Forum OpenACS Q&A: Re: Current state of theming in OpenACS (without .LRN)

Ah, yes. Ok. Thank you very much Dave.

So if you want to change the underlying queries in support of modified or changed tcl pages, converting a subsite into a descendant package type would enable you to do this. It would also allow you to export your customisations as a package so that in future you could install it on top of a default OpenACS, conveniently adding back your own customisations.

Initially I couldn't think of why you'd want to modify the behaviour of acs-subsite beyond changing the templates.

If you want to customise an existing application then I guess the best way is to create a new package, and copy the code from the one you want to modify! 😊

Regards
Richard

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Posted by Dave Bauer on
For acs-subsite, basically I put the entire web site under acs-subsite.

For example, for a simple web application, I'd put all the custom user interaction under my new subsite package and extend or override any subsite features to make them simpler or more specific for my application.

OR for a complex web site, I might have many subsites all with different descendant subsite types. In this case each sub-application has its own set of users etc so using a subsite makes sense. Again everything is put into the subsite derived package.

I generally don't use any existing application packages as they all contain too many assumptions or are just a huge set of switches which makes it very difficult to meet precise demanding user requirements. I just build all new data collection forms and displays and lists using the existing core features. It is kind of hard to explain in a forum post :) This mainly is due to the extremely unique requirements of my remaining OpenACS users.