I've upgraded from 3.3 to 4 and would like to dispense with my old templates and styles and develop a brand new look for the site.

However, when I select one of the default styles, nothing takes effect.

If I can't get the defaults to work (I would intend tweaking them of course) I will need to build new templates from scratch.

When I copy code from the default templates folder as a way of starting new templates, I get various error messages.

What's the best way of proceeding?

Do you have a link please.

Since ACHUKA has not replied, I will, because I have the same problem.

I chose the white minimalist stylesheet from the MT styles menu, clicked Apply, republished the site, refreshed browser, and the site still has no styles. The CSS linked to the index page contains nothing but this:
/* This is the StyleCatcher theme addition. Do not remove this block. */
@import url(/mt-static/themes-base/blog.css);
@import url(/mt-static/support/themes/minimalist-white/minimalist-white.css);
/* end StyleCatcher imports */

I don't know how StyleCatcher works so maybe that's something I should read up on.

I went back to the MT styles menu and downloaded the white minimalist css I'd chosen. I copied its contents (the styles) and pasted them into the one on my blog server, deleting the above StyleCatcher stuff. Save, republish, no change. Go back into the CSS on the server and it's back to only the StyleCatcher code above, I assume because the act of publishing the site overwrote what I'd pasted.

I would really be grateful for any ideas for next steps. Thanks.

Link:
www.fitnotes.net/blog
http://www.fitnotes.net/blog/styles.css

Check your StaticWebPath in your mt-config & your CGIPath

Your blog is trying to load the style from http://fitnotes.northwestnotes.net/blog/mt...alist-white.css which doesn't exist on that path. Your search does not work either it is try to run from http://www.fitnotes.net/cgi-bin/mt/mt-search.cgi which it can not find

MFM - It appears you have installed your MT in the main root but chose to establish the actual blog on a separate directory '/blog'

As mentioned above, go through your settings and locate where the installation of mt is.

A temporary fix for your styles would be to add '../' before the urls in style catches. as so:

@import url(../mt-static/themes-base/blog.css);
@import url(../mt-static/support/themes/minimalist-white/minimalist-white.css);

Thanks for the suggestions. My blog path has been corrected by the host so it's no longer fitnotes.northwestnotes.net/blog but now it's what I wanted - fitnotes.net/blog. That didn't change the lack of stylesheet visibility.

The stylesheet containing the brief stylecatcher information reflects the correct location of my stylesheet (which is now cityscape-seattle.css). The stylecatcher sheet reads like this and both paths are accurate:
/* This is the StyleCatcher theme addition. Do not remove this block. */
@import url(/mt-static/themes-base/blog.css);
@import url(/mt-static/support/themes/cityscape-seattle/cityscape-seattle.css);
/* end StyleCatcher imports */

Per the suggestion "go through your settings and locate where the installation of mt is," I changed the MT Site Root Path field to reflect the MT location, which is:
home/fran/public_html/cgi-bin/mt
I republished and refreshed the browser but nothing changed. No styles.

Could you please clarify this suggestion: "Your search does not work either it is try to run from http://www.fitnotes.net/cgi-bin/mt/mt-search.cgi which it can not find"? The path you listed is accurate; mt-search.cgi exists in that location. What is it that is trying to find that file and not finding it?

I appreciate the help. Thank you.

Those are relative paths to where you current are in your site.

When I went to do I test search I got a 404 error which means that your web server can not find the file.

Thank you. What path did you use to run the test you are running?

When I run http://www.northwestnotes.net/cgi-bin/mt/mt-search.cgi I get a search engine page.

Also how does this search issue you describe relate to the stylesheet problem I'm having? I would like to understand the connection if you have time to fill me in. Thanks again.

Well that is completely different from http://www.fitnotes.net/cgi-bin/mt/mt-search.cgi which is off the main page.

And that is trying to load the stylesheet from http://www.northwestnotes.net/cgi-bin/mt/m...ape-seattle.css rather than from http://www.northwestnotes.net/mt-static/su...ape-seattle.css where the stylesheet is located.

Make sure http://www.northwestnotes.net/mt-static is listed as your StaticWebPath in mt-config rather than a relative path like /mt-static and then rebuild.

I fixed that and rebuilt, no change.

Can I move my stylesheet to the location where mt-search is looking for it? Or can I tell mt-search to look elsewhere? If I move the stylesheet, will it stay connected when the site is published/rebuilt? If the answer is to tell mt-search.cgi to look elsewhere for the css, what's the syntax? Currently mt-search.cgi contains this:

!/usr/bin/perl -w
# Movable Type ® Open Source © 2001-2008 Six Apart, Ltd.
# This program is distributed under the terms of the
# GNU General Public License, version 2.
#
# $Id: mt-search.cgi 1174 2008-01-08 21:02:50Z bchoate $
use strict;
use lib $ENV{MT_HOME} ? "$ENV{MT_HOME}/lib" : 'lib';
use MT::Bootstrap App => 'MT::App::Search';

The location of mt-search is this: http://www.northwestnotes.net/cgi-bin/mt/mt-search.cgi

Thank you.

What I ended up doing was related to Faramarz's suggestion of adding ../ to the start of the css locations in the StyleCatcher css file. Instead of that, I made them absolute paths to the theme css's location and that worked. Hopefully that won't cause problems later. If I change the theme or make my own css, I guess this means I will have to edit the StyleCatcher manually again.

Thanks for the help.