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Themes

Tutorial Fail

Permalink January 28, 2021 at 1:07 AM

Hoping someone has experienced this issue and the answer is something simple.

I have followed the standard tutorial here:

https://documentation.concrete5.org/developers/pages-themes/designin...

for creating a customized theme to the letter multiple times, and each time when I go to look at the result at the various stages of the tutorial, all I get is a blank page.
The tutorial makes this look rather straightforward but does not really deal with troubleshooting ...

I have followed the video then the written instructions, gone back and tried it again.
Using a general html template with Bootstrap as a test. There is general content from the html template in the file so SOMETHING should have been showing up.

I am using
Core Version - 8.5.1
Database Version - 20190301133300

If someone would be so kind as to enlighten me, I doubt I am the only one who has experienced this...

THANKS!!!

ConcreteOwl replied on Jan 28, 2021 at 8:17 am Permalink Reply

One possibility is that the tutorial shows you how to create theme paths using php short open tags like this

<?=$view->getThemePath()?>

If your server is not setup to allow php short_open_tag then the code will fail.
If this is the case you have two options.
1 In your server PHP settings, allow php short_open_tag
2, Change that line of code to this

<?php echo $view->getThemePath()?>

As a general rule-of-thumb where you find this

'<?='

Replace it with this

'<?php echo '

And where you see this

'<? '

Replace it with this

'<?php '

Here I am enclosing the code in ' ' this is just to show any necessary spaces

owebsmart replied on Jan 28, 2021 at 10:10 pm Permalink Reply

that's a great point... thank you! I will check. I did try just straight html file before adding the pointer snippet, still didn't work.
Kinda stuck until I figure this out, appreciate the info!

O

mesuva replied on Jan 28, 2021 at 10:11 am Permalink Reply

As another example of how to structure a theme (and put that theme in a package), you could take a look at this example I put together a few years ago.

https://github.com/Mesuva/anatomy_theme...

It might not solve your particular issue here, but could be useful as another example.

owebsmart replied on Jan 28, 2021 at 10:09 pm Permalink Reply

thank you! I will have a look and see if this helps.

I wasn't sure if this latest concrete5 version is doing things differently than the version in the tutorial I watched.

ob7dev replied on Jan 29, 2021 at 12:48 am Permalink Reply