I'm fairly new to Magento and am having trouble uploading the Aheadworks blog extension to the correct directories. I am using a custom theme for my site, let's call it "themex". The directions state "Navigate inside step_1 directory. If you use a different from default theme - be sure to rename step_1/app/design/frontend/default/default and step_1/skin/frontend/default/default folders to your store's values."
I've located the 'step_1' directory but I'm not quite understanding the latter part of the directions. Am I renaming the 'step_1' directory to "themex" and uploading it to the root directory? Please be as descriptive as possible in your response.
Their instructions are badly phrased, but I'm pretty sure it means that you need to upload the files to app/design/frontend/default/themex
Magento theme files appear in the app/design/frontend/ folder.
The "base" folder here contains the core layout files, and the "default" folder contains the file overrides for other themes. As such, your theme's layout files will appear under app/design/frontend/default/themex (possibly app/design/frontend/themex/default depending on how the theme works)
Magento will first look for design files here first, and then look under app/design/frontend/base if the override does not exist.
Make sure you back-up any files, and if their files over-write any of your theme files then run a comparison on them to make sure they are not over-writing any of your theme's functionality.
Related
i have uploaded the files of the new theme bought from https://themeforest.net/user/codazon . But don't know where to move each individual files to the correct directories in order to add this new theme. Below is the files inside the new theme folder
Below are the screenshot of what's inside the Theme zip file.
It is hard to guess which theme you have purchase but they must be providing a detailed documentation of that theme through http or wrap inside theme package. For example i have found http://www.codazon.com/document/fastest/magento2/ is the documentation for their M2 Fastest theme from envatomarket page.
Codazon has to kind of zip files one is with complete Magento package and the other has only extension and it’s documentation. Please find out it’s extension zip file only .
I have a real noob Magento question. I'm helping a friend change the template their store is using but they are worried about losing the functionality of some of their extensions such as ajaxsearch. They don't know if it's actually an extension or part of the template. I can't seem to figure out if some of the extensions are built into the theme or if they are completely separate extensions. Is there an easy way to tell?
To give an example the ajaxsearch JS file's path seems to in the template path e.g http://www.example.com/skin/frontend/default/templatename/js/ajaxsearch.js
and if I go to system > configuration I can see it listed in the sidebar under Templates-Master (which I think is a brand name). In this case is this an extension and is this how file paths work for extensions? The fact that skin is in the file path is throwing me off.
Thanks!
Fast way:
Each Magento extension provided as archive (.tgz). Unpack it to some folder outside Magento and check have it next path or not:
unpacked_folder/skin/frontend/default/templatename/js/ajaxsearch.js
(another trick is look in the first lines of ajaxsearch.js file, authors often write extension or theme names in it).
Long way:
Find where is this file included on page. Search for 'ajaxsearch.js' in xml files placed in app/design/frontend/default/templatename/layout/
if not found, try to search in app/design/frontend/default/default/layout/ etc.
For example you find it in somefile.xml
Try to find which extension include this file. For doing this search 'somefile.xml' in config.xml files in local and community pools:
app/code/local/some/extension1/etc/config.xml
app/code/local/some/extension2/etc/config.xml
app/code/community/some/extensionN/etc/config.xml
etc
If you found it in ...some/extensionX/etc/config.xml - this mean what ajaxsearch.js belongs to some_extensionX extension. If not found - it belongs to theme.
just a quick developer question in regards to Magento Extension/Theme Packaging, more specifically, when packaging, would I place the template files, layout files, skin folders etc in the base folder (see path below)(and not overriding any core files either)
app/design/frontend/base/default/template
app/design/frontend/base/default/layout
skin/frontend/base/default/css
and so on? I see this would be most suitable as alot of platform users would have custom themes with maybe custom namespaces for the theme folders. As users would have to stuff around to rename/move files/folders to work with their platform if packaged the default way I have seen in the past (ie in the default/default folder paths).
cheers for any feedback
This is the only way to package extension to use base/default or default/default location for template, layout and skin folders. Because if custom theme is used, then also this will work due to Magento's fallback mechanism. And if user want to add those files in custom theme location, then he/she should manually copy or move files in theme's respective location as you have said. And it is obvious that we can not predict custom theme path while packaging extension.
I am making some changes to a purchased magento theme. Is there any simpler way to backup my work other than by copying the relevant folders inside app skin and media and their directory structures.
What I recommend that you do is to have your purchased theme as your default theme, i.e. in the "default" folder under your package. You can then declare another theme, e.g. "custom", and copy the path/files to there that you wish to override. You just need to set the "Default" value to "custom" in Admin > System > Configuration > Design > Theme.
Just thought I'd answer this for anyone coming along - as far as i can make out the answer to the question is no, not really - unless I'm doing it the wrong way - ( and I think not ) then the best method of backing up a custom theme is to first compress the entire app, skin and media ( if relevant) directories into one archive file, move this and expand it in an empty directory, then carefully delete all the other theme folders, leaving just the files which you are using and the directory trees which you have created - this preserves any files you have in your custom theme and also the necessary directory structure. If anyone has a better method maybe they'd share it.
I am working on a Magento project and it is due an update; so I am wondering which folders will it replace/affect during an update. I am used to working with wordpress which leaves the entire 'wp-content' folder ( all the user data ) untouched during an update - I presume magento does something similar and doesnt overwrite custom theme files, media uploads (and hopefully not products and user data anyway) but then I read the following from this page which confuses me
For several of the first Magento themes I built, I copied the layout files from the default or blank theme into the custom theme layout folder. I would then modify the layout files directly, editing or commenting out content in files like: catalog.xml, page.xml, checkout.xml, etc… I never liked editing these files directly, as I knew that when it came time to upgrade to a newer version of Magento that had upgraded the layout files, I’d have to merge the changes into the new layout files.
I think I may just have a mistunderstanding specifically about layout files but all the same could someone clarify for me which locations (if any) that I might expect to loose data from during an update ( so that hopefully I can avoid using these locations )
You won't loose any data if you have made your edits in custom theme package/folder and not in core code (but in tyour own extensions and code/local code-pool). However as you mentioned yourself it would be wise to merge your theme to be based on new layout files and same goes for template files as well
you can use a diff tool for that that can compare entire folder structures (winmerge, things and so on) and compare your theme and base theme folders
lets clarify things
whatever you change in code do it by making extensions in app/code/local/ or app/code/community
by merging your theme based on = if new version of magento is available and your theme is based on old version layout files and templates eq you have copied layouts and templates and modified them then it is wise to compare all changed files against new ones and apply your changes on top of new layout and template files