[balinor]

Hi Ali, it would be really helpful if you could add your X-Cart version in your signature, as each version is very different. Edit profile, enter version, enter password, hit save.

I'll try and answer each of your questions generally:

Featured products are easily added using the built-in featured products function. Just go to the category you want to add featured products to, and use the box at the bottom to browse and select them. To add them to the home page, just click on the 'Categories' menu and use the box at the bottom of the screen. To modify the display of the featured products, you need to edit either products.tpl or products_t.tpl depending on your layout.

Adding plain old images is pretty easy, you can just edit customer/main/welcome.tpl and add the images where you want them using the following code:

[img]{$ImagesDir}/imagename.jpg[/img]

There is also a built-in bestsellers list, which can be turned on under 'modules' if it isn't on already. You will need to place a few test orders in order for any products to show up in it.

The only way to get rid of that white 'block' on the images is to make them transparent .gif files.

Hope this helps, and also be sure to search the forums thoroughly, as most of the questions you asked are answered elsewhere already.