Developing a theme, where to start

[SeriousKen]

New user of Prestashop and looking into theme development and just wondering where to start. I've looked at the official documentation which mentions the starter theme but this is apparently no longer in development. I've currently modified Prestarocket Classic Rocket (https://github.com/prestarocket-agence/classic-rocket) for my own shop, but was wondering if there was a cleaner starting point similar to the starter theme.

[jeffree7]

I'm trying to do the same but so far have only been modifying the Classic theme like you, by adding .css to the custom.css file. I tried using the start theme but it doesn't install so I just copied all it's contents to an empty folder under /themes called my_theme and then modified the /themes/my_theme/config/theme.yml file changing the "name" and "display name" to be the same as the folder name for my new them "my_theme".

 

Now I can see the theme in the back office / admin area and choose to use it, once i've done that when I go to my site it doesn't load even though in the admin area it shows that I have switched to this theme without error.

 

One thing I noticed about the starter theme is that it has a _dev folder with .css files that you can edit directly instead of using custom.css and the classic theme doesn't have this folder.I believe once you "compile" the them the _dev folder is removed and it's settings are put in the /themes/my_theme/assets/css/ folder but are no longer easily editable.

 

If I can figure out how to get the _dev folder for the Prestarocket Classic Rocket then we'd both be in business!

 

Well this is how far I've gotten if you have any questions and suggestions let me know and I'll get back to you and share whatever knowledge I have.

[SeriousKen]

5 hours ago, jeffree7 said:

If I can figure out how to get the _dev folder for the Prestarocket Classic Rocket then we'd both be in business!

The _dev folder should be in the zip file you can download from github (link above) it contains sass rather than css but it's just an extension of css so reasonably straight forward to work with. I think this page https://devdocs.prestashop.com/1.7/themes/distribution/testing/       has some good info on what a theme requires, but there's a lot that's not explained such as what each template does and what content each one has access to.

[jeffree7]

Thanks. Yeah, I ended up going back to the classic theme that comes with Prestashop and downloading the classic theme from Github that has the _dev folder. When I try to choose the theme in admin interface it gives the error "An error occurred. The template "assets/css/theme.css" is missing." so it seems I only need to build the theme now, and then build again after every modification.