Modifying Joomla Templates

[scottthepotter]

I have an existing Joomla template, not made with the DW Template Kit. I have set the site root to the template path of a Joomla install on my network server. Because I am the only one who uses this network server, I am treating it as essentially a local server, I have a drive mapped to the location on the server. When I open up the index.php file, none of the images that are in the template show up in DW. Even if I use the wizard to convert images to DW they don't show up. I can make modifications to the template in DW and it is reflected when I point my browser to the network server. Now I realize that this is probably a misunderstanding on my part, just not sure where.

[admin]

Hi scottthepotter,

To view images in Dreamweaver path has to be images/logo.gif or c:\\some\path\logo.gif

The template that you’re working on must have some type of code in the path image src path so Dreamweaver is not going to read it.

For our “images to CMS wizard” to work the path has to be “images\logo.gif”

For the “images back to Dreamweaver” it looks for our dynamic PHP code and puts the paths to images\logo.gif

To fix this third party template you would have to make the image paths images\logo.gif
And also if the template has images in the CSS code you would have to link to the css so DW can read and render images and layouts.

[scottthepotter]

Okay, I think I can see what the problem is. Just about all of the images, are defined within the CSS file. And since you need this line of code:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="<?php echo $mosConfig_live_site;?>/templates/<?php echo $mainframe->getTemplate();?>/css/template_css.css" media="screen" type="text/css" />

to actually load the CSS, DW doesn't understand all of the PHP includes. So to actually see the images from the CSS file, I would have to eliminate all of the PHP includes correct? So what process will put all of the includes back in again? packaging?

[scottthepotter]

Well, it looks like it would actually take more than that because of the Java script use for the style switcher. Here is the code for the relevant portion of the head section:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/template_css.css" media="screen" type="text/css" />
<link rel="alternate stylesheet" href="<?php echo $mosConfig_live_site;?>/templates/<?php echo $mainframe->getTemplate();?>/css/800.css" type="text/css" title="fluid" />
<script type="text/javascript" src="<?php echo $mosConfig_live_site;?>/templates/<?php echo $mainframe->getTemplate();?>/js/prototype.lite.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="<?php echo $mosConfig_live_site;?>/templates/<?php echo $mainframe->getTemplate();?>/js/moo.fx.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="<?php echo $mosConfig_live_site;?>/templates/<?php echo $mainframe->getTemplate();?>/js/litebox-1.0.js"></script>

<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="<?php echo $mosConfig_live_site;?>/templates/<?php echo $mainframe->getTemplate();?>/js/styleswitcher.js"></script>

So I am not sure if it is "easily" possible to edit a template like this.

[admin]

Hi Scott

The JavaScript code will not work in DW so you can leave the code as is.
The only thing you would need to do is add a local link to the css file for your layout or images or formatting.

// example
<link rel="stylesheet" href="css/template_css.css" media="screen" type="text/css" />

If you have an 800px,1024px or a 100% style sheet then add one link at a time to edit each style.
Then remove when your finish.



you can leave there dynamic link to styles this will not effect DW



Cheers,
Brian