Magento 2 theme override: changes not showing

Question

I am new to Magento 2 and theming and I'm having trouble overriding a particular template. I am running in developer mode.

I have successfully installed my theme and applied it globally in the admin, using Luma as a parent.

<vender> = SampleStore
<theme> = sampletheme

I can tell it is working because I have added _theme.less to <vender>/<theme>/web/css/source and changed the background color of the body to red, which after a cache clear is reflected on the store in my browser.

My issue is when I try to override a template not just a style change my changes are ignored and the parent Luma template is served.

I am trying to add some text after QTY on the product page, just as a test.

I went into vender/magento/ and copied module-catalog and all it's sub folders (as that is where the template for this particular change is) and paste them in my own vendor directory (not inside the <theme> directory, but right inside <vender>): <vender>/**module-catalog**

I deleted all the folders I didn't need, leaving me with view/frontend/templates/*all files*

Have I misunderstood where to place this module-catalog folder, have I missed out a step or something else? Why is my new template ignored and Luma being used?

I am using this guide. Specifically this section:

Template customization walkthrough

To customize or override a template:

1. Locate the template which is associated with the page or block you want to change, using template hints in developer tools. For example, these would be located at: app/design/<vendor_name>/<module_name>/view/frontend/templates/
2. Copy the template to your theme folder according to the template storing convention.
3. Make the required changes.

Answer 1

You need to change your path with below the structure.

app/design/frontend/SampleStore/sampletheme/Magento_Catalog/templates/product/view/addtocart.phtml

It will work.

Answer 2

Suppose you want to override below file :

module-catalog/view/frontend/template/product/view/addtocart.phtml

This file can be overriden in theme by copying the file to below location :

app/design/frontend/ThemeVendorName/ThemeName/Magento_Catalog/templates/product/view/addtocart.phtml

Note: view folder shouldn't be there as we are defining area in starting(app/design/frotnend)