Support & Assistance: Adding Your Xcart Store Design

One thing you will want to do with your new xcart store is add your own design to it.
There are essentially three areas where the X-Cart store layout and design is edited.

1) Setup
At setup, the store can be configured into a one (http://www.theequestrianstore.com/), two (store.cloch.ie) or three (http://www.mullingarflowers.com/) column layout.
The amount of columns is very much dependent on the size of your store and the content contained within it.

For example, a one column store might be suitable for a small store with only a few products or where a "top of page" navigation system is used where all the navigation is contained in links or drop down javascript menus at the top of the page.

A two column store is better suited to a store with a small number of categories, allowing all the various navigation elements to fit down the side without making the page too long.

A three column store can be used for stores with a large number of categories, or if they have custom content boxes that need room along the sides.

There is also a variety of standard colour schemes you can start off with: orange, blue, green, grey, red & yellow.
There are also several sets of "dingbats" in different colours. Dingbats are collections of small icon type images that are used around the store.

2) skin1.css
The vast majority of colour, format and sizing is contained within the skin1.css file (viewable under the Edit Templates link in the admin section).
We have a guide for this style sheet available for customers.

3)  TPL Files
The TPL files themselves contain the layout of each page, sections etc.
The easiest way of editing these is by using dreamweaver or another editor and FTP'ing them to the site.
We have full instructions on editing the TPL files.