Making a custom template active?

[jefferis]

Not sure this is correct. I have followed part one for Pages to create a custom template with shopsite tags and loaded it up along with css and js in the right places using the custom files upload.. I don't see any way to activate it in the themes. Do you have to have all pages created before you have a theme and if so, will it appear there?

Thanks
Jeff

[Jim]

Custom templates are not themes. They just affect certain areas of the site such as Pages or Products or Shopping cart etc. A theme changes all templates in the site, sets colors, may change buttons, image sizes, backgrounds etc across the entire site. Using a Custom Template you could have a different template for different types of pages which is not possible when you change the Theme for the store.

To apply a page template to all pages you would need to either edit each pages Page Layout setting for the template. This could be done using the Power Edit feature and just selecting the Template field and changing that. If you have just a few pages that would be fairly easy to do. If you have lots of pages it would be easier in an upload by setting the "Template" field to the new template name.

[jefferis]

Ah... so what about creating a custom theme then? That is what I was trying to do? I see a cheat resource in the cookbook so I think that is probably my next step. I had created a layout in dreamweaver, and was trying to transfer it as a theme...

[Jim]

Creating a complete theme is much more complicated since it involves creating templates for all possible screens used by ShopSite features, pages, products, search, gift certificates, customer registration, shopping cart, wishlist, wordpress, order buttons (order anywhere) and probably some I can't think of. A theme descriptor file, theme_name.xml, needs to be created and it needs to contains all settings that need to be adjusted when the theme is selected . There may also need to be buttons created for all shopper facing screens. The theme must also be added to the themes.dat file that ShopSite uses to know what themes to display on the Preferences > Themes screen. A number of the files that need to be edited are in directories that most merchants would not have access to.

Generally that is more work that a merchant would want to go to for just their store, although a developer or designer or host might want to under take the challenge if they can make money from reselling the theme to multiple stores.

As far as I know there have not been any themes created by anyone except ShopSite. There have been individual templates for pages and products and shopping cart etc created by designers who resell them and there are designers who create custom templates for specific merchants who hire them.