Need help selecting a theme PLEASE!

[gracefuli]

i Need help selecting a theme. Here are my problems/wish list:
1. Product descriptions vary in length. So although i may love the look of the themes with nice grids or squares of 4 or items, all neatly lined up. i don't think these will work.
2. My product images seem to also vary in size. Is there a way to re-size all of them at once to be uniform?
3. What about subproducts? None of the examples seem to show how these will be addressed?

4. My ideal page/site (ie clothes store) on main page left column/side would list
WOMEN
-Blouses
-Pants
-Shoes

Men
-shirts
-Pants
-Shoes

Click on "Womens Blouses" and it shows a grid of product pictures with just the pic and maybe the name of item. then when you click on it, it opens the product to show image and details, then add to cart button...

is there a template that will do this or any of it, then i can customize?

[Jim]

See my post in the templates forum for some suggestions. Note that having the links on the left can be done in a couple of ways. The best way is to use the Navigation feature (Preferences > Navigation) to setup the links. It is possible in older themes to use the Assign Pages option to create a left link navigation. The newer themes generally rely on the Preferences Navigation layout and many don't support the Assign Pages method.

[ShopSite Lauren]

Do you have some examples of sites that you like the look of? Many of the templates available will suit your needs, but if you have some example sites, I could tell you which template, design-wise, would fit your needs and look how you want.

In general, based on what you have described, I would suggest going with the Familiar theme (http://shopsite.com/templates/cookbook/builtintemplates-bb-familiar.html) or the Compact theme (http://shopsite.com/templates/cookbook/builtintemplates-bb-compact.html), although with the compact theme, the template itself is very minimal with design, and is created with powerful images in mind. So if you go with the Compact theme, you will want to have banner images on your pages to add the 'wow' factor.

Once you select the theme you want, and once you have setup your main category pages (Pages > Add A Page) you will want to setup the navigation menus, both the left and top navigation menus. Below is a link to a video tutorial on how to setup your navigation menus.
http://www.shopsite.com/tutorial/preferences-navigation.html

After selecting your theme, adding your pages, setting up your navigation menus, you are ready to tackle your products. For product images, you can use ShopSite's image resizer to create resized images that have max-width and max-height's specified. Go to Images > Configure, and make sure these image settings are setup. I recommend that your image size 1, the medium size image that is used on product more information pages, is somewhere between 350-450px max in height and width. I recommend that your image size 2, the thumbnail size image that is used on category pages, is somewhere between 120-200px max in height and width. I would recommend that your image size 3, the smallest size image that is used in places like the shopping cart, or as little image thumbnails on the product more information page, is somewhere between 50-80px max in height and width. Save changes. If you have already uploaded your images into ShopSite, highlight all your images, and click "Create Resized Images" to have ShopSite re-create the image sizes at the new dimensions. If you have not yet uploaded images, then as you upload images through ShopSite, the images will automatically be created with these new image settings.

With products, how would you like your subproducts to appear? Both the Familiar and Compact themes have some flexibility when it comes to displaying subproducts. I think the default for both is to display subproducts with radio buttons so a customer can select one of the subproducts to add to the cart. However, there are easy changes in both ShopSite Manager and ShopSite Pro to change the subproducts to be either checkboxes or pull down menus.

[gracefuli]

Cool ideas - can't wait try these out. Sub products with radio buttons are great, but want them to listed under each other, not run continuously on one line. This is what I have run into before and it is very confusing.
Thanks