AJAX/PHP Website Template

From Cumulus Wiki
Jump to navigationJump to search

Free multilingual modular AJAX/PHP weather website templates

This template set is based on the original HTML-only Carterlake WD templates with the addition of AJAX real-time updates and a full-PHP modular website design incorporating the TNETweather modular site design. The templates use a modified weather-screen.css to implement a fixed-width (800px) website or full-width design with built-in color/width style changer. Using PHP allows this template to require only one file to be uploaded through your weather software for symbolic substitution for weather conditions. The AJAX JavaScript reads a separate, frequently uploaded, conditions file produced by your weather software to dynamically update selected parts of the HTML on the pages to reflect really current conditions at your location.

The templates are grouped into three basic versions based on geographic location, and include the support scripts needed for that geography:

  • USA-template (for USA, Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands)
  • Canada-Multilingual template English/French (for Canada)
  • World-Multilingual template (for non-USA, non-Canada)

Plugins are available for weather station software:

  • Cumulus (and CumulusMX)
  • Virtual Weather Station
  • Meteohub
  • Weather-Display
  • WeatherLink
  • WeatherCat (Successor product to Lightsoft Weather Center (LWC))
  • WeatherSnoop
  • wview
  • WxSolution


A complete template consists of a Base (determined by your geographical location) and a Plugin for your specific weather software.

Main features of the template set:

  • Modular structure for display pages on website with primary areas (top, header, sidebar, footer) controlled by included parts so global changes can be easily made to one file and shown on all pages in the site.
  • A 4-level flyout-menu system controlled by specification in one XML file.
  • Built-in theme switcher allowing viewer control over website color scheme and wide/narrow aspect (with user preferences remembered by browser cookie)
  • Built-in multilingual translation capability for single-phrase lookup (English to target language) and entire-page fixed content translation.
  • Integrated support scripts for forecasts, alerts, earthquake information appropriate to the geography selected.
  • Built-in optional debugging displays for remote site support
  • Validated XHTML 1.0-Transitional HTML and CSS 2.1
  • Easy maintenance using the Update tool to create a .zip file with all changes since you last downloaded the Base/Plugin

Note: the current CU-Plugin is primarily for Cumulus1 users. It can be used by CumulusMX users, but.. the wxgraphs.php page will not work as CumulusMX does not produce .png images of the weather graphs. A CUMX-plugin is being written to address this.

The templates are available at https://saratoga-weather.org/wxtemplates/index.php


Ken True

Author: Saratoga-weather.org