magento theme install

Question

I have a rather simple question.

I want to install a new magento theme. In the documentation it says to overwrite the default 'app' and 'skin' folders with the theme's 'app' and 'skin' folders.

"8. Upload the "app" and "skin" folders from the template themeXX folder to your Magento root folder (accept the replacement)"

However, when I am doing that, it prompts me to download magento again thru the magento installation wizard.

To me, it sounds more reasonable to just copy the contents of the 'app' and 'skin' folders of the new theme into the default 'app' and 'skin' folders of the magento framework as they contain some other folders that probably should remain intact.

Any suggestions please?

Answer 1

@george i know it's been a while since anything has been said on here, but i just want people to know for future reference that you only have to add to the app/design/frontend/default/[theme name] and skin/frontend/default/[theme name] folders like sg3s stated. i lost about 4 hours to this tonight b/c i bought a theme and they didn't specify that you only need to add to the folders not overwrite them.

Answer 2

There's absolutely no need to overwrite the app and skin folders. In fact, if you do so, you could easily overwrite just about all of Magento's functionality and break your system.

That would be why you're getting a new installation prompt.

What's the theme you are installing, and what's the link to the page where they give that information?

Generally a theme will be packaged will a folder structure that looks like this:

theme_package
theme_package/app
theme_package/app/code
theme_package/app/code/local
theme_package/app/code/local/Namespace
theme_package/app/code/local/Namespace/Themename
theme_package/app/code/local/Namespace/Themename/Block
theme_package/app/code/local/Namespace/Themename/etc
theme_package/app/design
theme_package/app/design/frontend
theme_package/app/design/frontend/base
theme_package/app/design/frontend/base/themename
theme_package/app/design/frontend/base/themename/layout
theme_package/app/design/frontend/base/themename/template
theme_package/skin
theme_package/skin/css
theme_package/skin/js

and so on.

This content needs to be merged as you said.

Many of these folders already exist, for instance app/code/, app/design/frontend/base/, skin/css/, skin/js/

Just copy any new files or folders.

Answer 3

Did you first install the default Magento in the folder where you want to run it? You will need a running installation of Magento before you can go ahead and install a team.

If it keeps promting you check that you're on the right address in the address bar of your browser. To install magento you would have been redirected to [magento]/downloader/

As a last resort you could open up index.php and remove the code redirecting you the downloader folder, but at this point you might be better off re-installing Magento (remove everything in the directory and follow the install steps again) since something probably went wrong.

After you've installed Magento check if you see the default store interface and can access the admin areas before installing anything else (including a theme)!