default template cloning

[Athens Collectibles]

Hi Schoolboy and thank you for your reply. I will not pretend that I fully understand what you say (more below) but it's encouraging to see that senior members of this forum are always helpful. Having installed another ecommerce package before Zen Cart, I found their forum discussions addressed to developers and ASP programmers only, ignoring requests for help from simple users like me who only want to set up a store and are not developers. That was the reason I decided to switch to Zen Cart.

Coming back to your reply: I installed Zen Cart and the Greek language pack a few weeks ago. You may remember that you again helped me with installing the Greek files in another thread and I thank you for that help. Since then, I made the following two changes to the template:

I changed the template width from 750px to 850px in file:
/includes/templates/classic/css/stylesheet.css and edited it back to its original value today.

I changed the header Search button size from 45px to 65px in file:
/includes/templates/template_default/sideboxes/tpl_search_header.php (to accommodate the larger button label in Greek) and edited it back to its original value today.

The above changes had been made on the server and the reason I changed them back to the original values is that I suspect from your reply that the files changed were what you call CORE files. I have read about the override system and must confess that it's something that I haven't understood yet. I'm not computer illiterate but the folders structure seems very strange, or at least unusual.

Before going on, I will mention that I have made many changes via the administration panel and have entered a test category and two test products but I guess that changes made from administration are not affecting the templates (except perhaps the sidebox settings which I can easily recreate).

Now I come to the serious questions, which are important to the way I proceed. Like the original poster, I too find the Classic Contemporary template quite attractive and would like to use it, customising it as much as possible. I'm quite good with HTML and have some basic knowledge of CSS but I'm also persistent and like the challenges. What has scared me after reading various posts in the forum is the possibility to do a lot of work and set up a store only to lose everything if I upgrade from 1.3.9d to a newer version in some time. This is the reason I want to be absolutely sure I'm doing the right thing.

What you call CORE files: do you mean the files in the various "classic" folders found all around the server or those in the template_default folder?

I have found 16 folders named "classic" in my server's expanded directories. I have read that, to create my own template, I need to create a folder named my_template (or whatever) whereever there is a "classic" folder. Your previous reply to "skaterschoice" was to rename the "classic" folders to "my_template" and then FTP the original "classic" folders back to the server. Having explained above what changes I had done (which are now undone), is it safe to copy all 16 "classic" folders to 16 "my_template" folders (including contents of course, not the folders only) and then edit the includes/templates/classic/template_info.php to provide the "my_template" info?

If that's correct, do I make all desired and future changes to .php or .css files within the "my_template" folders only and leave files in the "classic" folders intact? And does this mean that I will be safe during a future upgrade?

You may find my questions naive but I think that I will eventually find my way around and hopefully help others. Just to make everything clear, I attach an image of my file structure showing all the "classic" folders I found on the server. I haven't expanded the folders that do not have "classic" subfolders inside; that includes "admin". The red arrows point to the position of the new "my_template" folders as I understand it (which may not be correct, although I hope it is).

In any case, I owe you a pint next time I'm in the UK. I don't come frequently these days but I will sometime sooner rather than later. When I was working for RBS I used to visit London and other places on business frequently, but have only been back twice since I retired three years ago. I'm looking forward to the next visit!

Many thanks again for all your assistance (and patience) and I wish you a nice evening.

[gjh42]

Yes, you are perfectly safe in copying folders/files as you describe (and modifying template_info.php). It's just a matter of choice to do that or schoolboy's method. If you had nonrecoverable changes to /classic/ files, I would recommend the move/replace method.

You do make all future changes in /your_template/ folders; once you have a custom template, edits to /classic/ files will do nothing for you.

[Athens Collectibles]

Thanks Glenn, that's good news for me.

Nice site you've got, both in terms of contents and design. For some reason though, the lower part doesn't appear correctly on Chrome but it's fine on Firefox. Have a look at the attachments to see what I mean. It might be something easy to correct.

Once again, thanks for your helpful advice and wishes for a nice evening.

[gjh42]

Yes, we haven't yet gotten the graphic artist who did the calligraphy for our main categories to do the ones for those. I knew IE insists on highlighting missing image files (Firefox politely shows the alt text with the styling given for the element), but I didn't know Chrome did the same. I'll have to get those worked around until we get the images.

[Athens Collectibles]

I see. Add Safari to the Chrome team. Opera behaves like Firefox. Funny thing all these browsers, I wish we only had one to worry about.