Kentico folder structure

Hi Justin

It's a place to put theme/site related asessts. You don't need to put your site specific files in there if you do not wish to.

We tend to create a folder within the CMS structure and only include the output files e.g. minified CSS and put the SCSS/Gulp files outside of the CMS folder. So the source files and automation tools are outside, just their output is inside the CMS folder. Hope this makes sense?

Hi Ilesh,

So if i understand correctly the app_themes is meant to store theme related things?

For example: if you would create a winter theme for the Dancing Goat, you put all the new images in the 'App_Themes/dancing-goat-winter' folder, but if you create a whole new Sites instance, you would create a new projectfolder in the CMS-folder, like 'CMS/dancing-giraffe' if i understand correctly?

Best regards,

Justin

It's a default installation folder. So yeah or you can choose not to use the themes folder if you do not want to.

Anything custom I would create a folder outside of App Themes to make sure you can separate it from future Kentico upgrades and it would be easier to manage them in another folder, but that can be a peference of choice really.

Take a look at the documentation on Kentico Export Folder structure. This will help at to see what happens with system folders and other folders when you import/export data from a site.

Hmm, as i understand right now its just a preference thing. As the documentation Brenden linked shows both folders will be included when exporting sites. I'll keep my files in the root for now, as i find the term 'theme' a little confusing. You can only create site-instances, no seperate 'themes' for a site, right?

If you read the documentation, it states folders in green "Folders for custom files, part of the export package. You may need to create these folders manually." So if you have a folder in the /App_Themes directory named the same as your site's code name it will automatically be exported. So while yes, App_Themes were initially meant for different themes on your website in a standard asp.net website, within Kentico, by default if you use the OOTB CSS Stylesheets and your stylesheet's theme tab, it will give you access to all those files within the UI. Whereas if you simply place them in the root of the file system, you'll have no access to them through Kentico at all.

Really the only images and files we put in the /App_Themes directory are font files and any hard design related files, those files we don't want a content editor to be able to access. Otherwise we place all other resources in the media library and /CMSScripts/Custom. Since you can specify where those resources from Gulp and other third party add-ons can go, I'd suggest using the respective places as shown in the export documentation.

Thank you for your explanation Brenden, makes much more sense to me now.