X-Cart forums

[Nikko Cruz]

My site is blank and looks terrible; should I purchase a template, or should I learn how to edit using css?

If I was to purchase a template, would it come with a user-friendly editor?

I'm leaning more towards editing it myself for total customization because I am picky.

Is it possible to build a template from the ground up while using X-cart?

I had a website I designed using Dreamweaver, but it's incompatible with x-cart so it was useless.

Thanks,

Nikko-

[Shamun]

Hi,

You can do either or a hybrid of both.
Learning what you need for customizing the look of x-cart is extremely easy as long as you have common sense. All you really need to learn is margins, padding, offset, color and some other minor things. You could just glance over css on w3schools in less than a day and you could get working on your own. Knowing html is also good, but I find that nearly everything is accomplished in css so you kind of only need to know linking, images and divs.

Buying a template would of course be easier if you see one that is near what you want. However, when you buy a template you will likely only receive the files and maybe some support depending on who from.


Developing an x-cart site using dreamweaver is possible but very likely wont do any good. The best two tools you'll use are Notepad++ and Firebug.
Notepad++ for creating and editing the templates/css, and firebug for troubleshooting the css in real-time.

[rogue]

Buy

[cflsystems]

You need to know css and html at least to be able to customize it yourself. Smarty is also goot to know. I would say buy the closes template you can find to what you need and customize it further to fit your vision. Or hire someone to do it for you if you can't/don't want to learn.

[Nikko Cruz]

Could you please elaborate on the use of Notepad++ & Firebug.
I've downloaded both the programs. What is the process?
Do I edit templates in Notepad++ & view them in firebug? If so, how?
Thank you-

[Shamun]

Use notepad++ to edit the files (css, .tpl etc). Best to use notepad++ over wordpad,notepad, microsoft word etc because it has different language syntaxes built in. It also doesnt insert extra characters and also handles new lines correctly.

Then you will be using firebug to mess around with your css. In the bottom right of firefox, you will see a little bug. Clicking that will activate firebug and some of the panels.
In the HTML panel, you can see how everything is nested and if you click on a div then firebug will immediately show that divs css styling and parent elements.