Duplicate Publicstore.skin Problems Perhaps?

In 1.8 I copied the DarkOrange theme folder in App_themes and renamed it BlueOrange.  Then recompiled and changed it in the 1.8 admin.  So far so good.

Then made major changes to the styles.css but had some issues with inheritance but overcame those and the site looks pretty decent on localhost.

When I went to test it on a remote server I noticed two things -- webconfig references the DarkOrange theme and the skin file has the same name and everything in my new theme.

Should I change webconfig, should I change skin file names?  I think this is what is giving some of the funky visited links not being visible effects.

BTW,  That styles.css is sooooo huge I was thinking of breaking it up but I don't have time to deal with that.  I did however compress it a lot with CSSDrive.com compressor  http://www.cssdrive.com/index.php/main/csscompressor/ -- just compressed in pieces with medium compression and left the comments in.  Also did a CSS validation at w3 after compressing to be sure that evry thing still works.  It validated but got a big bunch of warnings about duplicate properties in tags -- which I may be able to fix if I understand this skin thing.

I think your going down the wrong route

style.css    is pretty small at only    93kb
publicStore.skin  is a tiny                 3kb


definately doesn't need compressed and not broken up (they would all load anyway)


change it in the web.config if you like, but it won't make a difference as you've selected in in admin


sounds like you have done something ominous to your copied theme ???

you don't need to recompile when you copy a theme

in VS or VWD  all you have to do is right click the theme

eg darkOrange   select copy

right click     App_Themes                folder and click paste

and that's it, you have a new theme - just rename the theme folder from copy of darkOrange

Thanks for the info about adding a new theme.  I think my inheritence problems with the new theme I created stems from being over-eager to make changes to reflect the look and feel that the client wants and to integrate elements from the old site.

I am in the process of redoing the whole style thing a little more logically.  So that I don't mess up the inheritance.  I do think that the present styles.css in, for example the DarkOrange theme is a bit convoluted, not that it doesn't work, but as a result of growing organically and the need to make it work for different versions.  For example, here are still tables all over the place.  Many I've left, but things like the sitemap.aspx really should be in a list format for SEO purposes and accessibility.

As far as compression goes, I have always been a big advocate of making files and images  as small as possible (without sacrificing legibility).  Therefore, it makes sense for me to not only validate things such as css style sheets, but also compress them.

As far as splitting style sheets  up (something I only contemplated) -- the thought behind that is to have a master style sheet for all the common elements of the page and then load section-specific styles only to those pages that need them.  For example forums and topics.  Although this works great on other sites I've done, it'll doesn't make sense to do it with nopCommerce.