Radical Redesign

[Cookiepus]

Hello
we've been using zencart for about a year.
Now ive been asked to redesign our site.
Our boss loves the site in the link below.
Im pretty confident i can do the front page layout, but the product pages look like nothing ive seen before in Zen.
I wonder what you guys think?
is zen just the wrong tool for this site?

http://www.dfs.ie/sofas/fabric-sofas/

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Cookie

[schoolboy]

Given that the DFS site probably cost between £100,000 and £150,000 to build - you have a big challenge ahead of you.

However... there are some FEATURES on the dfs site that can be mimicked in zencart, using the right modules.

Ask your boss to see our current DEVELOPMENT project for client Planscape:
http://planscapedirect.co.uk

There's still a lot of work to do on it, but our product pages use some nifty ZC modules. Bear in mind that the image zoom is a commercial module.

[Cookiepus]

Thanks Schoolboy
Of course DFS has a huge budget, but i think i can do the front & even maybe the category pages similar.

its the product pages which are giving me sweats.
no sideboxes, 2 vertical columns.
maybe if i could simplify it....
Just dont want to start into it to find out halfway its all a mess


http://www.dfs.ie/sofas/corner-sofas/carmel/

[dbltoe]

Turning off the sideboxes could be accomplished with css (see the readme in the css folder) and then munge the product tpl to produce the dual column.

[schoolboy]

Don't confuse DESIGN with FUNCTION...

The center and right column on the DFS site is a wide array of very complex coded FUNCTIONS (operations that gather up data, cobble it together, and then shove it into HTML before sending it off to the browser.)

Once you create the FUNCTIONALITY you want, you can worry about how you'd like to style it.

[Cookiepus]

Thanks dbltoe
"then munge the product tpl to produce the dual column "
could you expand on this a little?

[schoolboy]

The file in question is tpl_product_info_display.php

There will be the CORE file in:
includes/templates/template_default/

So you create a COPY of it which you can edit, which then gets loaded into the CUSTOM template folder you are using.

One way would be to add tabular <table> elements to the PHP code. Another would be to use CSS declarations to position the elements.

[dbltoe]

Personally, I'd prefer css versus reverting to tables.
Most would add a wrapper div and a second column div, but it can be done without the wrapper.
Viewing source won't help as you are looking at html. Try googling "2 column css" to see some tutorials. There's a good view of css results at http://tinyurl.com/55cye9

[Cookiepus]

Thanks guys
the more i learn the more i realize how much i dont know.
i think ill approach one of those contractors on odesk.