James
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Registered: 1st Jun 02
Location: Surrey
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I'm in the middle of migrating a website from a shit ASP.Net based shopping cart software package to use Magento.
Initially, I had to re-write the main layout because it wasn't cross-browser compatible and was generally shit.
So now I have a nice, clean template written mainly with CSS and it should be XHTML compliant etc.
I want to turn this into a Magento theme. Does anyone have any tips or useful articles? I've started reading the Magento documentation but it talks more about writing a theme from scratch. I wondered if anyone had any experience converting an existing website layout to a Magento theme?
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Whittie
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Registered: 11th Aug 06
Location: North Wales Drives: BMW, Corsa & Fiat
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Is it a layout or a graphic theme you've got James? (or both)
Download a theme from Magento these do some free ones; http://www.hellothemes.com/
And take a look at the folders they supply, and whats involved, basically replacing their files with yours and adding any extras.
This is how i've saved mine as a "theme" in the past.
[Edited on 19-10-2012 by Whittie]
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James
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Registered: 1st Jun 02
Location: Surrey
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quote:
Originally posted by Whittie
Is it a layout or a graphic theme you've got James? (or both)
Do you mean is it HTML or is it just a PSD (or similar)?
If that's what you mean, it's HTML. I know HTML and CSS pretty well. I also know XML (I know Magento uses this), so once I've got my head round the concepts, it should be fine.
Downloading some sample ones is a good plan, I'll take a look at that website.
Thanks!
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Whittie
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Registered: 11th Aug 06
Location: North Wales Drives: BMW, Corsa & Fiat
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Nope, just wondering if it was images (icons and boxes, etc) or a mixture of both.
You'll have to have a little ready on the layouts too, instructions are supplied in that theme though, this is where you can also add custom css 
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James
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Registered: 1st Jun 02
Location: Surrey
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quote:
Originally posted by Whittie
Nope, just wondering if it was images (icons and boxes, etc) or a mixture of both.
You'll have to have a little ready on the layouts too, instructions are supplied in that theme though, this is where you can also add custom css
It's pure CSS, the only images I've used are 1 for the header, 1 that is used for custom bullet points on lists and one PayPal banner. I did that because I find working with images in CSS quite fiddly, and these days, you can achieve a fairly good design without having images everywhere (plus it loads quicker with just CSS).
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Whittie
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Registered: 11th Aug 06
Location: North Wales Drives: BMW, Corsa & Fiat
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There's an addon for magento where you can view your site and you hover over a section you want to edit and it'll give you the url, can't remember whats its called but probably quite easy to find.
Helped me find my way round it rather quickly. Might help you out rather than searching for certain bits etc.
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James
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Registered: 1st Jun 02
Location: Surrey
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Cool - I'm going to have a play over the weekend. I hope to have the theme created in about 1 day (that includes any time it takes me to get my head round Magento theming  ). Then do most of the site config in another day. I'm hoping to be able to somehow export the product data from the old site in a format that can be imported to the new site.
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Whittie
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Registered: 11th Aug 06
Location: North Wales Drives: BMW, Corsa & Fiat
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If you need a hand importing anything give me a shout, might be about to help. It's fairly straight forward for someone with your knowledge though, so should imagine you'll be fine.
If its a decent template, bang it on themeforest too, get some pennies.
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James
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Registered: 1st Jun 02
Location: Surrey
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quote:
Originally posted by Whittie
If you need a hand importing anything give me a shout, might be about to help. It's fairly straight forward for someone with your knowledge though, so should imagine you'll be fine.
If its a decent template, bang it on themeforest too, get some pennies.
It's not a great template TBH, but it's good enough for the small company that uses it.
It started life as the out-of-the-box template that comes with VevoCart (the previous shopping cart software), then I tried to improve the design and make it look a bit cleaner and then I re-wrote the code to make it compliant with XHTML standards.
I'm terrible at design, ideally I'd get someone to create a design and then I would code it, but that costs money
This is the first web development I've done for about 3 years and I'm actually quite enjoying it
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James
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Registered: 1st Jun 02
Location: Surrey
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Also, anyone reading this - please avoid VevoCart. It is shit, it is basically a couple of guys in India that have a written a sub-standard shopping cart and are trying to make some money.
It's very bloated, it doesn't meet any standards, it's full of HUGE bugs (for example if you buy 2 of the same product and pay via PayPal - it only charges VAT on one of the items). The post-sales support is also rubbish.
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