Dreamweaver & Oscommerce

Hi,

OK I need some advice, I'm currently setting up a web design business and setting up my own ecommerce system for future customers & im working on a dummy website at the moment.

I have managed to implement the oscommerce system into the website but im completely lost as to how i add my design & customise the whole website.

I have setup an admin site for the customer to add products etc and check stats but im not sure how to edit the front end design.

Could anyone give me any advice on this, I'm not sure what information I need to give you so if you have any questions then please let me know.

Many Thanks,
Joanne

with this 'oscommerce system' is there not a 'template file' because if there is, all you have to do is adjust that to your own design - its just a case of working out whats what.

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OK ill check it out, do i need to open that template in dreamweaver or something?

you could do, ( but do be careful with dreamweaver it is prone to make alot of mistakes ) it is an idea to make it validate the best you can after you have re-designed the template and checked all is working - you can check it here http://validator.w3.org/

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ok thanks for that.

Joanne x

As far as I am aware, oscommerce does not provide templates to manage front-end.

So how do i implement the design?

there is a possibility that it is based on css, but only if there is no 'template file'

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You have to physically edit osCommerces files I believe. Youhave to dig through, edit the CSS and other documents structures for your specific layout. Its been a while since I have used it so they may have some theme system in effect now. RTFM I say.

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So what would you recommend the best system to use with dreamweaver so that the templates can be easily edited using dreamweaver?

It doesn't matter what you use to edit the files. the problem would be in knowing/locating the files you need to edit. Most of these open source systems like osCommerce have rather large forum communities specific to the software in question. I would check those out for more specifics unless someone here is more proficient. I have only installed/edited osCommerce once so I am not much help. The biggest problem i would see is that you would have to maintain osCommerces calls in each file you edit since it relies heavily on a database etc. So you need to tie the functionality of it into your new layout scheme.

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I am currently trying to implement the my own design to an osCommerce website. I managed to get it working, to a point, relatively easily. I used the oscommerce forums, and would recommend them as a starting point.

Also just get into the files and try changing small bits at a time and see if you can work out what each section of the code does.

Good luck!