Well, I've waded through all 24 pages of this thread - and I've gone through the FAQ - need to peruse through the wiki link.

I've been designing sites for about 4 years - pretty basic html table layouts and using Paypal and building custom carts (none of my customers have large inventories, and none to date needed cc processing).

Well, my loyal customer has got an infusion of money to build her business, is nearly set up w/ authorize.net and I decided that I'd take the leap into learning a shopping cart and settled on zen-cart.

I didn't have any trouble setting it up, I understand the process fairly well - the included modules are wonderful as compared to e-commerce. I still have a glitch w/ authorize.net having the orders go through w/ the test account they gave me, but I'm confident it will work.

I have to say the place that is driving me nuts is the template stuff - I want my own fonts for the header <h1>, etc. - I want white text on a custom dark blue column on the right and a custom header on the same blue at the top and I nice background image that works well on the current site - really, really basic. Oh, and I want my own text on the front page - thought I got it w/ copying it to the main page through one of the admin links, but it didn't show up.

But, I just don't get the css stuff - I so want a step by step guide - someone's tutorial of how to change the default template - to add colors, change fonts and change images - I've read about overrides, I've read about seperate folders, etc. and I just don't get it. I read the one page about copying the tp_header and footer page - got that, but didn't know what to do w/ them and don't really know where to put them once they're finished.

I got burned w/ a mambo site - I pounded through creating a custom template (someone had created a step by step and it was manageable) - I find out mambo released a couple of upgrades, I wasn't careful about what was changing and my template no longer worked.

So, I'm hesistant to leap - I can't find a template that's affordable for my client and personally, I just want to do it myself - I don't need any big deal stuff - I don't need a different look for different pages.

So - there I feel better - I love the product - I am excited to offer it to my customers, but man I wish the template stuff was easier for my old brain to wrap itself around it.

So, does the book that's being offered do this?

Michelle