Best approach to custom template?

[killerspam]

Hello,

I am creating a shop for a client, and I am looking for any pointers as to the most efficient way of templating zen-cart for a specific design.

Firstly, I should say that I am very experienced in html, css, php.


I have a template (below) which has already been sliced and created as html/css. What I am looking for is a pointer to the best approach to adding this as a template. Looking through the template files, there are a lot of IFs to account for every admin-set option (as I'd expect), but as I've already built this template in html, it would seemingly take a long time to divide it up into tiny components around all of the IFs.

Here are some screenshots of the sections. As you will see, the header / footer and side bars should remain the same throughout the site. The three pages I have here are the frontpage, a 'content page' (non-shop based content) and a product listing page.




I suppose what I may be looking for is the best way to access specific class functions to, for instance, return an array of categories and sub categories, so that I can write a little function to build my menu as I need it.

I hope I've explained myself well enough (I seriously need some sleep). If you need any more information, I'd be happy to provide it.

Many thanks in advance!
Mase

[Kim]

That isn't the way Zen Cart works- You need to put your parts and pieces into the Zen Cart Template Overrides system.

[killerspam]

OK, fair enough. I've been playing about with the overrides, and I'm making good progress. Thanks :)

[afo]

To create a very basic custom template (you can build from there), you need:
includes/languages/YOUR_TEMPLATE/english.php
includes/languages/english/YOUR_TEMPLATE/index.php
includes/languages/english/YOUR_TEMPLATE/header.php (to change the logo)
includes/templates/YOUR_TEMPLATE/template_info.php
includes/templates/YOUR_TEMPLATE/common/tpl_header.php
includes/templates/YOUR_TEMPLATE/images/logo.gif
includes/templates/YOUR_TEMPLATE/css/stylesheet.css

Any where you see a /classic/ folder, you can create a folder for your custom template. You can copy the files I suggested from either the /classic/ or /template_default/ folders.