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!