Upgrade to Joomla 4 with the DesignNow template

I have a web design company, with 30+ Joomla websites with client's currently looking to upgrade to Joomla 4.

One of these has the DesignNow template in their current Joomla 3 website we developed. We recently attempted the J3 to J4 upgrade, after disabling 3rd party extensions and using the online J3 to J4 online upgrade option in the back end of the website. We then realised there is no J4 version of this template, and the J4 upgrade attempt failed, with the front end showing a "Page not found" error only.

The back end was J4, and using this I installed a range of Hot Joomla Themes J4 templates and set each in turn to be the default template. Has the same result, "No page found".

I had no choice but to do a full restore to the origiinal J3 with the DesignNow template.

Would it work if I changed the current J3 to another Hot Joomla Theme J4 template using the back end install option THEN do the Joomla 3-4 upgrade?

Here is the existing J3 website -  nzbadgeclub.org.nz

Or have I missed something?

Cheers,
Bruce Gordon
CEO
Total Websites Ltd
New Zealand

Hello,

The Design Now template is not available for Joomla 4. It's an old template with an outdated design and we decided to remove it from our collection. However, if you want, you can hire us to make it Joomla 4 compatible (as a paid custom job).

If you want to change the template, you should first change your default template on Joomla 3 (to any template, that can be the default Joomla template), then make an upgrade to Joomla 4. When the upgrade is 100% successful and when the backend of J4 is working fine, you can install another template from our collection. The last thing will be to match all your content to the newly installed Joomla template (it has different menus, module positions, etc...) and it's described here: www.hotjoomlatemplates.com/blog/joomla-i...-on-existing-website

Regards,
Milos