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The easiest way to create your own theme is by copying the theme files from an existing theme and then modifying those files to get your own look-and-feel for your theme.

 

This tutorial topic uses that approach to creating your own theme.

 

NOTE: Creating and editing Resort Chef themes requires that you have some previous HTML page editing experience.  If you've not done any HTML work before, we suggest that you just use the standard themes shipped with Resort Chef or some of the themes that will become available from the Resort Software World Wide Web site in the future.

 

To create you own theme, there are four major steps, each of which is discussed in detail below.

 

4.        Backup your theme template files.

 

Create a directory/folder

 

For Resort Chef to be able to access your new theme, you must place all your theme template files into a folder under the \Themes folder in the Resort Chef program folder (normally c:\Program Files\Resort\Chef).

 

We recommend that you name theme folder 'MyTheme' or something similar.

 

When Resort Chef starts up, the program scans the \Themes folder looking in all folders under it, for theme files and notes the files/themes that are there.  Later on, when you go to select a theme for display, the program lists the themes found under the \Theme folder for you to choose from.

 

NOTE: Do not put your theme files directly in the \Themes folder, but place them in a separate folder under the \Themes folder.

 

Copy the files from an existing theme

 

As mentioned above, the easiest way to create your own theme is to copy the theme files from an existing theme and modifying the copied files to suit your own personal tastes.

 

We recommend that you copy the files from the theme in the \Themes\Default folder as this default theme is guaranteed to contain all of the required HTML template files for your theme.

 

Using Windows Explorer, just drag and drop all of the files from the \Themes\Default folder into the folder that you created in the previous step (I.e. \Themes\MyTheme).

 

After copying the files, there are two files that should be renamed:: default.hnf and defaultnc.hnf. Just re-name them to MyTheme.hnf and MyThemeNC.hnf respectively.

 

NOTE: The .HNF file are plain text files that contain information that is used by Resort Chef when loading your new theme.  More details on them below.

 

Now, you're ready to get to work on your theme.

 

Modify the HTML template pages

 

First of all, you'll need to modify the .HNF files that are associated with your theme.  These are just plain text files that you can with Windows Notepad (or similar).

 

Just open each of the .HNF files and look for an entry that looks like: name=

 

Change the words in between the double quotes in these entries to 'MyTheme', or your name even, and save the changes.  This is the theme name that will appear in the Resort Chef Theme Dialog when you go to select a theme for the program to use.

 

Before editing any pages, there area few things to note.  Resort Chef displays all ingredient, recipe, menu, and supplier, and report  information in web pages. These pages are generated from HTML template files stored in the theme folders.

 

There is a separate template file for each of the data forms and the reports.  If you're working on your own theme, we suggest that you concentrate on setting up the forms templates first and then doing the report templates later. The forms templates are in the following files:-

 

•start.htm

•ingredients.htm

•recipes.htm

•menus.htm

•suppliers.htm

•reports.htm

 

Also, we use a number of custom tags in each template to indicate to Resort Chef, where actual data is to be inserted into each template before a page is displayed.  While you're modifying a template page be careful not to delete these tags, because if they're removed, Resort Chef won't know where to insert data into the template at run-time.

 

Now, you're ready to start editing the HTML theme pages.  Just use your favorite HTML editor, such as Microsoft FrontPage or similar to edit each of the template files to suit your own tastes.

 

Backup your theme files

 

Once you have finished editing your theme, please make a backup of your theme files.  There are few feeling worse that the realization that several hours work has been lost when your hard drive crashes! (Trust me.  I've been there!)

 

When you've finished editing your template files, start Resort Chef, select your new template and see how it looks.  You can always make more changes to the templates and look at them from within the program if you're not happy with your initial results.

 

NOTE: If you have any difficulties getting your theme to work, contact support@resortsoftware.com for assistance.  But, before doing so, please zip up your template files with WinZip and include that file with your email message.  We'll take a look at your template and work out what's happening and get back to you.