Thread

This is nuts.  I have looked through all of my template groups, but there isn’t a corresponding template group or a template that corresponds to the URL that I’m seeing for my site.  I know that the page I’m looking at involved extra functionality (logging in, forums), but I can’t for the life of me see how the @$Q% EE is serving up that content… so if I can’t find it, I can’t fix it.  It’s driving me crazy how hidden this action is. 

Can anyone shed some light on this? 

Thanks.

Can anyone shed some light on this?

What’s the page?

There are a number of ‘default’ pages which use EE templates but not the Template rendering engine. For example, and another.

However, for EE pages that use the Template rendering engine you won’t be able to determine the full URL just by looking at the template group and the template.

Most EE URLs will look something like this:

http://mysite.com/index.php/template_group_name/template_name/name-of-the-entry/

Yep, that’s one of the pages:
http://www.mysite.dev/index.php/members/login

The other is
http://www.mysite.dev/index.php/forums/

I know that modules are involved here… the Discussion Forum being one of them.  But how can I edit the templates for these pages?  I simply need to update some formatting and it’s so badly obscured in the EE internals that I can’t find it. 

Thanks.

Well, there are more… there are several pages where I can even see the content in a specific weblog—there’s weblog for legal stuff, so the privacy policy, terms of use, and about us stuff is in there… only a few “posts” in this weblog.  But the template that’s serving up that content is ???  who knows.  The urls are simple:
http://www.mysite.dev/index.php/about
http://www.mysite.dev/index.php/terms
http://www.mysite.dev/index.php/privacy
etc.

These templates are not in the default template group.

This is a persistent problem with EE: finding the template that corresponds to a particular URL.

I posted this in the core forum before my license code got registered, so sorry for double posting. 

I can’t find the templates that are handling certain URLs.  Some of them are tied back into modules:
http://www.mysite.dev/index.php/members/login
http://www.mysite.dev/index.php/forums/

Butl, there are more… there are several pages where I can even see the content in a specific weblog—we have a weblog for legal stuff, so the privacy policy, terms of use, and about us stuff is in there… only a few “posts” in this weblog.  But the template that’s serving up that content is ???  who knows.  The urls are simple:
http://www.mysite.dev/index.php/about
http://www.mysite.dev/index.php/terms
http://www.mysite.dev/index.php/privacy
etc.

These templates are not in the default template group.

This is a persistent problem with EE: finding the template that corresponds to a particular URL.

Can someone help me find where this stuff is handled?  I can’t believe how much of time suck this is.  I just need to edit some css classes and div tags and it’s turned into a quest for the Holy Grail or something.

Thanks.

There are a number of ways. Your site could be using the “Pages” module, eg.  Or “about”, “terms” and “privacy” could refer to a template in the default template group, or a weblog entry using the default template (“index”) in the default template group (possibly “site”).

It can take some time getting used to EE’s url structure, but at the end of the day it really isn’t a mystery. Of course it’s always worse if you actually didn’t setup the site yourself.

Nevermind, I merged the two threads.

Thanks for the quick reply.  I found the about, terms, and privacy policy… they weren’t showing up in the templates page because I had a search term that wasn’t cleared, but they each had their own template group with an index page.  Done.  That leaves the module driven urls.

This site does not have the Pages module installed.  So where are the templates for handing the ‘Discussion Forum’ module and for the “members/login” page? 

Thanks again.

lol.  Rocket science isn’t a mystery either… if you’re a physicist.

Yep, that’s one of the pages:
http://www.mysite.dev/index.php/members/login

The other is
http://www.mysite.dev/index.php/forums/

I know that modules are involved here… the Discussion Forum being one of them.  But how can I edit the templates for these pages?  I simply need to update some formatting and it’s so badly obscured in the EE internals that I can’t find it.

Badly obscured? Say it ain’t so.

For the Forums, go to the EE control panel and click Modules, then click Discussion Forum, then click the Templates tab. The list of templates for forums will appear. Click the one you’re using (probably default), and edit until the cows come home. It’ll take that long.

User Message Templates are found by clicking Admin, then click Specialty Templates, then select whatever you want to edit.

Other user templates are available by clicking Admin, then click Member Profile Templates, then click Default, then click and edit until the cows have gone away again.

Always make duplicates of the original files before editing, of course.

So where are the templates for handing the ‘Discussion Forum’ module and for the “members/login” page?

These templates are a bit different from your standard EE templates. You can read about forum themes and the member profile templates in the docs.

lol. Rocket science isn’t a mystery either… if you’re a physicist.

I agree, just to let you know EE is not quite that hard 😉

Thanks for the quick responses.  Found it…  lord…. if that’s not obscured, then I don’t know what is.  No time to argue, though.

Can I use embed tags in there?  E.g. every page on our site embeds a chunk of html code that lives in a template named “.head”... standard stuff…  in some of the template fragments in the module, I’m seeing stuff like “{include:html_header}”—but we dont’ have templates by that name… where the heck are THOSE templates?

The documentation doesn’t detail which events trigger which templates…  I’m taking my best guess and editing template fragments (or whatever you call these little chunks in the Forum module), but it’d be quicker if I knew which one was being called.  This gets back to the whole URL thing… if I can’t see how the request is being handled, I can’t trace out the code… I can’t even go grepping for it.  I’m not even sure I’m editing the right theme.  This is maddeningly slow to deconstruct.

Can I use embed tags in there?

No, these templates are rather more lightweight, and are not run through EE’s main template engine. Consequently, only a limited subset of EE tags is available.

I’m seeing stuff like “{include:html_header}”—but we dont’ have templates by that name… where the heck are THOSE templates?

It actually is a forum sub template. (Global Templates > HTML Header)

These don’t run through EE’s main template engine, but are they handled by EE’s main caching?  I’m not seeing any changes I’ve made, so I’m begging to wonder.

Do you have those files set to writeable permissions?

Yeah, I had to change the perms.  I’m seeing the changes when I come back to edit the file, so it appears that they are changing.  Oh, snap… I just thought of something: if this is storing the values in the file and not in the database, these changes have to go through our release cycle. 

I think the template I’m editing is not the one that’s live, but as I said, I have no way of easily knowing because I can’t see how or where EE is handling the code.  It’s really driving me completely nuts.