Staying Up to Date

Written by Kevin DuCommun Friday, 09 January 2009 19:00

An important aspect of RocketTheme club membership is not only access to the template downloads and new template releases, but also updates to existing templates that correct known issues or bugs as well as expand features and functionality. The new RocketTheme site design includes a new feature to make it easier to stay informed of these updates, the Product Updates listings and RSS Feeds.

Joomla template and phpBB3 Style updates can be quite tricky due to the nature of the way the templates and styles are implemented. The logic and styling that controls all of the template features as well as the 'look and feel', is the same code that developers and designers using the templates will modify and customize for their site. The template logic mainly consists of HTML, CSS, and PHP which once modified, sometimes heavily depending on the needs of the site developer, make an automated "patch" or automatic update system cumbersome as a bad merge, or overwriting files and code would wipe out any customizations.

Product Update Feeds

With the new RocketTheme site, we wanted to make the process of staying informed of the latest template and style updates, as well as the process of implementing the updates, easier. Both the Joomla templates section, and the phpBB3 styles section have a module in the right sidebar that displays the latest updates to the products for those platforms. These update listings are also available as RSS feeds and can be accessed by using the RSS links at the bottom of the page.

• Joomla Template Updates - http://www.rockettheme.com/joomla-templates/updates
• Joomla Updates RSS Feed - http://www.rockettheme.com/joomla-templates/updates?format=feed&type=rss
• phpBB3 Style Updates - http://www.rockettheme.com/phpbb3-styles/updates
• phpBB3 Updates RSS Feed - http://www.rockettheme.com/phpbb3-styles/updates?format=feed&type=rss
• All Updates RSS Feed - http://www.rockettheme.com/news/updates?format=feed&type=rss

Updating Templates and Styles

Clicking on the title of the update takes you to a detailed view of the update which features a description of what bugs were fixed, or what features were added. Also included, is a list of the individual files that were added, modified, or removed. To update the template to the latest version, you can either download the latest template package and replace the existing template with the newly downloaded one, or manually update the files listed in the update changelog either by replacing them with the ones from the newly downloaded template package, or by merging in the changes using merge software.

With CSS files in particular, it is generally best to utilize merge or differencing software to compare the latest updated CSS file, to the one you have customized (since most site developers will make extensive modifications to the CSS files when building their site). Applications such as WinMerge or Araxis Merge allow you to compare the two files, and merge in any new changes to the file, without erasing any modifications you have made. This will allow you to take advantage of the latest bug fixes, tweaks, or functionality updates, without losing customizations and changes you have made.