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    • When upgrading to a new version of tikiwiki, what changes to my site will be kept?

    Posted by brandanhadlock

    I am currently using tikiwiki 5.2 and have made some changes to source files. For example, when someone registers, they receive a validation email and a welcome email. I changed the wording of those emails. Also, I started to change wording in the Articles feature so that I could use it as a service brokerage. So for example, instead of saying "Articles", it says "Service & Talents". I also added to the main menu that appears in the left column in the strassa theme. Will I lose all these changes if I upgrade to version 6.0 when it is released?

    What types of changes are kept when upgrading and what changes are written over and have to be redone?

    Reads: 2031
    Posted by Gary Cunningham-Lee

    If you have edited template (.tpl) files, then they are likely to be overwritten when you upgrade your site. All of Tiki's interface text is made to be changeable. Normally the change is to present it in a different language, but you can use the same mechanism to customize the text for your site. You can make a file lang/en/custom.php and "translate" the text you want to modify.

    See the file lang/fr/custom_example.php. Use this one as a base, just modify it and save it in the English language directory whose path I wrote above. Be sure to do the editing in a text editor that can save with utf-8 character encoding.

    Using this method, your custom.php file won't be touched by site updates, and this will work for any of the interface text. To be sure what you want to customize is an interface text string, you could do a search in lang/en/language.php.

    Update: I just noticed this is the old-fashioned way to do the customizing. Now you can also do this via the Tiki admin interface. Activate the multilingual feature, and under the "Customized String Translation" tab you can edit English language text.

    -- Gary


    Posted by brandanhadlock

    Gary,

    Are you one of the tikiwiki developers? Do you do any consulting or paid tikiwiki customization work? I haven't seen a way to ask you this off forum, so I am asking it here. You can reach me offline at br...@ya...

    Posted by Gary Cunningham-Lee

    Yes, I contribute to Tiki's code mostly in the area of themes, and I also do theme and related Tiki work on a contract/consulting basis. I've sent you an email.

    -- Gary


    Posted by Gary Cunningham-Lee

    Good that you pointed that out, Rick. His changes won't be overwritten if he's made them as a custom style, but he'll still run the risk of missing out on functionality changes, feature improvements, etc. that take place in the default .tpl files. (I know you know that, but wanted to add it to the conversation here as general information.)

    -- Gary


    Posted by brandanhadlock

    Gary,

    Thanks for the update.

    I checked, and yes, I had changed .tpl files. I understand the logic of .tpl files being overwritten. At the same time, I am concerned that with each update (which I assume includes x.x versions [i.e., 6.0 to 6.1 to 6.2, etc) I'd have to go in and edit the .tpl files again.

    Is there an elegant way to overcome this? How can people customize their site, really, if changes are continually overwritten? Is it possible to simply enter a piece of code in updated .tpl files that tells them to read another file for a portion of it's code? Then i have my changes in the other files? (even if that is possible, I don't know that would be the best way)

    I'm looking for some way to not have to be continually updating source files.

    Update: Using the "Customized String Translation" is a creative solution, but won't it "translate" the words anywhere they appear on the site — or at least anywhere in the interface?

    Posted by Gary Cunningham-Lee

    Yes, the language file editing will change the text wherever it appears, so probably the alternative is to edit the template file(s). As Rick mentioned, if you make a custom theme and modify .tpl files there, then your changes will be preserved through Tiki upgrades, but if you want to keep your files up to date, you'll need to do the editing again any time the default templates change. Probably if the changes are minimal and if you keep track of them, it wouldn't be hard to do (speaking as a guy who updates a bunch of theme files at mods.tiki.org for every Tiki release).

    -- Gary

    Posted by brandanhadlock

    Rick,

    How do you run the diff on the TPLs?