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.
Related
I'm new to Prestashop development. The first thing I've tried is to create a new theme copying the default theme directory in Prestashop 1.6. The problem I have is that, once created, the theme is not detected by Prestashop: is like the directory wasn't there.
If I create a new theme from the admin panel and replace the directory content with the same files, it works ok.
What should I do to make Prestashop detect my theme? I haven't found any information about it.
Thanks a lot.
I already answered on similar question here, there are two ways to solve your issue through backoffice
Copy default theme in Preferences -> Theme press Add new theme
button and then at the bottom Create new theme + choosing Copy missing files from existing theme.
OR if you already copied theme dir/files by FTP
Same steps, but without copy missed files (of course if you have no
missed files) and just put correct new dir name in Name of the theme's directory
This is actually the way it is done - Copying the default theme.
There could be several reasons for that:
Have you changed the name of the copied folder?
Did you use only a single lowercase word as a name?
Did you copy it to the /themes folder?
Here is additonaly info after the copying to do some cleanup: http://doc.prestashop.com/display/PS15/Creating+your+own+theme
Also it is perfectly fine to create a copy of the default theme from the backend. You can find instructions here: http://doc.prestashop.com/display/PS16/Laying+the+Theme's+Foundations#LayingtheTheme'sFoundations-Standingontheshouldersofgiants:copyingthedefaulttheme
For people who are using Prestashop 1.7 or higher and is facing the same problem when copying the Starter Theme, I recommend you to check if you actually have a themes/your_theme/config/theme.yml configuration file because the one that is loaded by default is a theme.dist.yml so Prestashop won't recognize it.
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'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.
This is my first time working with Magento and here is what happend: I spent two days reading the documentation and tweaking the settings to fit my needs. I then installed this theme:
http://themeforest.net/item/decostore-magento-theme/1876494?WT.ac=category_thumb&WT.seg_1=category_thumb&WT.z_author=8theme
The problem is that the theme didn't work the way I was expecting and now I'd like to rollback to the default theme and completely remove everything added by this theme to my installation.
Unfortunately, I didn't backup the installation and database before I installed the new theme and I have no idea where to start.
Thanks in advance.
1. Switching back to default theme
Go to the admin area and then system > configuration > design
Change "Current Package Name" to 'default' and make sure all inputs under the "Themes" section are empty. This will return you to the default theme.
2. Completely remove everything added by this theme
I take it from your question that you are not using any form of source control. Might be an idea to look into this for the future :)
Magento 1.7 has introduced backup and rollback features so you may also want to check that out.
If this is the case, backup everything before you start removing files and directories as described below
Anyway, to completely remove all files and directories added when you installed the module, unfortunately it will simply be a case of manually finding the files and directories deleting.
The easiest way to do this will be to find the original source code you received when you purchased the theme and removing the corresponding files from your site. When removing directories be careful to only remove those specific to the theme - It will have been sent to you structured so that you can easily drag straight in to your web root - so will contain some other directories required by Magento, simply to give it the correct hierarchy.
At the very least there will be files and folders specific to the theme located in the following directories:
app/design/frontend
skin/frontend
js
and also most likely some more in the following:
app/etc/modules
app/design/adminhtml
app/locale
I know the result for this can be different for everyone, but in case someone else comes across my specific case, it was the N98 folder under app/code/community/N98 that caused the problem. Particularly their CustomerGroupCheckout plugin as shown here: https://github.com/amenk/N98_CustomerGroupCheckout
Removing the N98 folder brought back the configuration page.
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