Templates, themes and getting back to basics.

[VinceS]

I need a bit of advice. My existing website (SS Pro v11SP2) uses custom templates for both pages and products. I went this way several years ago to get functionality that was not available in earlier SS versions.

I am looking to re-vamp the website using a standard SS template and/or theme. I need some very basic direction. Do I use themes AND templates or just one or the other.

I thought the theme just changed the colors and backgrounds but it also changes the template so I'm confused. It seems like they are almost mutually exclusive. What am I missing?

[ShopSite Nicole]

If you choose a theme in ShopSite then it does change the templates in the various ShopSite sections to all which are associated with that theme.

If you wish to use your own custom templates, then you will not be selecting a theme in ShopSite. Instead, you will be going to the various sections (Pages, Products, etc.) to manually select your templates for use in ShopSite.

[VinceS]

Thanks Nicole.
Maybe I wasn't clear. I want to get away from custom templates altogether. As my previous post mentioned I went the custom route because SS did not have the functionality I was looking for back then - side bar menus etc. SS does have it now and a whole lot more that I either have to code/patch for or miss out on altogether.

I have had my service provider clone my existing website to a test environment. I have one custom page template and one custom product template that ALL pages and products throughout the store use. So essentially I have a "theme" because my pages & products all use the same templates.

It appears that if I use a stock SS theme, the theme sets the template and I don't ever have cause to edit the template entry on new pages and products layout.

[Jim]

A theme is a combination of templates for pages, product, shopping cart, search, gift certificate, etc, images used on those templates, specific buttons used on the various screen, and colors used for various places on the site. Other, not so obvious settings, such as image alignment, font setting etc can also be set by the theme. So when you change a theme under Preferences > Themes, any or all of those things may change. Some themes have specific templates used just for that theme and some themes are designed to use the same templates as another theme but other settings of the theme make it look different.

When I first started with ShopSite back in 1998 all of the themes were based on templates created by C code. I think the custom template language was introduced in ShopSite version 5 or 6 and the C code templates have mostly been replaced by "custom template" versions that look and function similar to how the C did. Each release there have also been additional new themes added, all of which have been "custom template" language based. I think the only C (i.e. non "custom template") templates left in the product are a few product templates including Default_product_template, Graphic_over_text,Compact_product_template, Compact_graphic_over_text, Inline_product, Inline_graphic_over_text and One_line. All page templates are now "custom templates".

So your statement "I want to get away from custom templates altogether" doesn't make total sense, since it is no longer possible to have a ShopSite store without "custom templates". If you want to not use your own "custom templates" then all you need to do is select a theme under Preferences > Themes which will change all your settings to use the ShopSite provided templates (and other theme settings).

If you just want to change the templates from the ones you created to ones that ShopSite supplies, you would need to goto each location where a template is selected, Pages, Product, Search, Shopping cart, Gift certificates etc, and select a template that you like. The themes are designed to work together as a set so it may not be possible to just pick a page template and expect that any product template would work with it.

[VinceS]

Thank you Jim and Thank you Nicole.
That's what I was looking for.
Much appreciated.