Hi. I cloned my default templates and always edit them through admin. All seems to work. However, I recently and mysteriously 'lost' the cloned templates for xc-gallery. I tried to re-generate them but got a 'file does not exist' error.

I checked my templates_c folder (for the first time) and noticed it has some files prefixed with 'db%3A'. E.g

db%3Asmartfaq_category.html

Is that normal?

All the other mods seem to work.

Basd on the comments about this folder containing Smarty compiled templates, the originals of which are presumably located somewhere else, can you (i.e. is there any benefit to) empty the templates_c folder?, and if so, will it automatically be rebuilt next time you start Xoops?

yes it's safe to delete the contents of templates_c folder

they will be recompiled next time 1 of the pages is viewed :)

benefits.. aren't much unless you're editing templates all the time, but it maybe good practice to clear it out every now and then so they get refreshed especially if u have many themes etc or have deleted some themes..

Oooh! So it does!. Actually that's a good bit of housekeeping IMHO, especially on a development site. The db%3A filename prefix seems normal (it's present on the newly created files in my case anyway).

Thx m0nty. I feel like I've dusted.

yes the %3A is an http replacement, not sure of the correct term..

but it's equivalent is a colon ':' for use in urls.. as using a : isn't allowed in a url

the same for url's with spaces for obvious reasons a space in a url will break the link, so a space is replaced by %20 which is it's equivalent..