It works!
Andrey (on the xcart team) replied back to me informing me that the problem was from my safe_mode. The insructions said to ask the ISP to disable safe mode for the secure side. However, I asked my ISP to do this last year (due to another old xcart version issue) and they denied my request. After learning that the problem was safe mode, I did a search here and found the following solution:
In your smarty.class.php file;
change
Code:
$use_sub_dirs = true;
to
Code:
$use_sub_dirs = false;
This change eliminates the subdirectories in the templates_c directory. it seems the only drawback is the fact that there is no organization within the templates_c directory (as if I care).
The reason I'm posting this is because during the hours that I searched this forum for topics with templates_c, I never came across a post regarding safe mode and the solution.
Hopefully, anyone with a similar templates_c problem will now find this post and avoid needless frustration.
As always, if the problem is frustrating, the fix is simple!
Piper (now enjoying an error free site)