How does the JReviews Theme Engine work

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Revision as of 13:07, 6 January 2014 by Jreviews (Talk | contribs)

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JReviews uses a php templating system. This means you can mix html with php code, which provides a lot of flexibility to create conditionals and add snippets of php code.

JReviews Themes

JReviews themes are located in this folder:

  • /components/com_jreviews/jreviews/views/themes/

You will find several themes there:

  • /components/com_jreviews/jreviews/views/themes/default/
  • /components/com_jreviews/jreviews/views/themes/dark/ - for using with dark Joomla templates
  • /components/com_jreviews/jreviews/views/themes/mobile/ - for mobile devices

You will notice that "dark" and "mobile" theme folders contain less files than the "default" theme folder. The default theme is a "fallback" theme which contains all the necessary files, while dark and mobile themes are variations of the default theme and contain only "modified" files and images. If a theme doesn't contain a certain file, JReviews will load that file from the default theme. That makes updating themes easier.

If you want to make theme customizations, create a custom theme similar to the dark theme. Theme files in the default theme should never be modified.


Instead of creating your custom theme in /components/com_jreviews/jreviews/views/themes/ folder, you should use the JReviews Code Overrides functionality to place your custom theme outside the /com_jreviews folder. That way you won't lose your custom theme when you upgrade JReviews.

You will find 3 settings for theme selection in JReviews Configuration:

Theme-settings.png

    • Site theme** - this is the main theme that will be used for the JReviews frontend. If you will create a custom theme, this is where you'd select it.
    • Mobile theme** - here you can choose a theme that will be used on smartphones. It is recommended to select the same theme that you selected for **Site theme**. The *Default Theme* is responsive and works fine on mobile devices by default. The only reason why you might want to use a separate mobile theme is if you want to delete certain page elements only for smartphones. JReviews includes a *Mobile Theme* that you can use for this purpose.
    • Fallback theme** - all theme files that the selected **Site theme** doesn't have will be loaded from the fallback theme. The *Default Theme* should always be selected here (unless JReviews will have two different fallback themes in the future).
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