How do I make my store front look nice?

Hi,

I just want to set the font to white, change the green bars to another colour, remove the visa ad banner and set up a black background for my shop.

I have the Zen book but it doesn't cover this at all.

If there is a page for dummies that steps me through setting up a simple shop front up, that would be great.

many thanks for any help,

Hexe

Hexe:

Hi,

I just want to set the font to white, change the green bars to another colour, remove the visa ad banner and set up a black background for my shop.

I have the Zen book but it doesn't cover this at all.

If there is a page for dummies that steps me through setting up a simple shop front up, that would be great.

many thanks for any help,

Hexe

Sure is H,
At the top of this page is a menu bar. Look for Tutorials/FAQS
here you will find most or all of your answers to your questions above..

There may be ready made template in downloads section
to suit your needs.. you can view them all at
http://(sorry, site offline)/138/index.php
Top right hand sidebox
:smile:

misty:

There may be ready made template in downloads section
to suit your needs.. you can view them all at
http://(sorry, site offline)/138/index.php
Top right hand sidebox
:smile:

Cheers for that !!!! :clap:

Someone please add that to the FAQ section where it tells you to learn css if you want to customise your shop!

Hexe

Hi again,

I was enthusiastic a little too early -- I've downloaded 3 different templates and none of them works.

First of all, I grabbed Zen Cart Zen, the tool bar picks it up correctly but when I want to preview it, it informs that I don't have permissions to access /zen/includes/templates/zencart_zen/images on this server, although I have, everything is set correctly. Clicking on the catalogue itself gives me a blank page.

Next I tried Darkness Template, and this I can preview, but alas, it shows me a scr_template_default.jpg picture of the default green template. Clicking on my catalogue gives me a blank page.

Finally I try Bare Bones -- There the preview looks like what I downloaded, but alas, my catalogue page is still blank.

I'm quite happy to live without the fancy templates, all I want is a black back ground with white font and get rid of the green bars. I figured out how to get rid of the visa advert, so at least some success!

If someone would be so kind to just tell me what lines to change in the original stylesheet, I'd be grateful -- this is too much of a programming puzzle for me by now, and it's getting worse instead of easier ;)

many thanks,

Hexe

These templates all work if installed correctly; therefore, you have not followed the installation instructions exactly, or else you are trying to do something in a way that it is not designed for.

gjh42:

These templates all work if installed correctly; therefore, you have not followed the installation instructions exactly, or else you are trying to do something in a way that it is not designed for.

That may well be the case, the instructions that come with it are not exactly concise, so it's very likely that I didn't get things right.. ;-)

From the installation instruction for ZenCart_Zen:

The best and easiest way to install this template is to use your ftp client, and drag/transfer the includes folder to your ZenCart install. As all of the files are structured like ZenCart and are contained in their own folders, you can determine where they belong and add them to the correct areas.As you can see, those are not exactly helpful for non technical people at all -- 'put them where they belong' is not a good way of documenting your work ;-D

However, given that the Zen Cart picks those templates up in it's Templates dialog, I think we can safely assume that I installed them in the correct areas. If I did guess wrongly and you know the exact directories where those templates are supposed to go, please let me know.

But back to my actual request -- if someone could just please tell me those 3 magic lines that I need to change in my current css sheet to get where I want to be, I'd be grateful (and I promise to stop posting too! :wink: )

many thanks,

8():

Hexe

For starters, the body {} declaration sets fundamental sitewide properties. You can change the font-color and background-color there.

You will probably need to eliminate background-colors from a number of other declarations so the black shows through. There will probably also be places like input boxes where you need to specify dark fonts so text is visible.

Do you want the heading bars to have the same kind of gradient in another color? If so, you will need to edit /includes/templates/classic/images/tile_back.gif in a graphics program and save it in /includes/templates/your_template/images/tile_back.gif.
If you want a solid color in place of the green, you can replace all instances of
background-image: url(../images/tile_back.gif);
with
background-color: #112233;
(adjust to taste.)

gjh42:

For starters ...(snip)...
(adjust to taste.)

Thank you very much for this, that did the trick , shop is working now and it's everything I need :)

When I recover from the computer OD I incurred in the last few days, I'll eventually get round to doing things properly(as I should!), but for now, I'm quite happy with my pretty little sleeping dragon and am not in the mood to serve it breakfast quite yet.

8():

Hexe