Great thanks SHAN...I will look into it...but I don't really have the whole CONCEPT down on this smarty thing...

Another example would be http://www.hom.gb.com/shop/ (for the cart) and http://www.hom.gb.com/index.php (for example of the regular pages).

If you don't want to do the work yourself or don't feel comfortable with it yet get one of the guy in here to quote for it ( I've used FunkyDunk a few times now) or contact the x-cart support team as they do template changes as well so it fits in with the rest of your design.

What's it usually cost for the redesign?

It depends on who does the redesign, how complex it is, and who implements the skin. Check out www.templatemonster.com for designs that good and reasonably priced. Then, once you find a skin, you can just ask for a quote in the forums and someone will give you a price, then go from there. I usually plan on 10 hours or so to implment a skin, of course, it always varies depending on the complexity and depth of the changes.

Hope this helps!

--Kurt

Do you actually implement skins? If so if I give you the details could you quote me?

BTW: Too bad there isn't an IDE editor for smarty. I tried customizing DreamWeaver as in the instructions had said but it still does not display right.

I have been quoted 9 hours from the x-cart team at $25 per hour ($225). I was looking at a couple of the folks from here because they do awesome work but I can't fight the economics of going with x-cart team.

In my Opinion X-Cart Sucks it up big time. They are sloppy in their code especial thier debugging(HAH like they even debugg) and they have never completed a project even within Double the time they quoted me.
I know many who have no problems I however have watched them 3 times screw up and thats enough to proove they are NOT WORTH the savings of $$$. Spend Double the money Get it done by somone with a positive reputation like Boome Shan FunkyDunk......

Honestly you would not think it would take over 12 revisions to debugg an upgrade fro 3.3.3-3.4.3 The millions of bugs I found Just Pisses me off to no degree I gave up on them as I did not have time to spend doing a job I paid them for.

P.S. They did a decent job on my templates(HTML is a little inneficient and I suppllied a photoshop file with the whole site elements already made) I have had most problems with their programmers.

Re: Just need CART no STORE
 

The "Add-on shopping cart" mode of LiteCommerce (http://www.litecommerce.com/) may be of interest to you. It is capable of being integrated easily with your existing store without having to re-create the store from the scratch.