Newbie Needs Help

Hello :)

First post on here. For the past 24hrs I have been trying to find out how to change the area outside of the shopping cart template.

Does it have an official name? I am searching for edit background and coming up with nothing.

I have added a pic that explains the area that I need to chnage.

Please can someon help me before I have no hair left please. Thank you :blush:

that is your page background . you can control the look ( color , background image ) by using your Stylesheet.css .. normally background color or image directive goes between body() tag in your stylesheet.

For future reference, install the Firefox browser and the Web Developer plugin for Firefox. You can use those to see where in the stylesheet you change the styling of the various page elements.

Ctrl-Shift-Y will allow you to hover over a section of the page and see the class and id names for that section in the box at the top. The statements in the stylesheet that begin with # are id's and the ones that begin with dots are classes.

Ctrl-Shift-E will open the CSS editor and allow you to edit the stylesheet and see the changes in real time without changing anything permanently. An essential tool.

Some prefer Firebug, which does much the same thing.

(If you're using Firefox 4 or 5, you'll need to remap the editor shortcut, since Firefox has appropriated Ctrl-Shift-E for an internal function - I use Ctrl-Shift-Q.)

Thanks,

I will have a play and see how it goes :)

I've had a look and I cannot figure it out. Can someone tell me what to do please?

I can see where there is a color specified for the background, but how do I tell it to load a particular image, and can I preview it in Dreamweaver?

Sorry to ask what prob seems like very basic questions to you, but i am a novice aththis. Been trained in DW like 4 years ago, and not really used it :blush:

Best advice I can offer is to put Dreamweaver away while you're working with Zencart. It isn't really useful with other than flat HTML sites.

If you tried Web Developer and clicked Ctrl-Shift-Y, you would have seen, as you moved the cursor around the page, that the area you asked about is body (as tony said). You would download the stylesheet.css file to your computer with your FTP program, open it in your text editor, and change the red part to the color you want it to be:

body {
margin: 0;
font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: 62.5%;
color: #000000;
background-color: #e5edf5;
}

If you want to add an image, you would add this rule:

background-image: url(../images/YOUR_IMAGE.jpg);

where YOUR_IMAGE.jpg is in the includes/templates/YOUR_CUSTOM_TEMPLATE/images folder.

Then upload the saved file to your custom template's css folder.

Thanks .. I actually want to add a striped baclground. How do I do that? I don't want a plain colour.

I have seen lots of zen cart sites with images in the background.

I edited my last post, but, due to your visitors using different screen resolutions, the safest kind of image is one that wll tile (repeating pattern), rather than a photographic image.

Thanks..that is exactly what I was looking for.

While DreamWeaver is a great WYSIWYG editor, the "ease" with which these software packages do the coding for its users does not do them any favours.

Your issue seems a lack of knowledge of CSS.

There are some good tutorials at W3schools.com .

Just so you know I am making progress. Google Chrome is usually my default browser of choice, but after installing the Web Developr PlugIn on Firefox - all I can say is WOW!! :clap:

So thanks very much for suggesting that.

I used to work as a Jnr Lotus Notes developer (back in the day) so I am a bit more familar than most with how code works.

I just had very little experience of CSS, as I have only ever used Dreamweaver to edit a previously built website.

So thanks everyone. :hug: