Need Help!

Hi folks,

I need some help, I'm trying to build a custom template for a site I'm working on, but I can't wrap my head around how the template system works with a dolphin, any help or advice would be greatly appreciated. 

Also, are there any updated videos I could watch on dolphin? Just to try and learn more about it

Many thanks,

Connor

Templates in Dolphin are a mixture of PHP, HTML and CSS. Unless you're familiar with these you're probably not in the race. Dolphin templates are nothing like a web page where you can move stuff around as you please. They are literally placeholders for blocks of information. These blocks are manipulated with Admin's Page Builder.

Thus, the best you can probably do with a template is change colours, alter the background, add borders and alter the main logo.

The few videos that appear on Youtube aren't all that educational and there's little in the way of information on the Internet. You can try searching the net in addition to this forum because you may find stuff the forum doesn't reveal. Oddly, I don't use the forum search, I always use Google. Just enter Boonex in your search query. It will give far better results that using Dolphin. 

Search for stuff like boonex wiki, changing boonex templates and boonex tutorial. There's a bit out there but as I said, very few video tutorials.

The problem with creating tutorials is this: Nobody knows how many people are actually using Dolphin at entry level. It could be thousands, but it's probably closer to a couple of dozen. Until we know this, I doubt that anyone will spend hours preparing tutorials that are never watched or read. I've already published a few tutorials for Dolphin, but hardly anyone has ever downloaded them.

Because there's very little in the way of written or video help, most newbies are probably turned away instead of persevering and that in itself is sad. This can also be said with other similar scripts, but Dolphin does seem to really suffer. 

I believe that Dolphin sales would escalate if the Boonex team created tutorials, or even took time to explain what their modules actually do. I've already stated on this forum that a guy who sells a web design program in an over-saturated market makes a real effort to explain how it's used in the way of a 400 page manual and countless tutorials on almost every feature. This fellow needs to sell 15 copies of his program to equal one copy of Dolphin, yet he constantly maintains it, answers every question in the forum and never lets anyone wonder. He's hugely successful and there's little wonder why.

Thus, the best you can probably do with a template is change colours, alter the background, add borders and alter the main logo.

That statement is only true if you have not learned the template system.

If you spend some time studying the packaged templates, you can go a long way to understanding how   to make custom templates.

The html files you see are sent through the template engine.  The standard html markup is not altered; so divisions and spans and ordered lists are left as is.  However, these html files also contain code that is replaced or processed; such as bx:repeat or bx:if and keys; a key is represented by __key-name__.  The template system will replace the key with the desire action or code.  You will see classes and ids being applied in the html files; these are just standard CSS and you can edit the css files to meet your requirements.  The php scripts don't have to be altered if you don't need to make any changes there; your template can be empty of the scripts as the template system will use the php files from the base template.

There was a member that once wrote a tutorial book for Dolphin 6.  I don't know the scope of that book or how much of Dolphin 6 would still apply.  A person very familiar with Dolphin could probably sell an e-book on Dolphin.

There's a few excellent tutorials here:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjh2K2wlrRaqfZS2peDYcVg

I hope he does a lot more.