Ok, point me in the right way on this.....

I'm using a test site for learning how to tamper with overrides.

I'm going right out of the boo, "E Start Your Web Store..." and already I'm confused about something.

As directed by the book, I made a direcdtory called "magic" for my css override template, and put a stylesheet in it.. I copied it from the includes/templates/classic/stylesheet.css.

The book (p 274-5 "Modifying Stylesheets", if you have a copy) told me: ......."

To give you an idea of how stylesheets can change your store's look, edit the stylesheet.css and change the following lines accordingly:

Body{

background-color: #e5cdf5; (there's a strike through line over this)
background-color: #000000; (replace with this line)

and then, below.....

.leftBoxHeading, .centerBoxHeading, .rightBoxHeading {
margin: 0em;
background-color: abbbd3; (there's a strike through line over this)
background-color: #000000; (replace with this line)
background-image: url(../images/tile_back.gif); (there's a strike through line over this)
padding: 0.5em 0.2em
}

The above stylesheet changes transform your store's background color and side box header colors to black.

Ok, that's impressive. It made alll the side boxes disappear, and changed things to black. Cool.

Only I want the side boxes. I'll make them come back. But what made them disappear in the first place? Those changes were only for colors. I'll start all over. I put the includes/templates/magic/stylesheet.css page back EXACTLY how it was. I reloaded the page; no changes. Boxes still gone. So I went to the tools/template selection and selected "classic template" again, and reloaded. Boxes came back, that time.

I want my "test" custom template to be identical to the classic template, and I will slowly change things. Experiment. I'm just trying to back up a little bit, you understand.

But I cant do that. On my test template, the boxes are still gone.

I suspect that I'm uploading to a wrong directory, but I don't see how. I'm following the book: includes/templates/classic .

And I added "magic" to that (at the book's suggestion of a name), so now it's includes/classic/magic . Inside magic is a stylesheet.css I'm messing with. Which is a copy from classic.

Now, I forgot to mention that there's a custom directory in there, too, as I added a Better-together cross sell module, but that shouldn't have any effect, right? I mean, I specified "magic" as my default template in the tools section of admin.......

So, bottom line, why can't I return to where I was? The only way I can do that is by specifying "classic default" as my template. I simply want to make Magic identical to classic default, before I tamper with it.

I know it's something right in front of me, that I'm missing. If someone could just point that out to me, I would really appreciate it.

When you switched to your custom template in admin, did you then go to Layout Boxes Controller ansd click 'Reset' ?

That was it!

As with a jillion other things, the book makes no mention whatsoever of this step.

Thank you so much. I couldn't figure out why a color change on CSS
would affect sideboxes. ***In fact, I still don't understand why. ***

But at least I can see some stuff with changes, and I can go from here. Thanks again!!!

:cool:

Hi JDog21, sorry for the error in the book.

The error you mentioned can be found in the Errata section on our site. Do refer to that section for other corrections to the book's contents as well.

Thank you! I'm following along, and the book is giving me some structure, so it's definitely a big help.

The book helps me to ask semi-intelligent questions when I come in here, too... :D