Some Customization Questions

[oracle86]

Hi everyone, I did some searches so I hope these topics haven't been covered excessively before. I have a few questions about some things that I'd like to change with my custom Zen Cart template.

My regular website (for reference to the navbar I'm talking about) is:
http://www.thegoldworks.net

The location of my store's Zen Cart is:
http://www.thegoldworks.net/cart

1) The Zen Cart Navbar. It is currently a grey strip underneath "The Goldworks Online Store" header. You'll notice on my regular site I have one of those CSS navbar's. It's nothing fancy, but I'd like to use it for the Zencart navbar or at least something very similar. Is this possible? I know it's a pain but I can picture people being confused about the navbar changing when they go from my regular site to the online store portion.

2) Above "The Goldworks Online Store" header is a login pane. I'd like to have this either below the navbar (probably white instead of grey) or as it's own layout box on the left or right hand side. Is this possible?

3) Zen Cart ad's at the bottom of the page. Are these 100% neccesary? I love Zencart and I have full intention of keeping the powered by Zencart on my website but it's not the kind of website that has advertising on it. How do I remove this? (Note, the ad's don't always display sometimes you need to hit refresh a few times to get one)

4) Layout boxes. I have the search bar and the categories bar at the moment. My first problem is that when I enable other ones (such as "Languages" or "Shopping Cart" in the Tools > Layout Boxes) they do not display.

5) More of the layout boxes. I've been playing around with the CSS for a week or so and I still can't properly set up a 1px solid #363636 border around the entire layout box as well as setting a 1em margin on the left sides left and the right sides right. Also, for some reason even though I'm setting the right hand side to have a margin like the one on the left, it does not do this.

I hope this makes sense. Thanks to anyone who is able to give me a hand with this. I'm sorry if it's been overdone and I'm a pest.

[oracle86]

Problem 3 solved.

[dbltoe]

1. The strip under the (rather large ) image is actually a Categories-Tabs Menu that is turned on and off in the Admin under Configuration -> Layout Settings. IMHO, it's better to not have the navigation look too much like your website when Zen is not your entry page. Confusion and a customer clicking home thinking they are going to the cart home when they, in fact, wind up out of the cart; will cause many customers to leave.
2. The beauty of the override system is that you can take the tpl_header.php (and others) located in the includes/templates/template_default/common folder and modify them to your heart's content. You will need to save them to something like includes/templates/goldworks/common to prevent them from being overwritten on the next update. Check the wiki, tutorials, and Docs for more on the override system and create your own goldworks template.
3. Glad you found it.
4. Languages and Shopping Cart are normally on by default Unless you have already created an override directory and forgot to reset the layout boxes after changing templates.
5. If you don't have a copy of Firefox with the Web Developer, FireBug, and Html Validator extensions, GET ONE. IE will not give you a proper look at the way your site should be CORRETLY displayed. Plus, the Web Developer extension allows you to find the feature you need to fix (Ctrl-Shift-F). You'll find that there are wrappers around most areas that control the look far better than trying to "play" with the boxes themselves.

HTH
john

[oracle86]

Thanks for your help Dbltoe. Things are being fixed up and it's looking more how I want it to.

I use Firefox and Aardvark but I picked up FireBug. Usually, I get the layout looking how it's supposed to and then deal with the problems that need to be addressed before launching the site.