My cart not displaying correctly

Afternoon everyone, I have recently returned to Zen Cart after being disappointed with 1 and 1. Their cart was not for me. I reinstalled Zen Cart and have decided to go without an actual site for Xerarchs.com. I am only using the cart since it has all the pages I would have used in a site. When someone brings up my site, the changes that have been made do not display until a second page is clicked. The cart works as I have already had a few orders. Any help would be great as I am a firefighter and dont know much about this. A friend of mine uploaded the cart for me. Thanks much, Art

First thing you need to do is create your custom template, make your changes to the files then upload those files to the custom template folders:

http://www.zen-cart.com/content.php?180-how-do-i-create-a-new-custom-template

I will do that. My friend that uploaded it said he first made a copy of it and then uploaded that, I assumed the copy was for that customization.

Ok, I created my custom template and uploaded it and now the whole thing looks way different. I did notice that when I type xerarchs.com the first page still comes up without the changes and the address bar says xerarchs.com but when I click on a seconed page, the cart comes up with the changes but the address bar says xerarchs.com/shop. I didnt want it to say shop since I am not using a site, just the shop.

You need to edit the includes/configure.php file to remove the /shop part wherever you see it.

One more suggestion that can probably wait a while, but you'll need to address eventually - your product images are waaaaay too big (file size, not dimensions) and your pages take forever to load as a result. You need to optimize them. The preferred file size for the smallest image is less than 10KB, but anything you can do to reduce them from the current 1.5Mb (!!) would help.

Thanks much steve, I will get on it today.

Hey Stevesh, I only found three places in includes/configure.php where it says /shop but I cant change any of them. I get an error message that says, "could not open includes/configure.php for writing. permission denied.

Thanks again for your help.

You'll need to change the permissions on that file to writable (755 is OK) to make changes. Be sure you change them back afterward. You can usually change permissions through your FTP program.

ok, so I changed the permissions from 0444 to 0644 and changed define('DIR_WS_CATALOG', '/shop/'); deleting shop, but leaving '/' and bad things happened. the cart loaded but without any form or pics, or colors or anything. I was able to change it back.

And now, I followed the instructions for a new custom template and the look of the cart was changed drastically. If I go in and change things in the new custom CSS stylesheet no changes appear (font size and color), but if I make the changes in the original CSS the changes come through. weird