Help With Template Customizations Please?

[gjh42]

It wouldn't be a big deal to make a homepage like that for Zen Cart, but there is no room in the template for most of ZC's e-commerce features. You would have to turn off all of the sideboxes and use some header features and mods for basic functionality, like a categories-tabs dropdown menu.

You need to do some thinking and sketching to decide approximately how you want to present the various features you actually need (and write a list of all the features you will use), before we can advise on how to get them to work for you.

[Globie]

Hi Glenn,

Well that does make sense... But actually, having the homepage like that would be a great start.

So are you saying it possible, just ridiculously cumbersome???

[gjh42]

Not cumbersome at all.

You would start by turning off all sideboxes in admin > Tools > Layout Boxes Controller, and applying the background to #contentMainWrapper in the stylesheet. You might want to keep column left/right enabled with a width setting as desired in Configuration > Layout Settings, just to keep the content clear of the background image on the sides.

The homepage content would go in define_main_page.php (in Tools > Define Pages Editor), with perhaps a wrapper div or two to apply the round-cornered box borders to in the stylesheet.

The header would get logo and background styling as required, and for starters you could enable the categories-tabs and ez-pages header bars to display essential navigation. These could later be replaced by more specialized navigation tools in the same general location.

[Globie]

Hmmm, thanks Glenn!! I am going to try this and will get back with you.

So are you saying to do this this is for just the homepage? Or this is how I will adapt the template to everything?

[gjh42]

The mods above will apply to the whole site (except for define_main_page.php). You will want to identify the elements on other pages that want rounded boxes in the center column, and decide whether you want the center content as a whole to be boxed, or potentially have separate boxes for parts of the center content.

[Globie]

So I will need to do a lot of editing to the style sheet and what other file? Sorry, I'm trying to understand where I put what.

[gjh42]

You will be sure to want to edit /includes/templates/your_template/common/tpl_header.php and tpl_main_page.php, and possibly a number of others depending on your specific design decisions.

[Snicklefritz]

I found a zencart template that I liked and downloaded it to my computer. However, when I go to "tools" in the zencart admin window, nothing shows up except the "classic" template. I must have put the new template in the wrong location. Where is it supposed to go exactly? I thought it should go into the zc_install directory based on something I read in a readme.txt file, but nothing is working...

[Globie]

Snicklefritz, you're hijacking my post...! :)

But no worries... you should have uploaded the template to your includes/templates directory.

The path is: includes-->templates. In the templates folder is where you will put your newly downloaded template. And then you should be able to see it in Tools-->Template Selection-->Edit.