A pretty easy tutorial on how to install an OpenCart theme or template to change the design of your OpenCart store. This is a vital part of eCommerce designing and there are a few other tutorials but I thought I would write my own tutorial on installing OpenCart themes and see how it got on!
The default template in OpenCart is very basic and not really much use if you don’t customise it heavily so buying new themes from template marketplaces or paying for web designers to create a new theme specifically is the best way to get a bespoke shopping website.
Creating A Folder To Install Your New OpenCart Theme
This is pretty basic but you will need FTP access to your website. Simply navigate to:
- catalog/view/theme
Now, from here you will see a single folder (if this is a clean install of OpenCart) containing the default theme the store comes with. Named, conveniently, “default“! All you need to do here is create a new folder in this directory. You can name the folder anything you like but remember the name as you will need it later.
In my case I am going to name the folder “myTheme“.
Activating Your New OpenCart Theme
It might sound like we have this backward but bear with me! Login to the OpenCart Admin system and go to System -> Settings, then go to your store and click “edit“, the click the “Store” tab and find the drop down menu with the name “Template“.
All you need to do here is click on the menu and choose your “myTheme” name instead of the default. The click “Save” and your all done! Your new OpenCart Theme has been installed.
The OpenCart Template Installation Fallback
The reason I told you to activate the theme before putting the files in the folder is to show you that the OpenCart template automatically drops back to the default theme if there are any files missing. That is how the store can look exactly the same when you have activated the empty Opencart template; because the files are missing the store just uses the default package instead!
Installing Your New OpenCart Theme
Simply copy the folders within your new template file (there should be three: image, stylesheet & template) to your new folder sitting on the directory. In my case I will be copying the three folders to:
- catalog/view/template/myTheme
And that’s it! Your new OpenCart theme has been installed and activated. Now you just have to refresh your page and you will be looking at a brand new template for your OpenCart store! If you want some free themes to play around with I have listed several on another blog post here.