Themes

Hi All

I am new to Moodle but have spent a few days lurking around the forums and reading the massive amount of information available. From a new user perspective it is quite overwhelming. I have a few questions which may/may not have been answered before so please do not tell me to read the forums or send me on a link hunt to other threads. It would help me the most if you could share your information here in one thread - posting links to other threads only if they are absolutely necessary to make your point. Thanks.

Note:
 I am testing offline on Apache/Windows prioer to putting a site online.

So - the questions:

1) I figured out from reading the forums I can change the layout of Moodle by editing the theme/header.html, theme/footer.html and various css files. What I would like to know is what do I need to do to edit the centre content output? I would like to design a curved box to for the content sections but there is no html page I can edit. Also, which bit controls the positioning of the sideblocks? In other words, how do I have full control over the layout so I can design/use a third party template - e.g. say from TempateMonster? (I read the URI theme tutorials but although they are very good they do not tell me all I need to know)

2) I would like to add things like a search box in the header, a login box etc. I would also like to hide the admin features from public view - so only authorised people can access the admin page by accessing a login form from a url I provide. This form will likely be a html page external to Moodle with the form action communicating directly with the Moodle Admin Login. Can this be done?

3) I was previously using Robohelp and Macromedia Contribute to deliver course content. This gave me a Windows help style system with embedded Flash movies. Mostly it was html based, so I could customise each page to suit my needs, but it is unweildy and not nearly dynamic enough. I would like to import this material into Moodle but how do I do this without rewriting each page?

4) Is it possible to make each course resemble the Windows Help format - i.e. a treeview of topics and subtopics which when clicked will take you to the relevant page/topic?

5) How do I customise the front page of the site? I know it can be done from within Admin and I have seen examples where people have a nice introduction with images etc. Can I design a page using say Dreamweaver then use this for the front page? If so how do I do this?

6) Say I have a topic and want to include a link to a Flash movie? How do I embed the flash page so people who are not subscribed to the course cannot acces the movie directly by typing in the link to it?

7) How do I customise the layout for individual courses and course pages? Can I use a layout template for this and if so where do I put it?

I know some of these questions must seem pretty basic for those already familar with Moodle but for someone just getting started it is quite complex and I want to get things right from the beginning.

Thanks in advance for your patience and advice

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