Joomla Template Tutorial - Changing File Permissions

Joomla Template Tutorial - Changing File Permissions

There may be times when you wish to edit your Joomla template files and this can be done either from within Joomla itself or by editing the file on your PC. For this instance let's suppose we would like to edit the template.css file of the beez template that comes with Joomla.

Editing Joomla Templates from inside Joomla:

Login to your Administrator area of Joomla

The Control Panel will show

Click Extensions/Template Manager from the Menu bar

The Template Manager will show

Select the Template you wish to edit i.e beez

The Template Edit page will display

Let's imagine you wish to edit the template.css file

Click Edit.css

The Template CSS Editor page will show listing all the css files that are associated with your Joomla web web site

Notice that in nearly all cases all the files will be unwritable.

To amend these files you will want to change the permissions so that you can change the coding

This is where it becomes a little more complicated especially if you are not familiar with FTP

You will need an FTP product to amend the permissions such as Filezilla ( HYPERLINK "http://wiki.filezilla-project.org/Main_Page" http://wiki.filezilla-project.org/Main_Page) or you could download a 30 day trial of Dreamweaver

Whichever program you select, login to your server where you will notice a list of files intended for your joomla site

Navigate to the Template folder and then to the folder of the template you wish to edit. For this example let's use beez

Click the beez folder and you will see a folder called css

Choose the css folder and you will see the template.css

If you are using Dreamweaver, right click on the template.css

The Microsoft Windows pop up window will show and you will see an option called Set Permissions

In support of other programs you will want to study the manual

Click the Set Permissions option

The File Access Properties screen will display and you will see that the file is set to 755 in other terms it can be read and executed by everyone but not except for the owner of the file

Edit the permission to 777 which will give everybody access to read, write and execute the file

Be conscious that this file is currently vulnerable so you want to alter it back as quickly as you can to 755

Open up your Template Edit Page in Joomla

You may want to refresh the page and you will now notice that your template.css file is writeable

Select template.css and click the edit button

The Template Manager page will show and you can make your amendments

Click the Save button when you have finished your amendments

Check that your changes have been reflected in your site

You may need to close the browser and open it once more for you to be able to see the changes

Return to your FTP program and set the permissions back to 755 so that your file cannot be edited to

The second way of editing your template.css file is to download the file to your computer:

Using the FTP (File Transfer Program) program login to your server

Navigate to the Template folder and then to the folder of the template you wish to edit. For this instance let's use beez

Choose the beez folder and you will notice a folder called css

Click the css folder and you will notice the template.css

Download the file to your computer

In Dreamweaver you are able to simply double click on the file

You will not have to worry about permissions

I recommend you create a copy of this file incase you make a an error so name it something similar to templateBACKUP.css

Open the file and make your amendments

Upload the file back to the original folder. This will overwrite the original file

Refresh your browser and notice your changes

For further information and tutorials on Joomla check out www.joomlainformation.com and for Joomla Templates check out www.joomlainformation.com/joomlar-templates.html

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