My b2evolution Version: Not Entered
I'm trying to upgrade the b2 [url=http://birchtreefarm.com/weblog]birchtreefarm[/url] site from v1.86 to v2.46. When I originally created the blog I used the custom skin and modified the <div pageHeader> of _main.php to make the header a link:
<div class="pageHeader">
<h1 id="pageTitle"><a id="pageTitle" href="http://birchtreefarm.com/weblog/index.php"><?php $Blog->disp( 'name', 'htmlbody' ) ?></a></h1>
<div class="pageSubTitle"><?php $Blog->disp( 'tagline', 'htmlbody' ) ?></div>
</div>
Then I modified the custom.css file quite a bit to make the width of the blog a percentage of the screen (instead of a fixed width), put a picture in the header and make things left justify instead of centered.
I think I can manage moving the css changes into style.css. However I'm at a loss when I look at the new
"skin_container( NT_('Page Top'), array(...
code in index.main.php.
Please keep in mind I made the original site over 2 years ago. I read through all the information I could on the "Skins 2.0", but I just don't understand it. I get the idea of using containers, but not how or where they are defined, or what elements may appear within them.
So finally my question, what general approach would you recommend for upgrading my customizations to 2.x? Should I just try to make edits as I did before, work harder to try to understand the new skin format, or other ideas?
Thanks.
General Support
b2evolution CMS Support Forums
Hi rainshowers. Welcome to the forums.
So dig on it a couple of ways: just do the upgrade and see what you get then tinker it to suit your tastes. If you do that the first thing that will go wrong is it will select the evopress skin. So you then have to select the custom skin ... which will then be something you can dial in again.
Oh and the blog title always links back to the blog's home page now. So there you go!
Alternatively, copy your database to another database, copy your files to a folder on your server and point the foldered version of conf/_basic_config.php to the new database, then upgrade the hidden secret duplicate copy. It's a bit more work this way, but you can work on it at your leisure until you have a skin that again suits your needs. In this situation you would want to select custom and begin customizing again, but you probably won't bump into problems with containers for quite some time. Heck just dropping your style.css into the new verson of custom might just take care of 80% of your stuff.
THEN you start learning how widgets have their own class designators so you can style each bit appropriately. EVENTUALLY you figure out containers are just ... containers. All they do is define a place on the screen where you will put various widgets.
I'd go with option 2 myself, but I did manage to upgrade a 1.9.something to 246 in 2 days. 2 weeks to get all the details dialed in including changing how the skin actually looks (and moving blogs and stuff way beyond upgrading the engine). Then a couple of hours to actually implement the changes on the real site.
Good luck!