Changing themes

[Big_Dave]

I've had the Smart theme for over a year now and have changed the templates by cutting out the yahoo sections and adding my own static html links and some links to the footer of each of the main templates (checkout, brochure etc).

I am thinking that my shop would be better served by adopting another theme that doesn't rely so heavily on dynamically creating pages like the Smart theme does.

If I simply choose another theme will this easily be deployed throughout my site or would the fact that I have altered some of my templates cause a problem?

regards
Dave

[jont]

It depends on what mods you have done to the other layouts and most importantly if you are using the ACTSTDWIDTH global setting ... if you are (most people do) then you should be OK as the new theme will sit over the top and any section / product layouts etc will still sit happily in the middle.

Only way to really find out is to apply the theme and see (after taking many usable backups, snapshots and folder copies to reinstate if it goes pear-shaped)

99% of sites change themes quite readily in my experience.

[wjcampbe]

All Actinic site pages are static HTML including Smart.

Changing theme will overwrite your altered templates with the originals for the new theme you choose. If you need the modifications, you would have to reapply them.

[Big_Dave]

Thanks for that. The only thing I have done is chop out the yahoo sections and add static links to :

Act_Primary
Act_BrochurePrimary
Act_PrimaryCheckout

I'm guessing that a new theme would overwrite these templates with its own settings and section links?

Cheers
Dave

[Big_Dave]

I think Bill may have just answered my question (thanks)

[jont]

rely so heavily on dynamically creating pages like the Smart theme does.

I think you mean dynamic links via the cgi-bin which are not so SEO friendly as HTML links.

That said, a lot of evidence from v8 suggests the spiders are crawling the cgi links better than they used to but full HTML would be preferable.

[Big_Dave]

Thats what I mean yes and I'm assuming the other v7 templates are all static HTML?

[jont]

All pages in every theme are static HTML .. it is the links between the pages that sometimes go via the cgi-bin.

The smart theme is the "worst" offender for using cgi-bin links in the main navigation to the sections and subsections using the Yahoo Sections List which you have stripped out. I recall most (if not all) of the others use HTML links and not cgi-bin links.

Most of the issues can be overcome by placing a link to the sitemap on all the 3 main layouts you mentioned above ... this then creates a simple HTML link to the sitemap.html page where all the links are in plain HTML.