One thing you may want to do as a developer is to create your own framework. Based off all the common things you need to do when building a Miva Merchant store, Miva Merchant makes creating a framework very simple. Now a framework gives us a snapshot of all of the page templates at that specific time. So to create a framework, you have to come into the Frameworks tab under “User Interface” and click this button here for “Save Framework.”
Now, it’s going to require you to have a frameworks code. I’m going to call this “Test” and give it a name. Now, if you want to, you can create a preview image that will be used when the framework is imported. However, the preview image and the description are optional. Now, if you scroll down below, this is the really important part of the framework. This is what you choose to include in the framework. By default, everything is going to be checked. This means it’s going to take your entire store settings, including all the page templates, and save them into the framework. This is the most common use case. However, there may be an occasion where you just want a particular page, or a few pages included in the framework. Say you wanted a framework that just included the checkout process. You can create that and use that on the stores that you build. However, for these purposes, I’m going to leave everything checked because I want to save the entire store. Once that’s done you simply click the “Save Framework” up in the top right. Once it’s done processing, it will automatically add the framework to your store. Behind the scenes, it creates a .pkg file or a framework file that you can use to then move to a different store. Currently the only way to get that file is to ftp to the server and download it. So let me show you where that’s currently located.
Here I have my ftp program opened up and I’m ftp’d into the server. The frameworks folder is going to be located in the MM5 folder. You’ll see there’s a file called “Frameworks” and depending on how many stores you have, it will be located in the respective directory. I’m using sore 000002, so here’s all the frameworks for my store. Here’s the default CSSUI Framework, the Miva Bootstrap framework that we imported in the last video and then this test framework that I just created manually. You can then download this file to your desktop and import that framework file to the next store that you build. This file should contain everything that you need to take that snapshot of the store and apply it to a completely new store.
Mastering Frameworks within Miva Merchant will save you a lot of time and money when building Miva Merchant stores.