Remove space below header

[Pet Herbal Remedies]

Thank You Much. I did backup and pasted the HTML code into the HTML editor and still am getting 26 errors in my site.

I'm noticing now that the biggest problem that appears to be is:
Line 57, Column 189: character "&" is the first character of a delimiter but occurred as data.

… class="category-subs-selected">Cats & Dogs</span></a> </li>

✉

This message may appear in several cases:

* You tried to include the "<" character in your page: you should escape it as "&lt;"
* You used an unescaped ampersand "&": this may be valid in some contexts, but it is recommended to use "&amp;", which is always safe.
* Another possibility is that you forgot to close quotes in a previous tag.

All of my categories feature a & within the titles. Hmmmm.

I really appreciate your time.

[dbltoe]

While I'm looking at the other stuff, go in and change the category "Cats & Dogs" to "Cats &amp; Dogs".

I'm not sure how the span calls got in the files, but they're part of the problem.

[Pet Herbal Remedies]

Hi There,

I've changed the Cats & Dogs to Cats and Dogs for the Category name. (it's consistent with my other categories).

I really appreciate your time and looking into the "span" files. Not sure why they are there....

Lynn

[Pet Herbal Remedies]

Dbltoe,

One more thing... I noticed that my font size (verdana 12 on the main page) isn't appearing like verdana 12. UGH! Any more thoughts?

Much much appreciated! Lynn

[dbltoe]

You have a very interesting setup with this site.

Did you do this or did someone set it up for you.

Don't want to step on any toes but, it looks like the work of someone who wanted to code php versus work the admin settings and css calls.

You have weird things showing up everywhere. Right now your site is set for:

body {
color:#000000;
font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;
font-size:62.5%;
}

That's the standard for Zen. putting styles in text as you enter it creates the 150-line main page that we dropped into 36 lines of code.
Before, the main page had three different ways of defining <h2> When (not if) they needed changing, you would not be able to change one call in the stylesheet but would have to search every file holding an <h2> to see if it needed changing.

Note that, even with the font defaulting to verdana, some folks will have other fonts set as default or simply not have verdana installed on their computer. (yes, lurkers, I know it's standard font but I have a friend who goes through every computer he touches and deletes fonts he doesn't like)

and, I'm afraid, the really bad news is that most of this will go away with your settings at the next upgrade because everything is still being done in the classic directory.

sorry that this doesn't help much,

[Pet Herbal Remedies]

Dbltoe,

I'm at a loss with your response. Firstly, thank you again for your time. I have designed this site, hoping and thinking that everything I had been doing was correct. Obviously not. I'm still a little confused about what you mean by me editing the classic folder versus another. Are there means to "fix" this? I have been backing up nearly every day. Prior to a couple of days ago my header and site was working in both IE and FF.

Please advise. Lynn

[dbltoe]

Sorry if I seemed brutal. You are experiencing the reason for my signature. Many folks just jump in to Zen Cart with both feet, especially those who are more familiar with the territory.

I did much teh same in 2002. Jumped into OSCommerce with both feet, got my ego slapped, and jumped the OSC ship not long after ajeh moved to Zen. She, along with DrByte, has managed to save my bacon on many occasions. I'm a certified member of the "two steps forward: three steps back" club. Without this forum, I'd have gone back to door to door sales long ago.

You've done several things that are redundant possibly because you were not aware of what Zen does. For instance, a nice header is interrupted with your cart is empty and the amount when the cart is filled. Zen automatically adds the extra nav items when there's an item in the cart so there's no need for the extra. And there are several links that are not only hard-coded but include zenIDs that are from another session.

The classic template is an "old-school" example of how the cart can look. It does not take full advantage of css nor xhtml. Most folks recommend basing changes on the temple_default but, both are overwritten with any upgrade without A LOT OF WORK. Template_default is where Zen looks for most files if no override is found.

When I get a new customer, I suggest that they load the files, create the override directories, and then go through the admin drop-down menu items from left to right through the entire admin. It's amazing what can be learned by the time you get to tools.

Once the basic setup is done, I have them enter a product and start making the cart look like they want. By then, most of the look has been accomplished through the admin. Simple things like sort order for instance. I set up close to 1,000 products once only to have a customer want one group in the category to come first. ajeh commiserated with me but also taught me to use 10, 20, 30, etc. in sort orders for WHEN (not if) something needed to be inserted.

Normally, I just sit back and try to put a band aid or two on folk's problems but you are doing good work for the pets and I couldn't bring myself to let it get worse.

If I were you, I would load one of the templates from (sorry, site offline) and load the one that is closest to the look you want. Don't worry about the colors as they are easily changed. Turn on the new template and the sideboxes. See if most of the problems don't disappear. If they don't, you'll need to find which classic or template_default file(s) changed and fix or remove them.

Not a fun process I know. I had a sign above my desk in the Air Force. "Never enough time to do it right but, always enough time to do it over." It always frustrated me that they would not allow time to do it right but, always come back for corrections.

You have control of the situation and can decide to continue on or backup, regroup, and perservere.

I'll be here to help, either way.
john

[Pet Herbal Remedies]

John,

Thank you for being so brutally honest and for giving me so much of your time.

In an effort to create a unique site, I researched the forums for modifications and add ons that would help specialize it. I didn't realize that I was compromising it's ability to operate.

I am going to follow your instructions, download a new template, keep my fingers crossed and perhaps contact you...

I am from the school of hard knocks as well as 'where there's a will, there's a way'.

Onto my "will",
Lynn