Here's a ghist of what we tell clients before we start templating:
(1) Create Category/Subcategory (after deleting all category/subcategory that came with default install)
(2) Add Articles (Let there be sufficient articles of "Breaking/Typical" types. Leave Announced as for use in future. This has always helped. As a thumb rule there should be 10-15 times articles as the number of categories/subcategories. Ensure that all articles that came with default install are dleted before you add your articles.
Once above is done then we start the templating work:
(1) Create one template and make that default
(2) Delete all html source from all templates
(3) Start doing blocks in CUSTOM BLOCKS.(Needs html/css knowledge)
(4) Start doing html for schema/category/article/author template
(5) Include blocks by using "F" function button in editor
(6) Do you menu in css/graphic images or build from PHPCow's menu stuff and include the same in templates.
Points to remeber:
(1) Filter By Article Type (All/Breaking/Typical/Typical&Breaking) depending on what you want really.
(2) For most part use Detect Category automatically unless you are doing mapped templates. Mapped templates gives you the freedom to have different layout for each category.
(3) For blocks of Author template use "detect Author Automaticaly"
(4) Select the number of articles to display
(5) In HTML write down your html/css and include macros that you would want to.
(6) Try to make use of schema template as far as possible. Makes maintaining templating a bit easy.
That's all.
You need to be proficient in html/css. No programming skill needed unless you want to be doing custom functions.
This is all that i can offer as free consultation.
Cheers
Here's a ghist of what we tell clients before we start templating:
(1) Create Category/Subcategory (after deleting all category/subcategory that came with default install)
(2) Add Articles (Let there be sufficient articles of "Breaking/Typical" types. Leave Announced as for use in future. This has always helped. As a thumb rule there should be 10-15 times articles as the number of categories/subcategories. Ensure that all articles that came with default install are dleted before you add your articles.
Once above is done then we start the templating work:
(1) Create one template and make that default
(2) Delete all html source from all templates
(3) Start doing blocks in CUSTOM BLOCKS.(Needs html/css knowledge)
(4) Start doing html for schema/category/article/author template
(5) Include blocks by using "F" function button in editor
(6) Do you menu in css/graphic images or build from PHPCow's menu stuff and include the same in templates.
Points to remeber:
(1) Filter By Article Type (All/Breaking/Typical/Typical&Breaking) depending on what you want really.
(2) For most part use Detect Category automatically unless you are doing mapped templates. Mapped templates gives you the freedom to have different layout for each category.
(3) For blocks of Author template use "detect Author Automaticaly"
(4) Select the number of articles to display
(5) In HTML write down your html/css and include macros that you would want to.
(6) Try to make use of schema template as far as possible. Makes maintaining templating a bit easy.
That's all.
You need to be proficient in html/css. No programming skill needed unless you want to be doing custom functions.
This is all that i can offer as free consultation.
Cheers
I agree with you, support & manual both are not up to our expectation.
However, we'll do our best to help each other 
