The Cs-Cart Boilerplate Theme For Developers: Minimum Of Code, Maximum Of Flexibility

Hi!

Developing new themes from the built-in CS-Cart Responsive theme takes much time and effort—a developer has to completely rework the Responsive theme by deleting tons of code.

We’d like to ease the work for theme developers, so we’re presenting to you a special Boilerplate theme that has minimum of code and is easy to develop.

What Makes the Boilerplate Theme Easy to Work With

We’ve contacted our developer partners and asked them to provide us with feedback about CS-Cart theme development: difficulties, special aspects, and requests.

We’ve analyzed the feedback and created the Boilerplate theme—a skeleton that has much less code and files than the Responsive theme:

- The Boilerplate theme uses Bootstrap 3.3.5—an HTML, CSS, and JavaScript framework that developers use as a basis for creating responsive websites.

Bootstrap is easy to work with because you can use dozens of pre-built components such as dropdowns, navigation, buttons, and other interface elements. No deep HTML, CSS, and JavaScript knowledge required—copy-paste the pre-cooked code and you’re good to go.

Bootstrap is open source and available on GitHub.

- The Boilerplate theme supports both Glyphicons, which ship with Bootstrap, and Font Awesome icons. These icons simplify and speed up theme development—you add a ready-made icon to your theme by copying the pre-cooked code.

- Since the Boilerplate theme uses Bootstrap, we have re-factored all the templates—now they use bootstrap components and have simplified HTML.

- The Boilerplate theme has 1,000 lines of our CSS code left (Responsive has 11,000 lines). Less code—less work to do.

- The number of template files decreased by 131 files compared with Responsive.

- Unlike the Responsive theme, which uses a 16-column grid, the Boilerplate theme has a more common 12-column grid.

Plans for the Future

After the release of the Boilerplate theme, we’ll continue to polish and simplify it. Here’s how we’re planning to improve it in the future:

- Through the theme, you’ll be able to override store settings—in the theme’s manifest.json file, you can change product page templates, thumbnails size, number of layout columns, and more.

- We’ll rework JavaScript by simplifying it and deleting redundant code. For example, jQuery UI will be totally removed.

- We’ll reduce the amount of the CSS code that developers have to modify during theme development and simplify the templates’ logic.

How to Get the Boilerplate Theme

There are two ways to install the Boilerplate theme: via Git and from downloaded ZIP archive.

Git

Follow these steps to install the Boilerplate theme from GitHub:

1. Go to a CS-Cart folder via this bash command:

cd your-project/

2. Clone the Boilerplate theme repository:

git@github.com:cscart/cscart-boilerplate.git


3. Go to the CS-Cart administration panel, and on the Design → Themes page select the CS-Cart Boilerplate theme.

ZIP Archive

1. In the CS-Cart administration panel, go to the Design → Themes page

2. Click the “+” button at the top right of the page

3. Choose an option to upload the theme via URL and specify this URL: https://github.com/cscart/cscart-boilerplate/archive/master.zip

4. Switch to the Browse all available themes tab, find the CS-Cart Boilerplate theme and install it.

5. Switch back to Installed theme tab and Activate the CS-Cart Boilerplate theme

The Boilerplate theme is open source, so you are welcome to send pull requests.

Please test the new theme, and post issues if you find any.

Tell us what you think about the CS-Cart Boilerplate theme here in this topic. We greatly appreciate your feedback!

Dear yakulakov,

Good news! Thank you for the long-waited theme. Will there be any way to turn on the 16-column grid?

Dear yakulakov,

Good news! Thank you for the long-waited theme. Will there be any way to turn on the 16-column grid?

Hi!

Thank you for your question.

No, there's no way to switch to a 16-column grid in the Boilerplate theme.

Hi!

Thank you for your question.

No, there's no way to switch to a 16-column grid in the Boilerplate theme.

hello,

just installed the theme and looks very nice...

here is a small issue

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4wkwfPFu50ZNVpOZjZwVHhrM0E/view?usp=drivesdk

and when will be this theme became default in cs cart ? version 5?

regards

and you said that the fontawsome is already included... i have added html block with simple fontawsome code to display it in the frontend and it's not showing... will the documentation be prepared?

hello,

just installed the theme and looks very nice...

here is a small issue

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4wkwfPFu50ZNVpOZjZwVHhrM0E/view?usp=drivesdk

and when will be this theme became default in cs cart ? version 5?

regards

Hi!

We're planning to include the Boilerplate theme into the next CS-Cart version.

awesome news..

Hi!

We're planning to include the Boilerplate theme into the next CS-Cart version.

and you said that the fontawsome is already included... i have added html block with simple fontawsome code to display it in the frontend and it's not showing... will the documentation be prepared?


demeldoo, one note here.
The theme will be included but it won't be default. Responsive will still remain the default.

It’s a smart decision. I went trough the theme today and probably some polishing is needed :wink:

Great!

I've been waiting for that moment for a very long time. Now theme developement should be much easier ;-) Keep up the good work!

Quick note, debuger doesn't work with the current theme.

Uncaught --> Smarty: Unable to load template tygh 'views/debugger/debugger.tpl' <-- thrown

Greetings!

A little off topic, but any ideas when cs-cart v5.0 will be released and will it support bootstrap 3.3.5 by default?

Happy Holidays everyone!

Just curious why you would make a development theme part of a release rather than a free addon that can be downloaded from elsewhere. Maybe you could craft/distribute a whole suite of developer tools...

I doubt your expectation is that a merchant would use this as their primary theme. If I understand correctly the goal is to enable "developers" to create custom themes "from" this theme, not to use it as an installed/active theme.

If your concern is that the theme is to be release dependent (minor releases) then it's not much of a development platform to work from and would simply require that all custom themes using this basis be upgraded at each release too.

- The Boilerplate theme uses Bootstrap 3.3.5—an HTML, CSS, and JavaScript framework that developers use as a basis for creating responsive websites.

why not 3.3.6?
or maybe better 4?

Greetings!

A little off topic, but any ideas when cs-cart v5.0 will be released and will it support bootstrap 3.3.5 by default?

Happy Holidays everyone!

Can people please stop talking about cs-cart 5? Can we please just continue with 4 until it's solid as a rock?
The last thing we need is another "big" release that renders all custom work and themes incompatible again.

On topic: I like the idea of a "clean theme" but I agree with Tony it should be released as an add-on.

Can people please stop talking about cs-cart 5? Can we please just continue with 4 until it's solid as a rock?
The last thing we need is another "big" release that renders all custom work and themes incompatible again.

On topic: I like the idea of a "clean theme" but I agree with Tony it should be released as an add-on.

i agree ;) new theme should be optional and version 4 should be maintened...

Just curious why you would make a development theme part of a release rather than a free addon that can be downloaded from elsewhere. Maybe you could craft/distribute a whole suite of developer tools...

I doubt your expectation is that a merchant would use this as their primary theme. If I understand correctly the goal is to enable "developers" to create custom themes "from" this theme, not to use it as an installed/active theme.

If your concern is that the theme is to be release dependent (minor releases) then it's not much of a development platform to work from and would simply require that all custom themes using this basis be upgraded at each release too.

Hi!

The theme is distributed free of charge. It's open source https://github.com/cscart/cscart-boilerplate. Therelease will include the Boilerplate theme from this repository.

An add-on and a theme are completely different entities, so we consider distributing a theme as an addon an irrational decision.

why not 3.3.6?
or maybe better 4?

Hi!

We used Bootstrap 3.3.5 because it was the latest stable version of Bootstrap when we started working on the Boilerplate theme. Of course, we're planning to update the theme to Bootstrap 3.3.6 soon.

Bootstrap 4 is still available as an alpha version so we think that it's not a wise decision to use it for production.

Let me rephrase my statement.

You should be making development tools available separate from the product archive. And you should be making more tools available to developers so that they have more incentive to do development for your product.

I used the word "addon" because it is a common term. Change that to "separately installable module" (which is really an addon) and you'll understand more of what I mean.

Let me rephrase my statement.

You should be making development tools available separate from the product archive. And you should be making more tools available to developers so that they have more incentive to do development for your product.

I used the word "addon" because it is a common term. Change that to "separately installable module" (which is really an addon) and you'll understand more of what I mean.


Tony,

I'm not quite clear what is your concern.
The theme is opensource and you can install the latest version whenever you want to. You can contribute, post issues etc. Everything is here: https://github.com/cscart/cscart-boilerplate

However if one does not care about latest changes, development staff etc - he will use already included version of theme.

What he says is he wants this theme not to be in default package but separate thing.. Not sure why he wants that because I find it very handy to have, was looking for very minimalist white theme where I can make few css overrides of my own..

Tony,

I'm not quite clear what is your concern.
The theme is opensource and you can install the latest version whenever you want to. You can contribute, post issues etc. Everything is here: https://github.com/cscart/cscart-boilerplate

However if one does not care about latest changes, development staff etc - he will use already included version of theme.