Glossary Item Box

Squirrelcart v6.1.0

Copying a Theme for Testing

Overview 

If you wish to make changes to a custom theme without negatively impacting your store, you can create a copy of your theme for testing. By setting your current theme to this new copy, only you will see the changes you make.

You can then safely work with this theme until you are happy with the changes. To make it live, you just need to make the copy your store's default theme.

How to create a copy of a theme

  1. Open the themes table:
  2. Locate the theme you wish to copy and click on it's record to open it. For this example, we will be copying a theme named custom.
  3. Without changing the record, click Save Changes  . This will ensure that the theme information is saved to an XML config file inside the theme's config folder. You should see a message like this:


    If you do not see the green message above indicating the config.xml.php file has been updated, set permissions on the theme's config folder so it is writable by your server.
    That usually requires 0777 permissions. The location of this folder is: squirrelcart/themes/YOUR_CUSTOM_THEME/config

    After changing permissions, open and save the record again. Do not continue until you see the success message similar to the one above.
  4. Download a copy of this themes corresponding folder from the squirrelcart/themes folder via FTP
  5. Rename the folder you downloaded. Any name will do. We recommend adding a "-v5" suffix as in:
    custom-v5
  6. Upload the renamed folder to squirrelcart/themes
  7. Install the theme
  8. Theme will show up in the themes table with same name, but with a higher record number.
  9. Open the new theme record, which will have the largest # in the table:
  10. Change the Name field to something different so you can tell them apart, such as:
    custom v5
  11. Click Save Changes  . The theme will automatically be set as your current theme, without changing the theme for your customers.

 

You can work on the theme now without negatively impacting your store. When you are ready to make this theme live, set it as your store's default theme.

 

 


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