[resolved] need to change a template that is not updating, please help

Hi All,
Usually happy open source joomla fan here.


I had a mobile site that was just getting awesome and then I installed the latest mobile joomla upgrade.

Now iphone (the most important mobile device for us) is not working at all. All modules have disappeared and the home page has been resized to a tiny thumbnail and images that used to resize nicely are very small. The XHTML desktop test is working fine and i can change the homepage from the iphone settings screen. I have spent most of the day trying to get it working like before with no luck. Any helpful tips on configuring the new version for iphone would be much appreciated.

Please ask any clarifying questions, I will be around.

Best,
Daniel

Oh ya,
the site in question is www.emilypost.com

Hi Daniel, let's see if we can help.

Are you using iPhone template for iPhone? Smartphone settings should be changed from Smartphone settings, what kind of customizations you've made?

Hi Cool,

I was out of the office yesterday so I am just getting back to this topic. I hope you are still out there and checking.

I am using the iphone settings to point at he home page. When Ichange the homepage designation there it changes to the page I select. The new pages are also resized to tiny thumbnails sized images like the current home.

I am using the all header module position to point the menus at the other internal pages. There are no menus on the homepage. I used the iphone template previously to position menus but that does not seem to help the problem when I try it now. I have used the all header and footer to direct the markup chooser and custom html (with twitter and facebook links and images) at all pages. I also had a google add running in the all footer. I still see them on other platforms but they are gone from the iphone.

My instinct is that the problem may come from the redirect settings and am wondering what should be in the redirect field or in the subdomian fields. I have not built any redirects independently on the server for iphone but did have these redirects turned on in the old version.

All mobile joomla pluggins are active on the site.

Any ideas would be much appreciated. I loved the old product but am starting to think I will have to shut it down soon if I can't get this to work.

Thanks for the reply,
Best,
Dan

More info. I think I am getting closer.

The iphone template is the only template that shows - The parameter file /templates/mobile_iphone/params.ini is unwritable! - on the template page.

The css editor works but the HTML editor for the iphone template yields -

JFile::read: Unable to open file: '/home/emilypos/public_html/templates/mobile_iphone/index.php'
Operation Failed! Could not open /home/emilypos/public_html/templates/mobile_iphone/index.php

way closer.

iphone template is still labeled version 1.0 RC6

the question now becomes, what is the best way to update this template that is getting left behind when the rest of the pluggin does its automatic update? I am good with FTP and can replace the folder or specific files. I openned up the download and looked at what is on the server for comparison and there were enough differences I am not sure what to update/replace with what.

any suggestions?

way way closer.

tried a reinstall and got the following error message.

It was not possible to copy the selected file.
JInstaller::install: Failed to copy file: /home/emilypos/public_html/administrator/components/com_mobilejoomla/packages/templates15/mobile_iphone/params.ini to /home/emilypos/public_html/templates/mobile_iphone/params.ini
Cannot install: Mobile Joomla 'mobile_iphone' template.

Install Component Success

I can feel the solution - it is close. If we can get the template updated I think everything is going to fall back in line.

any suggestions would be much appreciated,
Best again,
Daniel

Maybe permissions of files/dirs was changed, and Joomla cannot uninstall/upgrade it correctly. Try to set chmod to 666 for files and 777 for directories.

Thanks for the suggestion. I'm not sure exactly where to do this and don't think that any permissions have been changed by me manually. I am guessing I do this with the hosting server?

Is there a simple way to manually place the new template files or directory from a fresh download to the server using FTP or are there too many corners and different locations to make this a feasible option? can I just swap the directory for template iphone15 with the new template iphone15 directory?

Hi dryabov,

Floodvictim here.

Thanks for the suggestion. I'm not sure exactly where to do this and don't think that any permissions have been changed by me manually. I am guessing I do this with the hosting server? (I've since learned how to do it using ftp but still don't think permissions are the issue.)

Is there a simple way to manually place the new template files or directory from a fresh download to the server using FTP or are there too many corners and different locations to make this a feasible option? can I just swap the directory for template iphone15 with the new template iphone15 directory? If this is a simple fix for updating the iphone template I want to do it, but if it will break a lot of other connections or some installer places the files to lots of different locations on the server I should maybe avoid this approach.

Any thoughts would be much appreciated.


-Private reply from Moderator dryabov reposted with permission:

suggestion #1
You can try to overwrite template files, but note that some templates contain language files that should be copied to languages/en-GB and administrator/languages/en-GB

suggestion #2
Try to remove all files from mobile templates directories (templates/mobile_smartphone/...) except of *.xml file, and then reinstall MJ. Hope this way files will be correctly copied.



Greetings dryabov,

You are the man!!! This (suggestion #2, never tried #1) seems to have worked like a charm. I will nose around some more but everything seems to be back in shape.

Would you mind if I put your private replies up in the forum before I mark it as resolved so that everyone can see the solution? I really appreciate the direction you provided. I could not have solved this one on my own.

...also I would love to change the name of the thread to something like "how to update a mobile template that has been modified and wont reinstall".

Best and best,
Daniel