BTS Questions

[letmelearn]

Hi,

I keep reading about the BTS being better and easier to work with but I'm not finding it so.

From what I can gather, all pages have to be the same layout; same boxes, no room to customize pages with different boxes, or no boxes at all.

Am I correct or have I missed something?

Thanks LML

[met00]

BTS is a clean way to manage a simple template.

For instance, you can program the main_page to be used on only certain pages and on other pages use a different main_page template by just telling the root program to make a different call. So, when it comes into index.php it can display main_page_front.tpl.php and then if the user clciks anything else they can go to main_page.tpl.php.

You can use the fallback for 80% of the pages, and modify the last 20% and place them in the templates content directory.

With a minor modification to templates/boxes you can have multiple boxes used.

The amount of personalization you can do with BTS is only limited to your imagination and how much you want to hack away at the UI.

[michael_s]

Originally Posted by letmelearn

Hi,

I keep reading about the BTS being better and easier to work with but I'm not finding it so.

From what I can gather, all pages have to be the same layout; same boxes, no room to customize pages with different boxes, or no boxes at all.

Am I correct or have I missed something?

Thanks LML

You are not correct and you have missed a lot.

Every page and every box can have its own custom template and can be completely different from alll others if you want... Some boxes, no boxes, etc.

[letmelearn]

Great, thanks for the info.

Please could you direct me to a tutorial on how to create an alternate template?

I copied main_page.tpl.php and renamed it to products_page.tpl.php, I created new filenames in filenames.php but I don't know what else to do.

I read on another post that I need to do something with this:
include (bts_select('main', $content_template)); // BTSv1.5

And I'm guessing I need to change 'main' to something else like 'product' but I don't know where 'main' is referenced within other files.

Hopefully I'm on the right track!

(I've been using oscommerce for a year now and want to switch to oscmax because it's loads better, if I could only understand how to create alternate templates i'd be sorted)

Thanks
LML

[letmelearn]

Can anyone help me with this problem? Surely someone knows how to do it or knows of a tutorial?

Thanks
LML

[letmelearn]

Surely there is a tutorial on this, I know there are lots of people asking the same question but nobody is replying, please help

[tcshadow]

Maybe search for BTS1.5 on the oscommerce forums/conrtibutions and reading the documentation?

[michael_s]

I just located a tutorial that has a lot of detail. It is not complete by any means, but it is very detailed. I am going to copy over in a new thread and will update you when I have it ready.

[tcshadow]

Michael any chance I could get you to look into the whole analytics/e-commerce tracking thing not working with BTS when usnig the new ga.js code?

Not trying to derail, it's a BTS related thing.

referring to this thread:

Google Analytics e-commerce

If you can help me implement it properly I'll write up the documentation for it.

[michael_s]

Here is a link to the tutorial:
BTS Template Tutorial, Examples, converting osC template to BTS

It talks about converting a html osC template to osCMax, but there is a lot of good info that explains how things work. This should get you started.

I added a tutorial on how to create a secondary main template, and per-page custom stylesheets. Armed with this info, you should be well on your way.