New user - layout issues

[iainpeace]

Hello,

I have just installed zen-cart for the first time into my site and would like to know how I can get it to look like the rest of my site.

No doubt this is easily done, but it is doing my head in trying to find out how. I am using dreamweaver to develop my site and I am by no means an experienced site developer, so simple talk please.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

[stevesh]

First, Dreamweaver will be of little to no use in styling Zencart.

Read through the Tutorials/FAQ section, and create your custom template before you do anything else.

After that, you'll need to familiarize yourself with the various areas of Zencart, and you'll need some HTML and (especially) CSS knowledge. (I knew nothing about CSS when I started with Zencart - turns out it's pretty easy to learn.)

Try stuff, and then come back here with specific questions if you can't get something to work.



Start with this: install the Firefox browser and the Web Developer plugin for Firefox. You can use those to see where in the stylesheet you change the styling of the various page elements.

Ctrl-Shift-Y will allow you to hover over a section of the page and see the class and id names for that section in the box at the top. The statements in the stylesheet that begin with # are id's and the ones that begin with dots are classes.

Ctrl-Shift-E will open the CSS editor and allow you to edit the stylesheet and see the changes in real time without changing anything permanently. An essential tool.

Some prefer Firebug, which does much the same thing.

(If you're using Firefox 4-8, you'll need to remap the editor shortcut, since Firefox has appropriated Ctrl-Shift-E for an internal function - I use Ctrl-Shift-Q.)