing saves the files as they are now, and the PDF of the last successful compile. If you edited the project after that compile, or the last compile failed, the gallery shows an old PDF next to newer files, which may not compile. Recompile until the PDF is right, then publish.

2. Open the form

   In the top menu of the editor, click File, then Manage Template.

   

   The File menu

3. Fill in the form

   

   The Manage Template dialog

   Field	Notes
   Title	Starts as the project’s name. Must be unique in the gallery. At most 150 characters.
   Author	Starts as your name. A Markdown link such as [Demo Author](https://example.com) becomes a link on the template page.
   Categories	One category, see Categories.
   Description	Supports Markdown. At most 4096 characters. The template page shows it as Abstract, and the gallery shows the start of it as plain text.
   License	Creative Commons CC BY 4.0, LaTeX Project Public License 1.3c or Other (as stated in the work).

   The compiler and the main document of the project go with the template, so set them in the project first. Projects opened from the template use the same ones.

4. Click Publish

   The template page opens.

   

   The new template

   Admin: Source Project, Edit and Delete are for you. Other users see only Open as Template, View PDF and the download button.

5. Check the gallery

   Click Templates at the top right. The new template is first in the list.

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Categories

A template is in one category. The names and descriptions come from your configuration and cannot be changed in the site.

You see them in these places:

• Categories in the form.
• The cards at the top of the gallery page, /templates. Click Template Gallery on the All templates page to get there.
• A page for each category, for example /templates/presentation. A category without templates shows No Templates.
• New project, then More templates, on the projects page.
• The link above the title on the template page.

Categories on the gallery page

All templates in the form means no category of its own: the template is only in the full list.

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Update a template

To change the files and the PDF, publish the project again under the same title.

1. Change the project

   Edit the project and click Recompile.

2. Publish again

   Click File, then Manage Template. The form shows the details of the template, which you can change. Click Publish.

   A message says that the title already exists, and the button becomes Overwrite.

   

   Publishing under the same title

   If you change Title now, the message goes away and Publish creates a new template.

3. Click Overwrite

   The same template page opens, with the new PDF.

   

   The updated template

   Projects that users already opened from the template do not change.

The form finds the template by the project’s name. If you renamed the template with Edit, the form opens with the project’s name, your name, the first category and an empty description, and typing the template’s title does not bring its details back. Overwrite then replaces the details with what is in the form, so fill them in again first.

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Edit the details

This changes what the gallery shows about a template, not its files or PDF.

1. Open the template

   Click Templates at the top right, click the template, then click Edit.

2. Change the fields

   The fields are the same as when publishing, with one more: Language is the spell check language of projects opened from the template. For a project published with the default language it shows Off, and projects opened from it use English (American).

   

   The Edit template dialog

   A title that another template has is refused: Save stays greyed out until you change Title.

3. Click Save

   The dialog closes and the template page shows the new details.

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The source project

Admin: Source Project opens the project the template was published from.

The template keeps its own copy of the files. If you delete the project forever, the button disappears, and users can still open the template. A project that is only in Trash keeps the button. See also the Q&A under Templates.

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Delete a template

1. Click Delete

   On the template page, click Delete. The dialog names the template.

   

   The Delete template dialog

2. Click Confirm

   You are back on the page you came from, and the template is no longer in the gallery. Its link now shows Not found.

   The source project stays, and so do the projects that users opened from the template.

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Manage templates in the admin panel

Click Admin, then Project/Object Lookup, then the Templates tab. It lists every template with its author and owner, and you can search it.

All templates in the admin panel

• Click a title to open the template page, or the open icon to open it in a new tab.
• Click an owner to open that user’s page.
• Click the bin icon, then Delete, to delete a template. The dialog warns that this cannot be undone, and the template leaves the gallery.

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If publishing is refused

The form lets you type more than the site accepts. A Title over 150 characters shows Template title exceeds the maximum length of 150 characters., and a Description over 4096 characters shows Template description exceeds the maximum length of 4096 characters.

Publish then stays greyed out even when you shorten the text. Click Cancel, click File, then Manage Template, and fill in the form again.