I apologize if the answer to my question is in the manuals, but I couldn't find it. How do I actually apply a design customization to a site? I tried simply changing design choice in the settings of my site to use the customization instead of the design itself. That gave me some ugly php error. I'm sure it's something obvious but it's eluding me.
That is what you're supposed to do. Instead of applying a design, you apply the customisation. Could you post the PHP error here?
I have a design that seems to work just fine. I created a customization. I made no changes or customizations, I only approved it and made it live. Then I went into my site's settings and changed the front end design to the customization. The change seems to go through fine. When I attempt to browse the page I get the following error:
PHP Warning
paint([SYSTEM_ROOT]/data/private/assets/design_customisation/61/design_file.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory
Fatal error: paint(): Failed opening required '/usr/local/ahs/matrix/data/private/assets/design_customisation/61/design_file.php' (include_path='.:/usr/local/ahs/matrix/php_includes:/usr/local/lib/php') in /usr/local/ahs/matrix/core/assets/designs/design/design.inc on line 704
You need to customise at least one of the design areas so that Matrix creates the design_file.php for that customisation.
Thank you for your help.
Ok another customization question…
Let's say my design originally had 3 constant buttons, nav1, nav2, nav3. I rename them to a1, a2, a3. Even if I delete a customization and recreate it, it still shows both sets of buttons to customize even though nav1, nav2, nav3 don't exist any more. Is there a way to "refresh" it or something? Is it clear what I'm asking?
The designs are not supposed to keep old design areas. You could try doing a manual reparse of the design (check the box on the details screen of the design).
If that doesnt help, you can file a bug report at bugs.matrix.squiz.net and possible attach the old and new parse files for us to test and fix.