Fresh Zotonic site giving me a blank page with debug "Error rendering template"

Zotonic Forum Zotonic Questions
1

Sorry for coming up with another problem:
Zotonic is now up and running, and I am trying to make my first tiny example site.

All the dashboard is working fine, I created a document, but when I press Save and View, I get allways an empty page.

In the debug window I get:

2022-12-30 12:34:27 ERROR  site=blank  user_id=1  dispatch=page <0.23628.0> [z_template:render_block/4:131] ▸ text="Error rendering template" template="{cat,\"page.tpl\"}" result=error reason=enoent in=zotonic_core 
2022-12-30 12:48:36 INFO  site=blank  user_id=1 <0.24596.0> [z_module_manager:activate_1/3:298] ▸ text="Module mod_admin_frontend activated by 1 ()" 
2022-12-30 12:49:59 ERROR  site=blank  user_id=1  dispatch=page <0.24888.0> [z_template:render_block/4:131] ▸ text="Error rendering template" template="{cat,\"page.tpl\"}" result=error reason=enoent in=zotonic_core 
2022-12-30 12:54:00 ERROR  site=blank  user_id=1  dispatch=page <0.25205.0> [z_template:render_block/4:131] ▸ text="Error rendering template" template="{cat,\"page.tpl\"}" result=error reason=enoent in=zotonic_core

So this site=blank is obviously the problem - what did I wrong?
Is there any step by step tutorial for dummies how to create a basic web site?

Any hint welcome…

Markus

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2

I never worked with Zotonic, but enoent means file not found.

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3

Indeed, it can’t find the template page.tpl (for the category being displayed).

You can add one to the priv/templates folder of your site app.

The site (app) is apparently called blank.

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4

Problem solved again!

Yes the name of the site is blank , maybe a silly name.
I copied the content from the template folder from another site (a modified “Blog” example) to
.../blank/priv/template
but no affect. After stopping and restarting Zotonic it works!

Is it necessary to copy the templates manually into the directory structure of a new project?
Or is there any automatic function?

Is there any restart / refresh command recommended after canging the structure of a site?

Up to now I am deeply impressed, but also quite confused about all the functions and concepts behind the scene…

Markus

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5

Hi, if you have inotify or fswatch installed then the system should automatically pick up any new files.

If something is not picked up then you can also click “rescan modules” in the /admin/status

We have some “skeletons” with which you can make a new site from the “zotonic status site” (which you get when a Zotonic server started or the current hostname doesn’t match a running site).

There is also an example site, which you could clone to start:

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6

Many thanks! I will test it.

Slowly I understand some basics even if I mistreated Zotonic a lot I guess.
But no crash yet, that is not a matter of course nowadays :wink:
Congratulations!

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7

I just cloned the zotonic_example.

The skeleton on Github is in directory apps .
Is this working?
Or should it be in apps_user ?

8

In the bin/zotonic script an environment variable is set so that apps is used

9

thanks!