Best Practice for Templates and Themes?

We are shifting a few existing sites (and creating new) from 3.7 to 4.x .One thing I've noticed (if not mistaken) is the removal of the ability to apply themes to individual pages. For example, in 3.7 we were able to share a single template (e.g. a 3 column subpage) for a number of pages and apply a variety of color themes to selected pages to achieve different colors using the same source code; thus, taking advantage of the purpose of CSS to separate the code from the design. This allowed a 1 (template) to many (themes)

If correct, we can now see that In 4.x we, must now create a new template for every new theme that is created. Thus, if we have 100 pages that use a "3 column template" with an applied theme, if we wanted to create a related subsection (say 10 pages) within the core site with a slightly varied design (such as a new color theme), we need to create an entirely new template AND new theme for those 10 subsection pages ... as opposed to simply selected those 10 pages and applying the new theme directly to them.

... deep breath ... sorry if confusing ...

Thus, our question for now; what is the best, or most efficient way to setup our templates and themes to allow for minimal templates but a variety of new themes. We are trying to keep the template list clean. Are we correct to assume that we need a new template for every new theme that we create?

Hello Jeff,

Themes are supported, which means you can have more then one theme for 1 template. Different themes can be applied on different pages. Please check the following blog, since it might help:

http://www.sitefinity.com/devnet/forums/sitefinity-4-x/designing-styling/how-to-use-different-styles-for-different-sections-of-the-site.aspx


The following Designer's Guide - http://www.sitefinity.com/documentation/designers-guide/website-templates-file-structure.aspx - also has a picture showing the general structure of templates and themes

Let us know if you need further help.