X-Cart forums

[Nora McDougall-Collins]

I have built new and child themes in WordPress and Drupal. Now I need to customize a theme in X-cart. So, I thought I would try copying the files from a theme into a new folder to see if the Dashboard would pick it up. No joy. Where are the instructions for building a custom theme.

[gb2world]

There is a tutorial here by Totaltec about creating custom themes for x-cart: http://forum.x-cart.com/showthread.php?t=62810

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[elmirage001]

I would recommend you look at the new reBOOT template http://forum.x-cart.com/showthread.php?t=66570

It's a responsive template and easy to modify. I've been tweaking it since it came out and I'm about 95% there. I'm also customizing a responsive Wordpress template to use as my x-cart blog for when I go live with reBoot on 4.6.x and have it seamlessly integrated with my reBoot template design. Visitors won't be able to tell that they are switching between x-cart and Wordpress.

[Nora McDougall-Collins]

Thanks for the answers! I find it interesting that the X-cart help files have links that don't work.
"Please note that your manual pages don't work:
http://help.x-cart.com/index.php?title=X-Cart:Editing_Skin_Files
The links in this text don't go anywhere. You need to fix this:
(See the section Compiling templates and to restore any skin files that have been edited to their original state (See Restoring all files).

Please note that this is a lack of instructions on your part. We do not need to pay for support for simple instructions."

[Nora McDougall-Collins]

gb2world, You are phenomenal!!! Great job on the video!!!

[gb2world]

You need to thank Mike White (Totaltec) - be sure and drop him a note or at least add a "thanks" to his page.

Also, re: broken links - best to submit to the Issues Tracker - https://bugtracker.qtmsoft.com/ - QT does not officially correct problems raised in the forums, but they will track and respond to entry in the issues list

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[Nora McDougall-Collins]

Thanks for the suggestion on the thanks!

I tried following the steps in the video, which are very clearly explained, and follow patterns that are common in WordPress and Drupal. But, I'm not getting the X-cart dashboard to notice the new theme. Near as I can tell

1. Create a folder with the theme name.
2. Make the changes in altskin.ini
3. Upload folder

I even waited over night in case X-cart batch processes. Can you think of any common errors? I checked that each item after the = has both quotes.

I did notice that there is a string of characters at the top of each altskin.ini that is unique for each new theme. I wonder where that string comes in.

elmirage001, I will be checking out your solution, as well - thanks!!! I see that it is a paid theme, which are generally good for developers to use.

Thanks!

[Nora McDougall-Collins]

OK, now I see that the dashboard is not dynamically picking up the skin -> directories.

1. I backed up the fashion_mosaic_pink theme folder.
2. I opened altskin.ini in the original and changed the color in parenthesis to red
3. I uploaded the file.
4. The new name did not show in the theme dropdown list in the Dashboard.

Thinking to my Drupal experience, I hunted around for a way to clear a cache. I found it under Tools -> Maintenance. I think that additional explanations on that page would be helpful. I took a guess hoping that I wasn't going to break anything. Of course, regular database backups do help alleviate some of those fears!

[gb2world]

Try going to Tools -> Clear templates/X-Cart cache
You can also select the Force cache generation just for good measure.

As you are developing, it is good to understand and use the cleanup.php script: http://help.x-cart.com/index.php?title=X-Cart:Advanced_Tools

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[DBK Web Builder]

I was going nuts - I created a new skin - it didn't work - i renamed an old skin - still didn't work
clear CACHE - who knew !

thanks

Donna