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I am trying to make a copy of Beez_20 template so I can make edits to the CSS without effecting the original Beez_20 template.

I have a copy of The Official Joomla Book which explains how to do this (but it's for Joomla 1.5 and I'm using Joomla 1.6 so this in itself might be the problem)

It explained that I needed to go into the control panel of my host, create a new folder for my new template and copy across all the template folders from the Beez_20 template. Then to edit the templateDetails.xml file to change the <name> of the template

I've done all of that.

Everything looks fine in the host's File Manager and I've checked with them that it has all copied over fine. However, when I go back into the Joomla! Administrator Template Manager I can't see the new template.

Does anyone know what might be wrong?

I have searched the forum for a solution - but no luck

Is there another way I can play with the CSS of the Beez_20 template but keep a copy of the original?

Any help with this would be much appreciated!

Clare

Is there another way I can play with the CSS of the Beez_20 template but keep a copy of the original?

quite simple copy the css folder and rename it as backup_css
and work css folder as you want

when you runnig in trouble restart copy from the backup one

Thanks muchly alikon - that's a good plan - simple but effective :-) Shouda thought of that myself!

Would still of course be good to know how to duplicate all the files of a particular template and be able to view them in Administrator. So if anyone out there knows how to...

Once you have copied the template, go to the extension manager, discover tab.

Click on the discover icon.

The new template shoudl show up.

Check the box next to it and click install.

As part of 1.6's introduction of styles you now actually have to install templates you can't just put them in the templates folder.

Hope you are liking the book!

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I am sooo grateful :-)That had been driving me to distraction and I just couldn't fathom how to fix it. And now it's fixed! So easy when you know how.

I think the book is essentially a good one but because it's not written for 1.6 I'm having to read between the lines alot. I hope they release an update soon!

Oh dear...

Just when I thought it was all going swimmingly... I go to the front end of the website and see this error message:

Fatal error: Call to a member function get() on a non-object in /home/chester/public_html/templates/beez_20/index.php on line 122

Line 122 of index.php says: <?php echo htmlspecialchars($templateparams->get('sitetitle'));?>

The only thing I changed when I copied over the files was the <name> in the templateDetails.xml file and of course the folder name.

Any ideas what is going wrong?

Cheers

Clare

By the way, when I looked in Joomla Extension Manager (Warnings tab) I discovered that I had a warning:

"The PHP temporary directory is the directory that PHP uses to store an uploaded file before Joomla! can access this file. Whilst the directory not being set isn't always a problem, if you are having issues with manifest files not being detected or uploaded files not being detected, setting this in your php.ini file might fix the issue."

I think this is the root of the problem.

So, I'm now following this thread where this particular issue is being discussed...

http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f ... 1#p2544921

Trouble is now I can't view the website front end at all - just get an error message - so can't get on with any work until it's fixed.

You have made a copy of the templates/Beez_20 folder (and all of the sub-folders). Assume this copy folder is called Beez_20_new. In newly-copied folder, find the file 'TemplateDetails.xml'. Find the occurrences of 'Beez_20' in this file and replace with 'Beez_20_new' (or whatever you named your folder). There should be 3 instances to replace. Find the file 'en-GB.tpl_beez_20.ini and rename it to 'en-GB.tpl_beez_20_new.ini' and also find 'en-GB.tpl_beez_20.sys.ini' and rename to 'en-GB.tpl_beez_20_new.sys.ini.

Then copy these two files from 'templates/beez_20_new/language/en-GB/' to 'languages/en-GB/' .

(in above examples, replace _new with whatever folder suffix you used).

Then use 'Discover' and 'Install' in the extension manager. You might need to 'purge' first.

hjc,

Woud you write up the whole process and put it in the wiki? http://docs.joomla.org.

Claratuckbones,

Don't worry about the warning though you can ask your host about fixing it.
Updates for 1.6 are available on the book website.

What a crock! Why should users have to jump through all those hoops just to create a duplicate of a template? This is a bug and it should be fixed. You shouldn't have to do ANYTHING (except edit the duplicated style sheets) once you use the "Duplicate" function from the Template Manager. I used this "feature" today and noticed that - while it does add a new entry in the "Styles" list (Copy of) - it does nothing to the files - no "Duplicate" is made or shown in the "Templates" side of the Template Manager form. So the "Duplicate" option in the Template Manager is basically WORTHLESS!

Have not written up in Wiki because I am not convinced that it always works. Not sure if there is any change to make in the template's 'index.php'. Agree that the whole process is rather painful. There is a lot of (sensible) prompting that the original templates and stylesheets should not be used as they may be overwritten in an update.

I've done all this (thank you for the instructions!) and cannot manage to get a template style to show up! My new template shows in the "templates" menu, but nothing corresponds in the "styles" menu, so I can't apply it. It's driving me batty -- I've posted questions about it in a few forums here, but no one has responded. I don't know if that's because it's a really simple question that folks assume I should be able to answer from documentation, or if it's really uncommon and so no one knows how to help.

Can someone let me know one way or the other? I have done a ton of work to customize Beez, but at some point I'll have to give up and use another template. It would be good to know that sooner than later.

Thanks,
Debi

Finally got it! What an annoying workaround...

I ended up creating a copy of Atomic, renaming it, zipping it, installing it through extension manager, and then saw that a template and style had been added to the template manager. After applying it to one page to be sure it worked, I used ftp to overwrite all the files in my new template directory with my reworked beez_20 files, of course taking care to change the names of the language files, css directory pointers, etc. Voila!

Hope this helps someone else too. Will x-post elsewhere.

This post was extremely helpful to me... Also, changing the language file names was pretty important, Thanks

Also, I had to replace Beez_20 with my new name of the template in several instances in 3 files in the template root
componant.php
error.php
index.php
As I was dragging header images from Beez_20's folder

I confess that I solved this problem with a complete reinstall of Joomla - Joomla really didn't like me messing with the Beez_template!!

Will be much more careful about messing with the beez template in future - and back up more often :-)

Is it just me, or is the craziest, most obvious and embarrassing oversight in all of Joomla? To recap:

a) if you dare edit a template or style sheet that came with joomla it will get blown away the moment you do a Joomla update, and

b) if you are stupid enough to try and copy the template that came with Joomla by clicking the "duplicate template" button, it will do no such thing and it will also get blown away the moment you do a Joomla update.

c) if you manually copy the template folder and rename it, it won't work. You'll have to search, dig and scratch for hours to figure out why.

If you are stupid enough to use the Beez5 template and decide you don't want to have bananas at the top of your site and you edit that image. DUMB! It won't stick and will get erased when you do a Joomla update. Who thought that was a good idea?