OK about to dive in

Before I do I just wanted to ask a quick question. Is there any reason to use hard coded .masterpages any more? I see most of the new templates are just built through the UI but I'm so used to Master Pages. Is there anything I can't do using the UI instead?

The user-friendly web-based UI editor does have it's limits.  Don't get me wrong, it's very nice, but grizzled designers (who are very comfortable with HTML & CSS) will probably eventually feel limited by it.

Thanks Gabe. That would be helpful. Another quick question. Do I have to follow the Template structure laid out in the documentation or can I just leave my masters in ~/App_Master/. I'm not sure why we have to put them in App_Data/WebsiteTemplates/TemplateName/App_Master...

Hi KMac,

Actually you can use App_Master without issues, but I would suggest crating Page Templates through Sitefinity instead of using static master files. You can take a look at our updated online documentation.

Regards,
Ivan Dimitrov
the Telerik team

Here is the video referenced above:

Awesome video Gabe, nice to see it all from scratch like like one of us screwing around with it for the first time :)

Question though...
Your sample was different that Ivans in that you had files in App_Master and App_Themes off the root instead of nested in App_Data

Is the difference that you were crafting a site as if it was being built for a specific company, while the App_Data version is more for a redistributable theme?

What's the difference in methods (I assume they both produce the same results)

And can you explain the required "Global" folder in AppThemes on here please (if you have time).

Steve

Hi Steve,

Currently there is no difference if you use App_Master and App_Themes folder in the root. All styles in Global folder are registered  automatically and you do not have to register them explicitly.

Greetings,
Ivan Dimitrov
the Telerik team

Hello Steve,

When your templates and themes are inside App_Data  we allow you to dynamically control these files from Sitefinity's UI. In one of the next release we are going to make synchronization between markerplace and Sitefinity which will allow you to pick up themes directly from there and the only way to control this is using App_Data and its subfolders.

If you want to redistribute a theme you should better use App_Data folder. If you just work locally there is no restriction to use App_Themes. Furthermore App_Master folder was introduced by us in the older versions of Sitefinity - 3.x which was a global storage for templates. In  4.0 you can specify the path to your templates from the UI and there is no point for using App_Master.

In 4.0 allow you to create a template directly from the UI and actually you do need a physical master file in your project.

Let me know if there are any further questions.

Regards,
Ivan Dimitrov
the Telerik team