I'm brand new to Plone, Zope, Python, and am trying to edit content in the "head" section of the site. Since the site is an intranet I'm unable to provide direct access to the site however, you can click the following link to see an image of what I'm asking.
The site is using Plone 4.3.1 (4306)
It looks like a custom viewlet, its perhaps hardcoded in the a filesystem template or a js-lib? It's not a standard html-snippet in Plone 4.
Start to understand adding /@@manage-viewlets on the site address. Often you can find some related templates in plone control panel -> ZMI -> portal_view_customizations
I would try to get what is the addon involved (plone control panel -> Add-ons) and read the docs, maybe there's a control panel to manage it and maybe some hint on css/javascript customization.
From site -> control panel -> theming -> modify theme -> shows a file manager, with a file tree on the left and an editor on the right. Clicking the index.html allows me to see the href reference I need to change, and change it. When I save the file, the changed href doesn't show on my live site.
Show Inspectors allows me to see my changed index.html correctly from the HTML mockup window and I can see the changes when Preview Theme, yet still can't see the change on the live site.
You were correct. It is hardcoded in the filesystem template, yet when I make changes to the index.html template, the changes don't show on my live site when I save the edited file.
Any ideas?
I think you are attempting to make changes in the wrong place. The index.html file you describe is a visual theme template for which the elements are dynamically replaced with content from your Plone site. Changing a link there would have no effect unless the link is static and remains untouched by your content.
is what you want to check out. On the manage-viewlets page, look at ViewletManager: plone.abovecontent (plone.app.layout.viewlets.interfaces.IAboveContent) and find the name of the viewlet which is responsible for building the icons bar. It may possibly be configurable in the control panel of your site...
Try to go in theming->advanced and save there, I've found it help to make some theming changes go live.
A lot of hints are here
https://docs.plone.org/4/en/adapt-and-extend/theming/index.html
but first you should work/train on a local copy to get in touch with all the parts involved.
I believe the link is static and remains untouched by my content. To verify this, when looking at the two inspector windows, ie, HTML mockup and Unthemed content, the icons/links are nowhere in the Unthemend content, yet appear in the HTML mockup.
Also, after editing the index.html file and then clicking "preview theme" the changes show correctly. I just can't get the changes to render from preview to the live site.
Do I need to restart a service for Plone to render/compile using the updated template file?
I'll look into your other suggestions, and thank you for engaging this issue.
My thought: check the 'custom' skin folder - that's an evil way to change stuff.
If you can't find HTML on the filesystem, you might find it there. If you do find it there, consider moving things out of the 'custom' skin folder and onto the filesystem.
The Plone site is using a Diazo theme. The HTML file is on the filesystem already. Based on what I'm reading the solution might be changing Zope's debug_mode. Just not sure how to do that just yet.
Thanks for engaging!
That is good news then. Verify if the theme you edited through the web is the active theme and actually overrides your filesystem theme. On Plone 5.2 this would look like this in your Diazo controlpanel:
On a Plone 5.2 instance running in production mode, all changes I tried (switching active theme, making html template changes in an active theme) are picked up immediately without having to restart the server. Maybe the theme on your filesystem is the active one? In that case, you should restart your Plone server after making your changes there.
The site is running on Plone 4.3.1 (4306) and the theme I edited is the active one.
Thanks again for engaging this issue. I'm not great with command lines and the site is hosted at Digital Ocean as a droplet. Not quite sure how to restart the droplet, ie, Plone server?
Restarting my Plone server worked. My edits are now running as expected in my live environment.
Thanks again for everyone's input!
Did you tried Saving on Theming -> Advanced?
Hi Yuri, yes I did try. I also think changing Zope from running in production mode back to debugging mode would've done the trick.
Thanks for checking, especially as I've appreciated everyone's engagement.