switching templates

I'm new to zen cart, but have been doing some web dev for about a year, so I'm not a complete novice.

I have been working through the zen cart book (e-start your web store), and as instructed I am using example.com on my PC, having downloaded apache and mercury etc to my PC. It is windows OS and the zen cart version I am using is the latest 1.3.8a.

The install was fine and all works. Working through the chapter on advanced customization I have created a directory in includes/templates called magic (as suggested) and copied the files from classic as suggested. I edited the php file, template_info.php and edited the stylesheet changing the background colour of the site with the 'magic' template.

In Zencart admin I have switched templates to 'magic'. The background colour changed as required, but both the side panals which include catagories, information, links etc have vanished. I have repeated the excercise several time and on two computers, am I getting something wrong?

Any help gratefully recieved

richard

In the book, go back to the previous chapter "Simple Customization" and look in the section about "Side-boxes" for information on setting up which sideboxes to show.

Basically: Admin->Tools->Layout Boxes Controller. Something not mentioned in the book: For quick reinstatement of all the default sidebox positions for your new template, click the Reset button at the bottom of the screen.

Thank you for that, spot on. that will teach me to miss out a chapter!