Main Page custom template

[Nfiniti99]

Hello. I'm new to this as well. I have Shopsite Pro and it's great, but i'm just not an experienced web developer and don't have expertise in this subject. I'm just trying my best because I can't afford to get the site professional done at this time. I was wondering if I can make a custom template for the Main Page of my site using Microsoft Publisher. I figured I can create the template using Publisher and just upload the template. Also, I am going to have links on the Main Page to other pages throughout the site. Can this be done as well?

[Winterfellow]

What really helped me to get started was to go to Merchandising->Custom Templates and copy the ShopSite template that was closest to what the store owner wanted. Even if you decided to work the other way around (start with your page and add in the ShopSite stuff, rather than start w/ a ShopSite template and rework that)... seeing a working template tells you a lot about how to create one. I copied and pasted the code out of the Custom Templates I had made, then compared those to what I was seeing on the actual pages (View Source from within a browser) and that gave me a lot of insight as well.

Yes, the template I started with already had the functionality to assign links to other pages from the main page and category pages. Those I could assign from the Pages->Assign Items in the CP. On the More Info pages, though, I had to code that into the Template and did not do it in such a way that I can add/remove those through the CP.

[Nfiniti99]

Wow, thank you Winterfellow. That is excellent advice. I really do appreciate the kindness of people when they take the time to help a beginner such as myself. I will definitely try your suggestion.