Can Shopsite be customized?

[esm]

Hi,

One of my customers (I'm a web designer) has purchased Shopsite from a third party. He wants me to customize the shopping cart so it matches his website colors and layout. However, this company does not allow ftp access, which means I cannot download files, customize them and upload again.

Is there any other way to customize the looks of the shopping cart?

Thanks,

Ed

[mustangfanatic]

You can create custom templates in Dreamweaver or whatever WYSIWYG program. You add shopsites tags within the document and then upload the template in the back office under shopping cart.

If you go to shopsite.com >> then, designer resources. There is a link that is called custom template cook book. That will walk you through the process. There is also a tutorial to read through. A good place to always start is by hitting the big "?" mark in the back office screen. This will load all the help pages for shopsite.

[esm]

That sounds good, thanks a lot for the advice.

How do I get into the back office?

[Jim]

The "back office" is the merchant interface. generally it is a url something like Http://mydomain.com/cgi-bin/ss/start.cgi. The cgi-bin part could be different on different servers. You would then be prompted for a username and password.

A few hosts use their own login interface and you can't get to it by going to the url like above. So you will have to check with the merchant to see how it is done where they are hosted.

[esm]

I checked the back office and there is no provision to upload any files. Just dropdowns that let me enter text or add images.

[loren_d_c]

Ed,

Do you have ShopSite Starter? Check the footer of the ShopSite backoffice main menu (click the green 'ShopSite' tab in the upper-lefthand corner of the navbar to get there) to see the ShopSite product and version that you have.

If you only have ShopSite Starter, then you do not have Custom Template capabilities, you will need to contact your ShopSite reseller/hosting provider to get your ShopSite upgraded to ShopSite Manager or ShopSite Pro to get that feature.

If you do already have ShopSite Manager or ShopSite Pro, see the Merchandising -> Custom Templates menus for the interface to upload/edit/copy custom templates. See the designer tools recommended by mustangfanatic to learn how to create custom template files.

-Loren

[esm]

It's Shopsite manager 8.3.

[esm]

Okay, looks like I'm to dumb to understand this.

I am using one of their page/product templates but I'd like to modify the stylesheet on those particular templates.

In the Backend > Merchandising >Custom Templates >Page/Product it says "No Page/Product Templates found".

How am I supposed to edit a template if the system doesn't find it?

[Jim]

You need to determine what template is being used by the page or product and then use the Copy ShopSite template option under Merchandising >Custom Templates >Page/Product to make a copy of the template. Then you can edit the template and see what INCLUDE file is being used for the style. Then you would go to the Includes section of the Merchandising >Custom Templates and copy the include and make your changes. If you want to override the ShopSite template or include you can name the file you edit the same as the ShopSite file name by making a second copy to that name after you have made your changes. (I.E. you can't copy a ShopSite template and give it the same name but after it is in the local area you can copy it again and give it the original name.)

Note that not all templates supplied with ShopSite use the custom template language. So if you don't see the template name when you try the Copy ShopSite Template option that template is not using the custom template language and can't be edited.

[esm]

Okay, sounds good.

I found the template and the associated style sheet and downloaded the copies.

Thanks a lot!

Ed