Creating Templates with Site Customizer

I like it. I think it will benefit. As I watch Cheetah grow I will invest as I can for sure. I would love to see Cheetah overcome its obstacles. I think Boonex walking away from Dolphin is a grave mistake. But on that same level, they never kept focus or concentration on a particular need or issue. They put there hands into, so many pots and it overcame the scripts directed needs.

It seems that it continues on in UNA...

No one has purchased yearly subscriptions as yet. For those that have monthly subscriptions, the subscriptions will just be canceled and the licenses converted to free ones and the powered by links will no longer appear. None of that will happen until the next cheetah update following this one. Coding work to make it happen still needs to be done.

The licensing system will remain in place so re-implementing at a later date if i choose to will not be that difficult.

For those that still want to contribute via funding can still do so via a sponsor subscription https://www.cheetahwsb.com/sponsor.php and i will also be creating a pro member account on this site at a later date that will give members access to more features that have yet to be determined.

This is all still being worked out.

So if dropping the paid licenses for a while?

• What does that mean for people that bought for a month or year?
• Or the ones who have not purchased yet, but would like to?
• Is the scripts going to still be branded or will the script become free to use without branding?

If you drop the Subscription feature, what and how ill you re-implement it?

One thing that Boonex has done is to have a set of free core apps that can be installed and then the rest of the apps you have to buy a license, usually a monthly license.

Sorry. You will find that the new template in the next version of Cheetah is designed the same way. There is a reason why the templates have all of those sections you mention. It's to maximize what can be changed. However there is modern CSS methods such as CSS variables where all of these areas that are the same color could for example use a variable. Then you could just simply change the value of the variable to change all those areas at once. Variables will be used in future versions of my templates to make changing colors much easier.

At the moment i have to be very careful with what i alter at this stage until template and module developers begin to embrace Cheetah.

To many changes to certain things would prevent modules and templates from Dolphin to be converted to Cheetah.

After this release, i will be dropping the credit system i am using here for the roles and dropping paid licenses for a while. I will try other things to raise funds. I have to make Cheetah free to use for now to attract more people. Especially developers.

Any template supplied by Boonex is a train wreck. Thus I'm looking forward to seeing what Deano has done with his own template.

Why the templates have to be so complex is beyond me. Most pages are made up from blocks and these have a:

Border
Background
Header
Header Background
Text or image
Text or Image background
Form Border
Form Background
Form Text

Then there are the page elements, each of which contain their own border, fill etc:Header 

Menu
Middle section that contains the blocks
Footer

In the real world, it should be a simple matter of identifying these dozen or so elements in a single CSS file for the blocks and another for the page, but not so. For some odd reason they appear in several CSS files which often override each other. 

When you sit down and identify the kind of person who wants to use Cheetah/Dolphin, you will probably find that a large percentage aren't computer savvy. They find these obstacles daunting and move on.

Designing a page and block designer using a simple interactive graphic interface should be a walk in the park. I could probably design one myself using simple code and an older version of PHP, but it wouldn't work today. Nor would it incorporate Page Builder, but I believe it should. If I get a few moments I'll design a mockup for discussion purposes and maybe one day Deano could consider doing something in a future release, or someone may care to create a module.

The thing to keep in mind is simplicity. Complicated programs turn people away and people are customers.

I know right. It is very misleading for sure. Not sure what the idea was there.

The site customizer is very limited in what it can do. And yes, as you noticed, it only changes certain areas. It's basically a override tool. It does not actually create new templates.

Personally i do not understand why boonex created it. Perhaps it was to make simple changes easier. I think i most likely will end up removing it from Cheetah as it's more of a problem than a solution.

It's best to just design a new template from a copy of the EVO template. Make a copy of the EVO template and give it a new name by editing it's scripts/BxTemplName.php and change the name.

You can then make that template the default template and start editing it's CSS. A actual template will give you full control over what it looks like.

The boonex limited instructions are here. https://www.boonex.com/trac/dolphin/wiki/DolDesign but those instructions state to copy the UNI template. You should copy the EVO template instead as that one is the new responsive template, and UNI is not. Plus the old boonex UNI and ALT templates are scheduled to be removed from Cheetah in the near future anyway.

As Cheetah advances in time and it's docs move along there will be better instructions in the Cheetah wiki.

Ok here is a few things I have found trying to customize site template with Site Customizer. It seems that system font colors do not change with the rest of font color changes, when creating a set, some pages are blank. Especially in my case like: Search, links, Edit profile info, Any drop down tabs, etc. 

It only changes certain portions and not others. System fonts remain grey and so do dropdowns.

Why does it do this. Shouldn't this effect over site code and change it???