X-Cart forums

[amy2203]

I'm working on a new skin for my store, and you know what it's like, it's much easier and quicker to test on the actual site than on a copy etc...I know, not a good idea...

so, I'd like to be able to work on a new skin on the live site, without disrupting the current one.

My thought was why can't I add in an if statement somewhere, so that if a particular user was logged in, it used the skin2 directory rather than skin1, then as long as I am logged in with the right user, I will see the new skin, but everyone else will still see the old one.

I've narrowed it down to smarty.php that sets the skin folders etc, but I can't tell when this file actually runs, it doesn't appear in my webmaster mode,

can I just add an if to this to change the settings for 1 user?

[carpeperdiem]

Amy,

If I were you, I would clone your site into a /dev/ directory

The only pitfalls is that if you don't clone the database, any language variables that you edit will appear on the old (live) store.

So clone the database too for dev purposes, and KEEP A LOG of the language vars that you edit.

When you're ready to bring dev live, hopefully you have command line SSH access, as that makes this EXTREMELY easy....

just backup, make a tarball, etc... then expand whee you need it.

update the language vars and that's that.

This is not the ONLY way, but one way that preserves your live site and allows you to really test the new skin.

Good luck.

Jeremy

[amy2203]

Thanks,

thats just a real hassle, and takes up a huge amount more server space, we've got thousands of products and images etc, and without it all it's easy for a skin to break,

It's not huge changes I'm trying to make to the skin, and I've nearly got it working where it uses a different skin folder for me,

in smarty.php:

if ($CLIENT_IP == "xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx") {
#admin tester
$smarty->use_sub_dirs = false;
$smarty->request_use_auto_globals = false;

$smarty->template_dir = $xcart_dir."/skin2";
$smarty->compile_dir = $var_dirs["skin2templates_c"];
$smarty->config_dir = $xcart_dir."/skin2";
$smarty->cache_dir = $var_dirs["skin2cache"];
$smarty->secure_dir = $xcart_dir."/skin2";
$smarty->debug_tpl = "file:debug.tpl";

$smarty->assign("ImagesDir",$xcart_web_dir."/skin2/images");
$smarty->assign("SkinDir",$xcart_web_dir."/skin2");
$smarty->assign("template_dir", $smarty->template_dir);
$smarty->assign("sm_prnotice_txt", @$_prnotice_txt);
}
else
{

#normal user
$smarty->use_sub_dirs = false;
$smarty->request_use_auto_globals = false;

$smarty->template_dir = $xcart_dir."/skin1";
$smarty->compile_dir = $var_dirs["templates_c"];
$smarty->config_dir = $xcart_dir."/skin1";
$smarty->cache_dir = $var_dirs["cache"];
$smarty->secure_dir = $xcart_dir."/skin1";
$smarty->debug_tpl = "file:debug.tpl";

$smarty->assign("ImagesDir",$xcart_web_dir."/skin1/images");
$smarty->assign("SkinDir",$xcart_web_dir."/skin1");
$smarty->assign("template_dir", $smarty->template_dir);
$smarty->assign("sm_prnotice_txt", @$_prnotice_txt);
}

I just keep getting the error:
Error: Smarty error: the $compile_dir '' does not exist, or is not a directory

I have created the new folders in xcart/var but it doesn't like it.

If I leave the $compile_dir as templates_c it works, but I'm worried about it overwriting complied files etc and messing up the live skin.

[ARW VISIONS]

there is a skin swap mod out there.