Better editing a skin, or creating a new one?
 

I'm totally new, and xcart seems really big and scary to me. I'm a professional web designer, not a stranger to code, so I could be looking too deeply here. Xcart is just too big to fully understand in the time I have to do this project, but I need to do 2 things.

1) Make it match a site (basics: logo, background colors, links, stuff like that)

2) Add functionality to configure certain options (similar to if you go to apple.com to buy a G5 tower, and you get a bunch of dropdowns where you choose type and amount of RAM you want, what type of keyboard, if you want speakers, monitor, whatever.

If someone could give me an idea of how I should approach these modifications, I would be so thankful. I'm totally overwhelmed by the scope of this product. Fortunately there seems to be quite a large community involved.

Should I just go in and change the default css files? Or should I somehow make a new skin, and install that?

I'll look in the modules for something like the upgrades I'm talking about. Thank you for your time.

Welcome to X-Cart! If you want to match an existing site, you need to edit the main css file (skin1.css), as well as some of the core templates such as head.tpl, home.tpl, rectangle_top.tpl, bottom.tpl, menu.tpl, dialog.tpl, etc. It takes a while to get familar with which templates are which, but if you use webmaster mode, you can easily at least get the hang of which is which. If you are in a rush to get this project completed, it may be worth hiring a professional for the first job, until you get familar with all of the templates and layouts.

As for the second part of your question, sounds like you need the 'configurator' which is an add-on module that can be purchased from X-Cart.

If you are going to tackle the project yourself, spend lots of time reading and searching through the forum, as most questions have been answered numerous times. If you can't find an answer, feel free to post and we'll help you out. Good luck!

Hi,

Further to Balinor's answer - you are indeed going to need to get the hang of template editing pretty quickly.

Once you know which template you want, if you can get it into Layout mode - it will be much less daunting as you will see they are mainly just tables, usually called by if statements.

You would be best backing them up as you go, but you can always reinstall from the skin1_orig folder.

As Balinor says, read this forum - there are lots of things that you should do to start with, things that should really be default settings that aren't, but are easier done now than later.

One thing to remember I think, is that x-cart is designed to be all things to all people, but it is very flexible. Don't worry about moving something just because x-cart has put it there - the design has to meet your needs, not everyone elses.

As a designer, you should be able to do your design and make x-cart fit that - not vice versa. The learning curve may be too steep though for that, given your time restraints and you may find it more cost effective to just give someone your graphic files and let them work them in, allowing you to get on with what you do best and design a shop that really meets your needs. There are many examples here of people who have spent ages getting there shop to work and in the end it still looks straight out of the box. Conversely, there are many examples of shops that don't even look like x-cart.

Good luck.