Template Monster Template Installation Problem

[stevesh]

It does surprise me, however, that the extent of the bad press TM receives on this forum (and probably others), does not prompt their management team to tidy up their act a bit!

The power that comes with being a monopoly ensures they don't have to. Near as I can tell, all the sharp, image-based Zencart templates sold are TM, in one sense or another.

[MotoDelta]

It would be very useful to document the ones that DO work well. THe templates on TM are much more professional and modern looking that most of the stock/standard templates that live here. One quickly gets tired of seeing the box-box-box format.

[fairestcape]

It would be very useful to document the ones that DO work well. THe templates on TM are much more professional and modern looking that most of the stock/standard templates that live here. One quickly gets tired of seeing the box-box-box format.

It's not that difficult to "tweak" the ZC Classic template to get a sassy, professional design - even within the relative constraints of the "header-columns-footer" layout.

To me, faultless FUNCTIONALITY is more important, and the standard template structure virtually assures this.

[MotoDelta]

Point well taken. However doing that takes a fair amount of time. If you have 1 or 2 websites it's simple enough, but what if you're maintaining 20, or 100? Very nice to be able to just purchase one.

I suppose I should just look into hiring someone to create the snazzy ones for me. :)

[nathant]

On the flipside, here's some good news.

I bought a template monster template for our store and after some of the initial messing around with it, I got it to look the way it's supposed to.

Some of the little changes I had to make:

- The header didn't format correctly
- It took some work to get the top banner back
- The All Categories/New Categories part doesn't format right

I have an evil minion who understands CSS and computer-type stuff better than I do, so that helps.

I wanted to throw this out there so people knew what they were getting into with a TM template - it is doable but it takes some knowledge and time - probably 5 hours or so to make it look professional.

[Merlinpa1969]

and hope that you never have to turn on any of the functions that TM decided were not needed

[dropbop]

Was just playing around with a TM template last night trying to get it to center.

I tried all sorts of stuff but no matter what I did it would stay left aligned.

So instead of centering i just created a left margin of 225px and that make it look like its centered. Ok, its not gonna look great when someone has their FF or IE window half open, but how many people really browse the internet half screen anyway.

here is what I did.. depending on the width of your TM template you can change this around to suite.

includes/templates/YOUR_TM_TEMPLATE/css/stylesheet.css

at the top of the file find:

#body {

and just below it put:

margin-left: 225px;

So you end up with this (or something similar depending on the template you have):

body {
	margin-left: 225px;
        font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;
        font-size: 62.5%;
        background-color: #fff;
        color: #464646;
        background-image: url(../images/bg_main.gif);
        background-repeat: repeat-x;