Changing templates wiped out my sideboxes?

Hi -

I decided to make a copy of the template I was using, since I've modified the original so much, it really doesn't look or feel the same.

I copied the six directory structures of the old template to new names, and it was mostly successful. My sidebox settings, though were wiped out. No big deal; I went back into the Layout Boxes Controller and turned them back on.

Now, however, the content of those boxes (like the privacy notice, for example) seems to have been wiped clean. I guess I could change templates, go in and copy out the contents and paste them into my new one, but I'm curious: why did this happen, and is there a quicker/cleaner to get my content back?

Thanks.

You just need to switch them all on again in Tools > Layout Boxes Controller

By default no sideboxes show

Yes, I understand that, but the fact that the contents were wiped clean was a bit of a mystery. Upon further review, though, it appears that the files that I thought I'd modified actually weren't. This is really strange, as the text in pages like the privacy notice are definitely changed; I'm not sure what to make of it.

Anyway, I just went ahead and cut-and-pasted the contents. I just hope whatever happened doesn't recur.

Thanks for the reply.

Whenever you change templates, you have to go to Admin/Tools/Layout Boxes Controller and click the reset button (bottom of the page) to turn them on. There's an add-on here that saves your sidebox settings: http://www.zen-cart.com/index.php?main_page=product_contrib_info&products_id=260

Are you using the override system? If you customized the define pages, and copied to your override folders in includes/languages/english/html_includes/your (previous) custom template, they should still be there. Just make a folder for your new template and copy the define pages (from your previous template) into it.

If you did the above, check and make sure all instances of your template are named the exact same.

Hope this helps!

Thanks, TShooters. I do have a suspicion that I somehow accidently overwrote those files with the vanilla ZC versions. I just don't know how the shop continued to display the modified contents if that happened.

In any event, it was probably cockpit error, and it's fixed now.

I'll look at the add-on you mention; thanks for the reply.

Something you could do next time, if you're not going to be changing templates often, is just rename those (language) folders to your new template name.