Magento

OK, I’ve been through the screencasts, and gone over the Design Guide at least five times, and I still have no clue how the templating process works. That is, I think I understand it from the guides, but then actually putting that knowledge to practice and making my own template always results in miserable failure. And i may be an amateur, but I have made my own templates for Drupal, OSCommerce, and WordPress projects before… What are CMS Manage Pages for? Ditto that for the “Layout XML” text area. If I edit the “home page”, am I editing the .phtml file? Why not show the file path(s) of the page being edited?  If I create a page with the CMS Manager, is a corresponding .phtml file created in the template app directory?

Also, for me the the design configuration area nomenclature is so confusing. What is a ‘package’? Is the same as an ‘Interface’? When I change the ‘default’ theme to ‘my_new_theme’ and try to use my own logo.gif as per the screencast, nothing is changed. Does the HTML Head, Header, and Footer areas in the config/design tab negate changes made in the template?  And I noticed that changing the “"Default Title” does not work, but changing the Title Prefix & Suffix does. Is this because of a conflict in the template?

Thanks for letting me vent.  Despite my confusion, I still think Magento is an awesome project, everything I’ve ever wanted from a shopping cart system, and I realize it’s still taking its first baby steps.  But if anyone can set me straight on my questions, I’d appreciate it.

Hi Brian,

Hang in there - it took me a while to figure it all out - and it’s not just one ‘ah ha’ moment - it’s a whole bunch of them!

I can’t answer all your questions but here’s a start (and anyone out there who knows better is more than welcome to correct me here)

1. CMS Manage Pages is for pages which are not part of the Catalog.  Have a look at http://72.167.126.248/magento/ (my dev site).  The Customer Service, About Us, and the Home Page itself are all pages which I created in the CMS Manage Pages section.  (btw, to get those menu options there I had to add them to app/design/frontend/default/<YOUR_THEME>/template/catalogue/navigation/top.phtml by adding <li><a href="/magento/customer-service">Customer Service</a></li>)

2. I had issues with the logo as well - what I did was to upload my logo as logo.png and then in Admin - System/Configuration/Design at the Header section I changed the logo file to images/logo.png. 

3. I’ve just been messing around with the Default Title as well - it may be a bug - but putting the info in Suffix solved the problem for me.

Hope this helps a little.  I’m new at this myself. 

Hez

brians - 05 February 2008 01:21 PM

OK, I’ve been through the screencasts, and gone over the Design Guide at least five times, and I still have no clue how the templating process works. That is, I think I understand it from the guides, but then actually putting that knowledge to practice and making my own template always results in miserable failure. And i may be an amateur, but I have made my own templates for Drupal, OSCommerce, and WordPress projects before… What are CMS Manage Pages for? Ditto that for the “Layout XML” text area. If I edit the “home page”, am I editing the .phtml file? Why not show the file path(s) of the page being edited?  If I create a page with the CMS Manager, is a corresponding .phtml file created in the template app directory?

Also, for me the the design configuration area nomenclature is so confusing. What is a ‘package’? Is the same as an ‘Interface’? When I change the ‘default’ theme to ‘my_new_theme’ and try to use my own logo.gif as per the screencast, nothing is changed. Does the HTML Head, Header, and Footer areas in the config/design tab negate changes made in the template?  And I noticed that changing the “"Default Title” does not work, but changing the Title Prefix & Suffix does. Is this because of a conflict in the template?

Thanks for letting me vent.  Despite my confusion, I still think Magento is an awesome project, everything I’ve ever wanted from a shopping cart system, and I realize it’s still taking its first baby steps.  But if anyone can set me straight on my questions, I’d appreciate it.

nope you’re not dense. its just magentos way of completely confusing 99% of people trying to figure it out. of all the php apps i’ve themed/skinned, this has got to be one of the worst theming mechanisms out there...hopefully it gets better. hell, i had an easier time with XSLT complex xpaths compared to this.

thanks hez, ohminu for the tips and encouragement! 

I believe “Default Title” only comes into effect when you’re on a page that doesn’t specify a title on its own. For example when you’re on the home page, you already have a Title set at the CMS block level. But say when you’re viewing your (empty) shopping cart, you do see the default title show up there.

I’m not sure if thats the intended functionality but thats what i’ve noticed.

If you want the Default Title to show up all the time, you can append Mage::getStoreConfig(’design/head/default_title’) to the setTitle function in head.php if you wanted.