Magento

I wonder if the community can help?

Like many, i suspect, we want to use our own designs, and many, will I am sure have pre-made or inhouse developed designs which will be in the form of html/php and images files exported from PSD and the likes.

What we can’t find is the exact files that allow us to to change the header and footer actual designs (ie: drop in the html, save and refresh). I did find files called header.phtml and footer.phtml located in app/design/frontend/default/default/template/page/html but these just seem to be the actual some of textual content / elements that drop in on the pages.

I have used the search option, but can’t find any related references to the exact files, and personally got lost quite a few times in the directory file structure to locate these.

http://www.magentocommerce.com/design_guide/

cibernoid,

Thanks for your reply, however we have already viewed those pages in quite some detail (infact 3 of us have), and whilst we all agree that they are really well written, they do actually fail to list the exact key files which can be edited without causing problems to the core software.

Try this:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4067344684924672049&hl;=en

This has got to be one the most frustrating fu_k_ng things I have come across next to climbing mount everest with dental floss.
Ever heard of the KISS rule?

well, did you refresh the cache? system > cache management

There is a drop down menu. make sure you use it.

I used my own design, and has started to design a new one; except in the early stage, now I don’t have problem moving things around as far as template concerns. Perhaps you can show us exactly the steps you have taken, and what files you have modified.

You post is quite vague as to what you wanted to do.

By the way, are you aware of the Template Path Hints feature? Do a search on how to turn it on if you don’t already know.

chinesedream,

Thanks for your valued input. I was not aware of the Hints feature, but can see that being quite useful.

Looking at it’s output, it’s not revealing anything we have not looked at already, therefore I presume the files we were attempting to edit are correct (ie: http://www.magentocommerce.com/design_guide/articles/magento-design-terminologies4 -> Block Diagram 1 -> Header and Footer )

I presume these relate to (?):

frontend/default/default/template/page/html/header.phtml
frontend/default/default/template/page/html/footer.phtml

That’s not just it.

By using your own design, I reckon you meant you are making your unique template design, not just skin correct?  when I think of template design, I think of my own design, with the power and freedom to display blocks/elements any where I wanted them be, for example, placing callouts in the bottom (not necessarily to be in the ‘footer’) and placing footer on the top (not necessarily needed to be inside the ‘header’) - the structural blocks that Magento pre-defind it; if I like, I can even have multi-row, multi-columns layouts and have the category menu sits on the left column vertically instead of the default horizontal. In order to do this, I need also to modify/re-arrange the order of the blocks or create new blocks in the Layout, Templates, along with Skins.

So to move the footer to the top, you need also to modify the page.xml and all the templates located in the page - if you use only one template, say, 2columns-right.phtml, then you need only to move this ‘ <?php echo $this->getChildHtml('footer') ?>’ to the top, be it in the ‘header’ or not. If you decide to have the footer be in the header block, then the code in the page.xml should look something like this :

because I am having the footer blocks sit inside the header, so I remove the

If you make the changes and placed them in the right places, your site should reflect the changes correctly without refreshing, clearing the caches; if it doesn’t show and no errors, then pay a visit to Caches Management just in case.

chinesedream,

Many thanks for that detailed, and really useful, reply. A few of things you have just said have just clicked into place....we have had some Euerka moments

I think you are pretty much understand where we coming from, and you appear to be designing in a similar fashion to us, or what we consider normal expectations of design (ie: building with blocks etc).

For us, the hurdle was/is to get over the terms that Magento have used, the actual files containing those key elements, and what we can/can’t do in each (the bit you listed above has actually resolve this bit quite a bit for us).

PS: In the video link provided by “hmmLetMeSee” above, there was an indevelopment feature that highlighted on the page what was being called in red boxes. Does anyone know if Magento ever included that feature?