Magento

Minu, that post is just awsome. Downloaded Magento a few days ago and taken the demo store apart, again and again to start to understand how everything is mounted together so I know what to change or not, but your post will most definatly save me lots and lots of hours of detective digging of my own.

I raise my hand and after beeing more and more convinced what plattform to start to build on, this community is making me dedicated.

Abit embarassing to admit, but I’m not sure I understand after all. I understand how to put things together, but still not where and how to structure my folders.

Will refer to what Minu wrote

Pretty straight forward. This type of templates are what we call “skeleton templates” because it exists for the purpose of positioning structural blocks within a page. Such templates are located in app/design/frontend/default/default/template/page/,

Does that meen that all your templates should be located in the standard setup? As of the path beeing “fontend/default/default”?

Located in app/design/frontend/your_package/your_theme/layout, layout is the one that puts all the pieces together. When a page loads in your store, the following things happen…

Here comes the referens to what seems to be a unique name in the structure “fontend” but should that then only contain the layout data?

I’m confused

Basicly, if you want your own looks and probably function as well, then should you create a complete package with all things needed or do you still just add stuff into layout? (and skin of course)

Sorry if this is basic stuff and I should have understood this from my 3 times around the tutorials, but still not there yet. I know I will feel that this structure is very logical once I reach the “oh, aha, thats how it is put together moment” but still need a few more pieces…

Hi, I have the same feeling as Macaper :-( ... I have spent last 3 days trying to implement my HTML/CSS template into Magento. In fact I understand the business about interfaces and themes and skeleton templates etc. I think that the problem is the XML structure that I am not by far familiar with and that should “put it all together”.
Pls believe I’ve read the Guide many times. The most helpful would be if somebody could work out a very very simple tutorial that should actually implement very very simple HTML/CSS template into Magento. It could be a template like header, left column with a cart and main area with catogories perhaps. I dont know whether this would be too much work for some of the people that are used to work with Magento. I dont know whether it is better to build a new theme from the scratch or to amend the default Demo shop template.  If someone could help I would be very greatfull.
Thank you!

I’m on right track now with almost an entire shop design implemented in about 3-4h.

After trying to make my own completly new theme I just realized that it wasn’t a very good approach as the shop uses so much code and CSS (even to the extent that I think its unnessassary amount of CSS, but that is a different story) so just started all over.

So what worked the best for me was just to copy the two default top folders and renamed them into my theme name. Then I just started to implement my own css into the skin css and that pretty much was it.

Of course I now have about 300% of the code and images I need, but atlest I got the function and look, so will start to clean out all the code I dont need and by that I guess that I will have learned enough about the structure and code to start all over again, but then with just my code, not the copy of the default one.

So my recommendation to anyone just starting out. Make a copy of the default info and start to make changed into that cause that will save you tons of time and will make it easier and faster to get to know the plattform and structure.