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POWhy does magento use xml files for themeing?
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copied!<p>I am new to Magento and studying its documentation. Excuse me if I sound a bit to much against it but I am open minded. I don't understand why Magento uses XML for theming. What's the reason behind it? </p> <p>I am running the newest version 1.6 from the SVN repo and following <a href="http://www.magentocommerce.com/wiki/4_-_themes_and_template_customization/0_-_theming_in_magento/designing-for-magento">this site</a>.</p> <p>I read that I need to create local.xml declaring what gets in and out of the theme. After I did the basic structure then added my theme directory through the backend. I removed a elements on the front end using a few xml elements </p> <p>Example:</p> <pre><code><remove name="right.poll"/> <remove name="right.permanent.callout"/> <remove name="left.permanent.callout"/> <remove name="paypal.partner.right.logo"/> </code></pre> <p><del>The homepage doesn't change... why is this? Is there another location that would need modification?</del><br/> I found out that i needed to disable all caching for dev only.<br/> (for those that dont know its (admin page) -> system -> cache management -> select all and disable) <br/><br/> I also don't understand why the CSS/JS/media directory is completely separate from the template directory. It makes no sense why they would do this. Another thing I don't understand is why there are a million directories (sarcasm) that I need to get into to make a modification. I assume they are using some kind of MVC model but it is by far nothing I have ever seen. If they are attempting to make pretty URLs with all these directories I'm pretty sure they have heard of htaccess. (again excuse me if I sound ignorant but I am new).</p> <p>PS., I looked into the phtml files and most of them look like their just calling these XML elements, is it possible to use plain old HTML and PHP to create a theme? Or am I forced to use their XML methods?</p> <p>edit: the theme folder at app/design/frontend has two folders base and default which im thinking each of these are interfaces for example a group of themes i would like to use. i modified the design_change db table from default/default to base/default (also done on the admin page but i like the db better). i saw that a different page was rendered. so i figured i can just take out the base folder because its extra confusion. when i did that the site broke. so it looks like magento has tied two theme directories into this application. its as if they are just as confused as we are. am i right?</p> <p>Please let me know your input.</p> <p>Thanks.</p> <p>ps: i found out magento is from the zend framework.</p>

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