I have been designing and coding for a while now, and have always wondered the answer to this...

How do we create templates for Wordpress, Joomla, OSCommerce..etc? It is almost impossible (unless you know the insides and out of every language) to code an ecommerce website. The logical solution is to use OSC, CubeCart or any of the dozen others that are out there.

Does anyone have any recommended reading for OSCommerce designing/how to create templates?

I would like to learn how to create templates in many systems including OSC, Joomla, phpBB, and wordpress, but for now I think I will learn OSC first, as many clients are based with an ecommerce website and the only solution I have is to find a pre-existing template and edit it.

You don't necessarily need to know the 'insides' of all the mentioned systems. After a while, it starts to become predictable.

What you really need to be a guru at is XHTML/CSS and understanding of PHP - The combination will allow you to easily knock about the code on these systems. It would only be a question of WHERE to look in the FTP as opposed to how, who, what when where why.

As for templates - I normally just study the default template and then make changes based on that template to understand - then second time round, I will create a template from scratch. It's worked well so far.

Maybe I should try that. I've never actually sat down and looked at the default template for said systems. I know xhtml and a bit of css and pretty good at php. I didn't know if there were any books that helped out or not.

Is it harder to get the template working correctly than custom coding it yourself?

a "bit of css" isn't really going to help. You need to work on CSS and also JavaScript.

What do you mean by custom coding it ?

Custom coding as in coding the same features yourself without using the cms. Example... Creating a shopping cart with php versus getting it to work with osc.


Css is what I am learning now, I'm trying to get away from my bad table habit.


I have been reading "Professional Web Design: Techniques and templates (CSS and XHTML) to try to learn it a bit more.

Would this fall under the same category of trying to take a joomla site and then converting it back to html? Just curious

Originally Posted by pbmedia

Would this fall under the same category of trying to take a joomla site and then converting it back to html? Just curious

No, this is not the same. To get the pure html of any site you can right click on the website and view source and it will show the static html as if it were just an html page. Of course, you will have to have all of the images saved.

What I am trying to accomplish is designing a template and applying it to a content management system so that all of the code from that cms works with my design. There are a ton of open source systems that I would like to take advantage of by creating my own templates.

Brandon

To know insides would not make a real difference. XHTML/CSS PHP and javascript and all the coding will become so easier and you'l get all the answers at your own. For templates, the default templates technique works well. Well, you need a good hand at XHTML/CSS PHP and Javascrpit to master them.

Originally Posted by WebTraffic

Custom coding as in coding the same features yourself without using the cms. Example... Creating a shopping cart with php versus getting it to work with osc.

Well that really depends on the project scope, budget and deliverables.

The larger companies I have done some work for develop their own system because they think using branded systems may taint their image. Also, they have the development team and long term contracts to finish projects off. They charge thousands so spending time on a system is feasible plus they tend to reuse the system and adjust it for future projects.

I'm not sure what your professional status is but I can tell you that when I take a job in representation of myself - I use software such as Magento and Joomla etc. just because

1. Not a programmer
2. I don't get the big budget jobs [ie; £10'000 etc.] (not yet anyway ) to make it worth me developing from bottom up.
3. There is community support for mods and security updates etc. so I don't need to spend hours on a frequent basis to update my system.
4. Practice makes perfect. The 10th project of Magento takes half the time of the 1st project) so output and profit per hours spent increase.

But when I work for companies - the larger ones have their own CMS. The smaller ones use CMS systems out there on the web.