Any change I make to stylesheet.css messes up everything

Hello all,

I am new to Zen-Cart & although I have some HTML experience, I'm in no way an expert. I apologize if my problem seems trivial, but I'm extremely frustrated at this point.

I created my own /CUSTOM folder within my store/includes/templates/CUSTOM (as per the instructions), and created the /css folder within that; I copied the stylesheet.css (from the store/includes/templates/template_default/css folder) to that new css folder within my /CUSTOM directory so I could modify the stylesheet to my specifications. The problem is, ANYTHING I change results in a loss of all formatted structure to the page & looks like it's just displaying in HTML format only, as if it didn't have a style sheet. See my site: https://www.causefortshirts.com/store for an example of what I mean. If I start with the original stylesheet.css file as provided in store/includes/templates/template_default/css and, for example, ONLY change the background color in the body it messes up everything, let alone trying to change more than one line of code. What I am doing wrong??

Yes, I "update" the template in my Zen-Cart Admin Tools section.

Also, if I restore the original stylesheet.css as provided by Zen-Cart, it works fine again, but it's back to not being customized.

I am editing the stylesheet code in Dreamweaver CS5.

I am very discouraged and frustrated right now because it seems I'm not able to modify the look of this thing at all.

Thanks in advance for any help anyone can give me.

Lara

Visiting your stylesheet: http://www.causefortshirts.com/store/includes/templates/cft_template/css/stylesheet.css
brings a 403-Forbidden error:> 403 Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /store/includes/templates/cft_template/css/stylesheet.css on this server.

Have you been altering the .htaccess files that come with Zen Cart? Or adding your own which maybe are causing conflicts?

Article from the FAQs section: http://www.zen-cart.com/content.php?233-my-stylesheet-is-not-loading-or-my-page-loads-with-no-styling-or-effect-from-css-stylesheet

No, I have not made any changes to the .htaccess files nor have I added my own.

check your css folder permissions should be 755

I think I may have figured it out. The permissions set on the stylesheet.css were very minimal. I changed them and now it displays correctly.

Do you still get that error when trying to view my page?

rbarbour: THANK YOU! I will check them again to make sure that's where they are.

Thank you very much for the help.

no errors - looks like your good to go!