Camera - Where and how do I see and select items for prebuilt template?

I have read the documentation for Camera over and over and I just don't get it. I have uploaded and selected the Camera template as the default, I have renamed it with a _PHOTOGRAPHY 1 at the end, I have used it with default at the end. I am still on Joomla 3 and the docs show how to do things with Jooomla 4. I have have many years of articles and image galleries and modules that I want to keep on the site, but I'm glad to recreate them if I knew how, but the docs say everything should be there to use the prebuilt site, such as PHOTOGRAPHY 1.

As I understand it from being a Joomla user for 10 years the only time you can install the quick start package is on a blank site with a new installation of Joomla. I did not do that, but the docs say to reconfigure it is easy. It might be easy, but I do not see it.

When I view the module positions and look in the backend at the template sales, I see some of the old module positions have kept their positions. I don't mind changing things, but I just don't see how.

I'm using StageIt to wrangle the site into shape in order to get it ready to migrate to Joomla 4 but it is such a mess now that I don't dare go any farther and I can't give you access to the site because it needs the StageIt plugin I don't even know if you can see it like I can. And if you can't, how can I get help. Oh woe.

Thanks for any advice,

Carol Jones

Thank you for your speedy reply. I am somewhat calm about it all. I finally realized how I have to remake all the SP easy (haha) galleries from what I have now, and I feel better about that. I knew it was easy but was so bent out of shape about the layout confusion that I couldn't figure everything out at once. It will probably only take a few days.

First of all, I didn't modify the template code or anything myself or on purpose, however, that template (on my live site at mainefiberarts.org) has been broken in some way for a few years, ever since Joomla Bamboo was taken over by Joomlart who couldn't fix the template. Any time I tried to make changes the whole site went down front and back, and I had to roll back the entire site to an earlier day to get it back. I thought it was time to get a new template and migrate at the same time. So I started this process by creating a staging site to test it on and getting your Camera template (even though I'd like to use the other one, Ufolio).

I have already installed the Camera template components modules plugins and everything on my staging site (my live site is still working as well as it has been).The duplicate business and the mess you see must be caused by the "StageIt" component that creates a copy of the real site in a folder and lets you fiddle with that and gradually update the live site. You can see the live site if you take off the "/stageit" at the end of the link. It looks fine but it is not.

My real goal is to be able to migrate/update to Joomla 4 anyway. I thought it would be easier to install a working template on the current site that is compatible with 3 and 4, so that once everything was working on Jooomla 3 I could zoom right into Joomla 4. I first tried the migration on my staging site but it was, oh, so awful I went back to the original site and erased the StageIt version altogether, then created another one I've been fiddling with.

It makes me very nervous using that "StageIt" plugin/component/whatever it is, because you are right, it has created a monster mess for me to figure out, partly because there is so much of the older template still taking over, all my categories and articles and modules that I don't even use anymore and thousands of images all want to stay where they are and use the old module positions and the old plugins that made the modules (or modules that made the plugins work).

I have considered starting over with a fresh site with the prebuilt template installed and importing the content I want into the new site, just to get rid of so much of the historical stuff that I don't need, but I'm worried about starting over with the "HotSpots" map component I need to use because it is so intricate and it depends on K2 which is not, to my knowledge, going to work on Jooma 4, even though the Hotspots is Joomla 4 compatible. And I don't really understand how hard or easy it will be to get the database stuff over to the new site.

I guess my question is, given that whatever I do is going to be very involved and tedious, if I'm going to start over, shouldn't I start over with Joomla 4 with a QuickStart package of the J4 template I want? And if I do that, can I still export/import files and data from the Joomla 3 site? In other words, which is easier, exporting then importing pages from a QuickStart blank-ish site into a huge mess (like I have now), or exporting then importing data into a fresh site that has the changes to layout etc. already made?

Thinking,

Carol

OK. I just installed the quick start package on a new subdomain I created, and after many trials to fine the correct user and password for the database I created, I soon realized that unbeknownst to me, it was installing the Joomla 4 version. I went ahead and continued the installation just to see what it looked like and got to the last page where it says my site is ready and I clicked open admin and got the red page of horrors, went back and clicked open site and also got the error.

Here's a question for you now. I've looked at one way to resolve the error but I'll have to create an FTP view into the files and it will take a while. So I might as well delete the whole subdomain and start over. A day's work. So how do I make sure that the QuickStart package for Camera template will installl a Joomla 3 version? Is this possible?

OK, never mind about the terrible error. I found a YouTube that said to delete a file from the admin cache which I did and apparently it succeeded and I see the site, at least the backend so far. It's all there. Now I will try to make sense of it and/or reinterpret it for my site. Thank you for sticking with me.

Carol

Well, I have to make one more comment. First, thank you for reminding me to keep my url's and menus the same. Thank you also for explaining why I have a Joomla 4 "demo" site now when I thought I was getting Joomla 3.

I had not decided to start with the QuickStart at all, I was just going to refer to the QuickStart site back and forth so I could recreate it in my staging site. I was only planning to use the Camera template on the J3 site because that was what I thought I had to work with, but the template I really want to use is the UFolio template which I thought I would switch to once I had the j3 version of the site organized with the Camera template which would make the migration easier. But no matter what I thought and think, I see it all boils down to how and when I use Joomla 4.

Since I have to migrate my site that I thought was unmigrateable to a J4 version of my current/existing site now, or fumble around trying to create a J3 version of the Camera template on my current site, why not migrate the current site to J4 and then apply the Ufolio template to that. Which would/will mean erasing the new Joomla4 website I just set up and starting over with the Ufolio QuickStart instead.

So I think that's what I am going to do, but the biggest holdup to that is the K2 plugin which my map component depends on which I have to somehow come up with a fix for that before any migrating. I've written to the developer and have combed the YouTube tutorials for an answer to that, most of which is 8 or 9 years old and lots of work getting the data out of the MySQL tables which I am incompetent to do.

Just keeping your informed at this point. I'm going to spend the day on it -- starting in a couple of hours.

Carol

Thank you!!! This is great! I"m going to make it into a poster. (just kidding)

I just have two questions/comments for clarification:

Points #1 and #2
I instal the copy of the live site into yet another subdomain, or I just use a folder inside the current site for the copy that I'll be working on? Does it matter whether a folder or a subdomain? I hope you don't mean I should host the site on my local computer using MAMP or something like that.

Point #3
I'm installing the new Ufolio QuickStart into a new subdomain of the same site (after I delete the subdomain I just made with the Camera quickstart and the database that went with it).

Does this sound right? I think I can do all this.

Carol