ok, lets assume you have some pages named "article:1", "article:2", "article:3" a.s.o ( autonumbered perhaps) …
- with the category "article"
- with some content (whatever)
- and want to display on every "article" page near the same "layout" with a little table at the start…
Than you
- create a new page ( in the URL-Adressbar! Not as link or in the side bar in the new page field!) called "article:_template"
- with this content as minimum in line: %%content%%
- save the page!
After the save every article page is in future combined with the "article:_template" page at rendering time:
- at the PLACE of the variable %%content%% the content of the called/rendered articlepage is IINSERTED.
That means you can later change the layout of the _template page by inserting your importand "table" before the %%content%% variable (line) or a "module comments" after this line or other generic layout commands) at any time ( with the history for later corrections togo back if not correct).
_templates are called "live" template because they change the content of their category pages at liv e time.
"template:article" is a different idea: this is the proposal you get every time you create a new article: page..
Hope this helps.
To complete confuse: liuve templates are needed for "data fields" on wikid pages… then the layout is build in the first part and after that the layout for data entering is build in the dataforms part…