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  1. #21
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    Default Re: Using Old Templates On New Versions

    I'm really impressed with the community response to my inquiry!

    @RodG: your post in conjunction with schoolboy's have give me a better grasp on how the system works. You two are very insightful.

    @SPH: your visual representation of what it means to turn a basic template into a working product was GREAT. Thank you for that. I also agree that the logo and banner elements are the hardest part of designing a website. I admit that I'm tempted to outsource these elements to other graphic designers at times.

    @dgent: I'm glad a know all of those things you mentioned -- save for php -- to be spared by that rant, lol.


    @Schoolboy: your two examples have also helped me to clear some of my previous concerns. The fact that those two templates feel completely different means to me -- and hopefully everyone else -- that any-one template an be used to create something totally unique.

    Thank you to the rest that I may have missed.

    I've downloaded a basic template that I plan on making a master piece. How long that will take? No idea.

    Daykeem.

  2. #22
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    Default Re: Using Old Templates On New Versions

    Quote Originally Posted by schoolboy View Post

    Most of the world's really successful online retailers actually have very BASIC site designs (unless they are into some "posh" area of women's fashion - but even then, the really large UK highstreet chains keep their sites very graphically "subdued". They know that the KEY FOCUS must be the product. Go look at the SIZE of the shop logo on AMAZON.COM, WALMART.COM, DIXONS.CO.UK, CURRYS.CO.UK, STAPLES.CO.UK . They are all very tiny... the Amazon logo measures just 50px X 200px.

    These retailers KNOW what matters - the PRODUCTS ! They place HUGE emphasis on product displays and showcasing. They know that people are there for the SOLE REASON to look at the products.

    Nobody goes to Amazon to spend 10 minutes looking at their logo, or their background colors... They go to Amazon to look at PRODUCTS. So these site have very SUBDUED general (corporate) graphics, but the PRODUCT DATA and PRODUCT IMAGERY is very bold, strong and prominent.

    .
    A valid point, but a bit irrelevant, as if you created a new store and made it look just like Amazons layout, colours, style etc, it would look pretty crap. Amazon as an example is a terrible site design and user wise too.

    Im sure the £1 shop in your local town does lots of turn over, but it still looks basic, bland cheap, and you don't have a feeling of quality.

    Amazon and eBay arent directly selling you any product, so thats not an issue. They are not trying to sell a brand. - the Currys and Dixons site you mentioned are highly graphical and image based.

  3. #23
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    Default Re: Using Old Templates On New Versions

    Quote Originally Posted by SPH View Post
    I don't think that most people go to a site to sit back with a coke and bag of pop-corn to watch a slide-show. :) That and the difficulty of making decent slide photos is why I've never used one.

    I understand that the products have to be paramount.

    And I am a huge fan of the less-is-more theory and of all or mostly white sites in general. But all those sites you mention, they also all look good, very good. Great product photos are a given. But also nice supporting banners and colors. With just that, we could all forget about colors: just have a mostly white site with maybe some nice color on the main nav bar and very nice supporting banners. Like this site by one of our competitors (much larger than us): macktakmart . com

    I'm a guy, so what I think looks nice gets constantly voted down from a woman's view point. I feel like Mel Gibson in "What Women Want." I've done some study indicating that the color of a site can affect men and women differently. For me, the default bluish All Business template (which I just came from) and the facebook-like IcAtheme template (which went through my best years) gets the best female feed-back.

    I'm just trying Cherry Zen past couple days, and thankfully it comes with two good "female" colors: Purple/Lavender which I'm using and the Blue version. (I'm also interested in this template because I think it started it all re the horizontal nav layout and I may get in to zencart work.)

    I have never been a fan of background images in general and only put mine up on the new Cherry Zen the other night, to see how it looks. Otherwise, I had an all white background (no img) and very well may return to it soon.

    Suggested logo is only 164x90, but have not yet gotten to that.

    But yes: I'm thinking that an all or mostly all white site is probably the safest...just so it doesn't cross over into boring.

    sph
    www.prommart.com

    PS: Come to think of it, All Business and Cherry Zen were designed by women. Maybe best to go with that for a women's site.
    Or try a slightly off white, to grey/pastel, like this forum. Or check the link to my dress site in my signature. That site gets over 70,000 visitors a month.

  4. #24
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    Default Re: Using Old Templates On New Versions

    Quote Originally Posted by dgent View Post
    If you're not, use a ready to go template, or use another cart, otherwise you're going to go no-where.
    I agree except why recommend a site which has templates which are KNOWN to be pretty but problematic.. A few years back the free templates available were NOT out the box pretty I agree.. However, today, there are plenty of ready made and good looking options available that are properly put together AND easier to modify (if the shopowner so desires) than Template Monstrosity and their templates full of endless nested divs and missing core code..
    Last edited by DivaVocals; 25 Apr 2012 at 02:37 PM.
    My Site - Zen Cart & WordPress integration specialist
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  5. #25
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    Default Re: Using Old Templates On New Versions

    Quote Originally Posted by DivaVocals View Post
    I agree except why recommend a site which has templates which are KNOWN to be pretty but problematic.. A few years back the free templates available were NOT out the box pretty I agree.. However, today, there are plenty of ready made and good looking options available that are properly put together AND easier to modify (if the shopowner so desires) than Template Monstrosity and their templates full of endless nested divs and missing core code..
    Ok find me a site with over 100 templates available with a really professional look in every genre available for Zencart, other than TM.

    Every one is saying 'don't use TM' but no one offers anything as an alternative.

    Remeber most people that start out with Zencart have zero experience with css etc so saying 'templates that can be easily' modified is not an option. Alot of people just want an out of the box online store they can put their products on and make money from.

  6. #26
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    Default Re: Using Old Templates On New Versions

    Which is where we get back to what I have said before, that while everybody should make some customizations to their template so it does not look like every other one out there, many just will not, and a neutral contemporary stock template will let their products be the focus instead of the sidebox/centerbox headers.

  7. #27
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    Default Re: Using Old Templates On New Versions

    Except MANY MORE small owners do not simply load Zen Cart, create their products and move on.. As evidenced by the support forum, they want to modify their stores and that's where Template Monstrosity templates and the the slash and burn methods they use to create their pretty little templates fall flat on it's face with their infinite nested divs, and their penchant for discarding core Zen Cart code. The minute these same folks want to install a mod or two is when things usually start to get ugly..

    Quote Originally Posted by dgent View Post
    Every one is saying 'don't use TM'
    I would be all for Template Monstrosity if they bothered to create templates without the unecessary nested divs or removing core code to "make" their templates work.. EVERY SINGLE ONE of their templates could be recreated without the slash and burn techniques they use to create them..


    Quote Originally Posted by dgent View Post
    Ok find me a site with over 100 templates available with a really professional look in every genre available for Zencart, other than TM.
    Quote Originally Posted by dgent View Post
    but no one offers anything as an alternative.
    Well let's start here then.. http://www.picaflor-azul.com/ and this is not the only source available for properly coded professional looking Zen Cart templates.

    Quote Originally Posted by dgent View Post
    Remeber most people that start out with Zencart have zero experience with css etc so saying 'templates that can be easily' modified is not an option.
    Any small business owner who decides to take on the task of building their own website using a tool as powerful as Zen Cart owes it to themselves to LEARN CSS. I do not accept that the DIY small business owner should not have to learn how to manage their own store up to and including how to manage the look and feel of it..

    Quote Originally Posted by dgent View Post
    Alot of people just want an out of the box online store they can put their products on and make money from.
    Unfortunately the posts on the forum do not bear this out.. If this was all there was to it you wouldn't see posts from the DIY small business owner asking for help to fix something that blew up when they wanted to modify their "out of the box online store they can put their products on and make money from"
    My Site - Zen Cart & WordPress integration specialist
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  8. #28
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    Default Re: Using Old Templates On New Versions

    Quote Originally Posted by DivaVocals View Post



    Well let's start here then.. http://www.picaflor-azul.com/ and this is not the only source available for properly coded professional looking Zen Cart templates.

    Any small business owner who decides to take on the task of building their own website using a tool as powerful as Zen Cart owes it to themselves to LEARN CSS. I do not accept that the DIY small business owner should not have to learn how to manage their own store up to and including how to manage the look and feel of it..

    Unfortunately the posts on the forum do not bear this out.. If this was all there was to it you wouldn't see posts from the DIY small business owner asking for help to fix something that blew up when they wanted to modify their "out of the box online store they can put their products on and make money from"
    (a) The Picaflor is no where near the style of what TM offers.

    (b) Only on an open source ecommerce program. I know plenty of business owners that have used corporate ecommerce software and all the styling adjustments are internal to the website admin, ie they do not need to hack stylesheets themselves.

    (c) Id love to see where you got this data from. Go to the top, click new posts, and see every day how many people have issues with broken sites or things that don't work, or don't know how to do something. Now select all the ones from those posts that have TM templates. More people have problems with sites they have built themselves.

    This is no different to saying to someone, 'dont buy a brand new car, you can't work on it yourself if it breaks, and you need to pay a dealership - buy an older car and you can do all this'...And the guy in the brand new car is looking at you thinking 'but you drive a piece of crap, and I can afford it/don't really care and your car never seems to look like its running as well as mine, whereas mine is fantastic.'

    The fact is, 99% of users that have installed Zencart, and bought a TM template, are perfectly fine and making sales, their site looks lovely and they are happy with it. Yes, later on, they may want to have an extra column, and realise they can't but, hell thats life. Before database driven e-commerce came along, lots of people had static page websites, and couldnt add a column or different listing either, without major work. Who are you to tell them they are doing it wrong?

    Its just going round and around in circles. I have sites with hacked pieces of code, butchered beyond belief, to get what I needed, because I needed those mods fast. I don't have time to sit around waiting to learn how to do it the 'correct' way etc...But the sites work perfectly for my customers, and I handle over £10 million per annum turnover through these sites, and have a database of over 1.5 million customers on file, and I could do the same using a TM template on these stores. Yet I have people with sites that do a couple of sales a month telling 'me' im 'doing it wrong'.

  9. #29
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    Default Re: Using Old Templates On New Versions

    Quote Originally Posted by dgent View Post
    (a) The Picaflor is no where near the style of what TM offers.
    In YOUR opinion.. Which you are entitled to have.. Let's just say we don't agree..

    Quote Originally Posted by dgent View Post
    (b) Only on an open source ecommerce program. I know plenty of business owners that have used corporate ecommerce software and all the styling adjustments are internal to the website admin, ie they do not need to hack stylesheets themselves.
    and since we're talking about open source (AKA Zen Cart) your comparison to commercial software is a lot like comparing apples to oranges.. Both fruit, but not exactly the same..

    Quote Originally Posted by dgent View Post
    (c) Id love to see where you got this data from.
    Ummm... Same place I imagine you got your data from..

    Quote Originally Posted by dgent View Post
    The fact is, 99% of users that have installed Zencart, and bought a TM template, are perfectly fine and making sales, their site looks lovely and they are happy with it. Yes, later on, they may want to have an extra column, and realise they can't but, hell thats life. Before database driven e-commerce came along, lots of people had static page websites, and couldnt add a column or different listing either, without major work. Who are you to tell them they are doing it wrong?
    I see you've missed my point here.. So let me say this again.. If a shop owner's Template Monstrosity template removes code that Zen Cart or an add-on needs which later causes OTHER issues.. well that's a problem is it not??..
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  10. #30
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    Default Re: Using Old Templates On New Versions

    My sister has this TM template on one of her secondary sites:

    http://www.templatemonster.com/demo/32422.html

    Here it is on her site:

    http://www.quince-dresses.com/

    I think too much orange to look as good as the demo, and we never did get the background image looking right (the stock one was inappropriate.)

    But everything works. Footer menu mod, Lightbox, Simple SEO URL. Only thing is we had to dedicate some top ezpages to the login stuff, as it was all in the footer. And we did re-arrange the product layout page.

    No problems with the TM template.

    She did buy a template from another souce (not Picaflor) but ended up "returning" it.

    I was very impressed with TM's demo template http://www.templatemonster.com/free-...templates.html when I had it on my secondary site, http://www.fashion-mart.biz/ , now Apple Zen.

    Everything worked on that insofar as the typical mods I use.

    But I don't think that even TM has the best templates.

    Here is a Chinese competitor who I was told on the Pub is a zencart:

    http://www.ulovebridal.com/

    I really like the over-all layout. I never had a side-flyout looking that good.

    But the product pages is where I think it stands out, and stands out from TM templates. Even without all of the gadgets and widgets, looks really professional, to me anyway.

    I want that template! LOL

    Dgent, "I handle over £10 million per annum turnover through these sites" holy c r a p! That's outstanding. With that, I guess you could have any platform and support you want.

    sph
    www.prommart.com
    Last edited by SPH; 25 Apr 2012 at 07:43 PM.

 

 
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