Magento

Hi,

Sorry if I’m duplicating, but getting started with Magento is a nightmare as there’s lots of information, but it seems to be all over the place and some of it seems out of date.

So, I’m starting to build my site using Magento, but whats the best start place? Initially I went with the ‘blank’ interface thinking it was the best starting point, but I’m a bit confused that the CSS files have different names to the ‘standard’ installation.

There’s a styles.css vs boxes.css

I’ve also seen reference to putting customised CSS into ‘custom.css’ - but there is no custom.css

Could somebody kindly point me in the right direction as I don’t want to do a load of work and then find that next time an upgrade comes along I’m screwed because I took the wrong approach.

Thanks for your patience!
Andrew

Andrew,

If you want to start from a Magento template, duplicate any of the theme folders and rename them. Then make your modifications from there. That way your template won’t be overwritten.

I’ve used the blank theme, default, theme, and modern theme depending on which was closest to what I wanted to achieve. It saves quite a bit of time in troubleshooting browser compatibility later and, if you’re new, helps you to understand the file structure.

Hope that helps.

What Sherrie says (another broken icon member - big Magento bug )

Upgrading Magento code is relatively easy. Upgrading your template can be difficult unless you pick one of the stock templates now and stay as close to it as possible. That way your future upgrades will be a breeze as Varien will have done the legwork for you. Go with a fully customized theme now and you need those designers to practically recode it partially every major upgrade.

Mine are based on the default theme and every upgrade, it takes me no more than 30 minutes to double-check each template file with the help of Beyond Compare.

@ J.T.: True story. Generally if I’m relying heavily on one of Varien’s templates, which I sometimes do, I only put the files I’ve actually made changes to in my template folder and tell Magento to look at Varien’s for the default. That makes upgrading even quicker.

Thanks - that helps.
Andrew