Best way to commence rebuild

Finally, the time has come to rebuild our website. The present version is built in Ruby theme (www.greenercamping.org). Although I purchase Foundry about 18 months ago, I haven’t used it much except to play around with it using Spark theme. Thought I could use Spark theme as the basis for the new site but there doesn’t seem to be a way to copy stacks from the Ruby RW project the the Spark RW project. Am I going about this the right way? Is there a better way?

First thing to note is you cannot use the Spark theme with Foundry. In fact the only theme you can use is the Foundry theme. This is covered in the tutorial videos on the site. Watch the QuickStart video here:

Honestly, the best approach is going to be to start from the ground up. You’re using a framework now and not a pre-designed theme. You’ll be building from the ground up so it will be better to start fresh. Watch through some of the tutorials here, especially the “Build A One-Page Site” video:

Thanks Adam. Good advice. I meant to say the Spark project file. I just struggle to get my head around 'margins, container, margins (to give one example from Spark). How do I know when to add another container to a page (I see there are multiple containers in Spark for example).

Shall I just watch the videos rather than ask daft questions? :slight_smile:

You use stacks as needed. Container stacks allow you to set a specific max-width for your content. Margin stacks allow you to set margin and padding around a specific element at the three breakpoints. Each individual stack has a purpose and you simply use them when necessary, combining them with other stacks, to get the layout or design you’re after.

Watch through the videos. There are a lot of them and they cover various stacks and topics. There’s also a Foundry course that Ben from Realmac created.

Also remember there is a documentation page for each individual stack that outlines what the stack does: http://foundry.elixirgraphics.com/documentation/

Also, @egomade has some GREAT pre-built project files with complex layouts. After you get a handle on the basics check them out and you can see some more complex layouts in action too.

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Thanks very much for the info. One final thing for now… we have 70+ login pages (increasing weekly) that are not in the navigation. We use Joe W’s PageSafe for each these pages. Do you know whether Page Safe works with Foundry? We also use Kuler’s SQL Base stack for reading in data from MySQL. Is that going to work too?

Most any 3rd-party stack should work within Foundry. I personally can’t keep track of each and every individual stack that works within Foundry though. It’s beyond the scope of what is possible for one human being unfortunately. I know that many people use Page Safe with Foundry. I’m not sure about Kuler’s SQL stack specifically, but I don’t see any reason it shouldn’t work. You can let us all know. That said, do know that I don’t believe the Kuler stacks are supported any longer, if that makes any difference to you. But this is another issue altogether.

Thanks. Will keep this area informed of progress!