themes do not appear like in samples

[colinlaw]

I am really frustrated in my early stages of trying to use and setup a shopsite store for our website. In particular I cannot figure out why the sample themes do not look as advertised when you enable them.

Example 1: 3 Column Blues Page
http://www.shopsite.com/help/10.2/en-US/sc/pro/templates/3column-blues-page.html
when I enable that for my as yet limited store I get...
http://spaceupdate.com/temp/3colblue_test.jpg

Note that the navigation tabs are not rounded, there is no line under the top right navigation items, and there is none of the nice gradient in the left and right columns, nor in the sale items themselves. Are these all things that can only be done by hacking into the support files for this theme??

Example 2: Bookend Blue Page
http://www.shopsite.com/help/10.2/en-US/sc/pro/templates/bookend-blue-page.html
my attempt...
http://spaceupdate.com/temp/bookendblue_test.jpg

When I enable the theme, there is no light blue rounded shape for the left and right columns, and there is no rounded white shape behind all of the center area. It basically looks horrible.

I've tried every variation of "Layout Settings" I can find, but nothing seems to enable these basic theme elements. Please help before I put my head through a wall.

Colin
colinlaw@mac.com

[loren_d_c]

Some of the theme images in this version are coming via the 'ShopSite Images secure URL' set in Preferences -> Hosting Service. These images are not displaying because you are using an invalid secure domain name in this setting. It appears that you have it set to be based on https://spaceupdate.com, however you have not purchased (or at least not installed on your site, if you have purchased) an SSL certificate for that domain. So you should be using your host's shared SSL URL for you site in this setting (and the other SSL settings). Please contact your host to find out what the shared SSL URL for your site would be, then replace the https://spaceupdate.com portion of the secure URLs in Preferences -> Hosting Service with what they tell you, save that change, and re-Publish your store.

-Loren

[colinlaw]

My 'ShopSite Images secure URL' is set to https://spaceupdate.com/store/shopsite-images

You are saying that I need a different domain in that URL (a shared SSL URL from my ISP if such a thing exists) for the theme to draw things like the colored gradients in certain columns? If I have that correct, can I ask why a theme would require a secure URL to supply images to its pages? That seems really just odd to me.

But I will start by contacting my ISP for this site (Verio.com) and see if they do in fact have a shared SSL URL.

Thanks for such a quick reply by the way. I sort of expected my post to go nowhere and am pleasantly surprised to find useful help so fast.

[loren_d_c]

The colored gradients, etc, are images. I don't know why those particular themes use the secure image URL setting, I can just see that they do in the css source. Yes, you will need a different domain instead of https://spaceupdate.com/, unless you want to talk with your host about the possibility of purchasing a secure certificate for that domain. Secure https:// URLs must be accessed at the correct domain name that is in the SSL certificate being used, and since you don't have your own, that domain would be a shared one provided through your host.

-Loren

[colinlaw]

Thanks again. I got Verio on the phone and got the shared SSL URL and that definitely fixed the missing interface items.

I was told our store would probably now display as https://spa117.sslcert19.com/ instead of https://spaceupdate.com/ but hopefully only for the secure checkout steps.